Tesla's disastrous deliveries, more Trump tariffs, EV delivery numbers, and more
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two one we are live for a new episode of the electric podcast i'm fred lambert your host and as usual i'm joined by seth winchell how are you doing today seth i'm good all right all right we have a ton to talk about today uh we're gonna talk about tariffs because i'm sure you guys haven't heard enough about tariffs in the last few weeks we're gonna talk about tesla's delivery numbers and the delivery numbers of a bunch of other evo2 makers

I'm going to talk about the new IONIQ 6. We're going to talk about Honda, some weird new electric SUV coming and a little bit more. But let's start about the biggest EV automaker in the world for now.

BYD. We're going to talk about BYD a little bit later. But yeah, it does look like BYD is going to take over Tesla this year. It's almost certain. But yeah, last year, Tesla still was technically, when it comes to BEVs, all electric vehicles, still the biggest in the world. But in Q1, we have the first numbers coming out in Q1. And for reference, just so people remember, Q1 2024, Tesla delivered 306,000 vehicles.

And the consensus from analysts for this quarter was 377,000 vehicles. That's based on Tesla's own compiled analysis consensus that the investor relations department releases.

So even the most pessimistic analysts this quarter were expecting 350,000 or so deliveries from Tesla. And that consensus of 277,000 went down this quarter a lot. It started at around like 460,000, 450,000 deliveries and went down by almost like 100,000 units basically throughout the quarter as people realized that Wall Street just...

It doesn't understand what's going on with Tesla. And you know what? It was even worse than that. So Tesla reported 336,681 deliveries. So almost like basically 40,000 units under the consensus, 20,000 units below the even most pessimistic outlook. It's bad. It's really bad.

Of course, Tesla made sure that in the release, the release is always very light for Tesla. You know, we complain about that a lot, that Tesla is one of the most opaque automaker out there. They just don't break down sales by model. They have the best selling vehicle in the world in the Model Y, and they don't even break down deliveries of the Model Y. They bundle up with the Model 3. And then other models include the Model S, X, Cybertruck, and Tesla Semi. So it's pretty wild.

Now, they made sure to add something this quarter. They quoted, while the changeover of Model 1 lines across all four of our factories led to the loss of several weeks of production in Q1, the ramp up of new Model 1 continues to go well.

So they want to make sure that this is because of Model Y, even though we've been reporting in the last few weeks that it's clearly not just Model Y. Model 3 sales are also way down in Europe. And then we also had a pretty good view of deliveries in China, which were basically flat, even a little bit up year over year in Europe.

In Europe, it was down about 30,000 units or so, which doesn't explain the 50,000 units. So the $20,000 difference is 20,000 units difference is the U.S. was way worse than we expected. So it should give us an idea, excuse me, of the brand damage that this is suffering in the U.S. on top, obviously, of the issues with production with the Model Y.

You know what the stock did that day set when the deliveries was 40,000 minutes below expectation? It went up by 5%. Maybe the whisper number was even lower or something. Yeah. Well, it sounds like it, but it makes no sense. It actually went down on the release. Yeah. It came out at 9 a.m.,

Stock went down about 5%, but then went back up to neutral and up 5%, which again, no sense whatsoever. Some people attributed that to a report from Politico that Elon was preparing to leave Doge.

So I guess Tesla investors figure, oh, Elon leaving the government is a good thing? Even though I'm old enough to remember in November and December when Tesla had a surge of $500 billion based on Elon joining the government. So...

Elon joining the government, good for Tesla. Elon leaving the government, also good for Tesla. And then when both the White House and Elon denied the report on Tuesday when the delivery report came out, the stock didn't move. It stayed like, yeah. Or actually, it went a little bit up. You're probably right. So it made no sense whatsoever.

What affected the stock this week is more the broader market. I'm sure that after some digesting of the news, like now a lot of Wall Street analysts have to wake up and change their whole model for the year for Tesla to adjust their earnings for the year because this is just a delivery report.

the earnings coming out April 22nd is going to hurt. I would assume. Tesla might do some shenanigans to make it look better, like include the settlement from the directors and their non-gap earnings. Maybe they report a ton of revenue from Tesla

turning FSD on in China, even though 90% of FSD's value is actually on supervised self-driving, which hasn't been released. So they might do things like that. But for the most part, Tesla basically running their factories at 60% capacity and delivering the lowest amount of vehicle they had in three years is not going to be good for earnings. So Wall Street is going to adjust to that in the coming weeks, and then Tesla is going to report in the 22nd.

What we learned today from Tesla, too, is that they launched the cheaper Model Y in Canada and the US. So that's the non-launch edition of the new version. Still only the long-range all-wheel drive available. But instead of being $60,000, it's now $49,000 before incentive because they don't bundle all the features together like they did for the launch edition. They also launched a new color set. I don't know if you saw that. It's called...

Diamond, diamond black. Looks pretty black to me. This is something I just cannot recommend from Tesla, the black. I bought the black, the premium black on my Model 3 when I bought mine. And back then it was the obsidian black it was called. It was the equivalent of the diamond black. And I mean, I cannot tell you how many times

In certain light, okay, yes. In very certain light, it looked a little bit better than the regular black. But there's a bunch of times when I park my car next to a solid black Model 3 and I'm like, I cannot see a difference. So for me, it was like $2,500 Canadian more or something. Now it's $1,500 US.

But yeah, in Canada too, they launched a new version and it's 70,000 Canadian dollars, which basically right now, based on the current exchange rates, which change a lot these days, it is about 49,000 US. So it would point to Tesla and not anticipating to get any tariffs from Canada on the Model Y. We're going to get into the tariffs in a minute, but...

You can get any version of the Model 3 or Model Y right now in the US and Canada within one to three weeks. So it doesn't look like Tesla has any backlog whatsoever.

We did report last week that Tesla started production of the new Model Y non-launch edition in the US, but they didn't launch the orders then because we assumed that, well, we knew that Tesla had inventory of the launch edition still because you could deliver it the same day. So we expected Tesla to not want to affect any kind of potential deliveries they could have of the launch edition at the end of the quarter and launch it the next quarter, which is exactly what happened.

It's worth reading electric. Sometimes you'll get some pretty good prediction when it comes to Tesla. And then I had a big exclusive this morning. And this is also why you should read electric is literally with all the tariff stuff going on and everything. No one has picked up this story, which I think it's a pretty big story about Tesla, about the Tesla Semi, which if you've been following the podcast, you know, it's actually the

Only vehicle program at Tesla right now that I'm excited about. I've been a big proponent of electrifying Class 8 semi-trucks. I think that if you can deliver a 500-mile Class 8 truck that can move as much cargo as a diesel or close to as much cargo as a diesel truck for a reasonable price, when you account the cost of operation being lower thanks to

you know electricity rates generally being lower than diesel you have a potentially revolutionary product on your hand there and that's what this has been promising with the SSMI and we've seen some test program you know confirming the 500 mile range they've been a little bit you know shaky on the actual cargo capacity but then PepsiCo and all that which moves you know beverage uh

which is heavy. They say that now it's the same capacity as all of their trucks, everything. So everything points in the right direction. Now there's something that has changed and it's the actual purchase price, the sticker price of the Tesla Semi. So we get this information thanks to Ryder. Ryder is one of the biggest trucking company in the US and it's a Tesla Semi customer partner for Tesla. They filed

with the California Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction Review Committee. That's a mouthful. It's MSRC. It's called MSRC. They were awarded. Early on, they reserved a bunch of Tesla SMAs. For those who don't remember, Tesla SMA was unveiled in 2017. It was supposed to go in production in 2019. In 2022, Tesla held an event

where they called the unveiling of the production version of the TESA Semi, but it still hasn't really come into production, at least not volume production. But it's now finally supposed in 2025 to come in volume production at a new factory that was just completed in Nevada, or at least the building was completed and now they need to set up a production, obviously. So early on, Ryder reserved TESA Semis, and then they were awarded by the MSRC award

funding for a project to deploy 42 Tesla Semi trucks and four mega chargers at two of their locations in California to use the Tesla Semi trucks. Now, that was a while ago. And with all the delays, they kept delaying the program. Riders has applied for extension and all that. And now last week, they applied for yet another extension. And we learned some interesting things from their application for an extension.

So they wrote, this extension is needed due to delays in Tesla product design, vehicle production, and dramatic changes to Tesla product economics. These delays have caused us to revalidate the current rider fleet in the area. So now they say the logistics company now says that it plans to deploy 18 Tesla semi-vehicles by June 2026. So that's due to the increase, the change in economics, which, you know,

means price hike, a big price hike. Now, they don't go into the details on the price hikes. There's another thing they changed their program to. They now say that they're going to install three mega chargers per location, so six total instead of four. And they also said that Tesla now requires 600 kilowatt chargers rather than 750 kilowatts, which was the original plan. So that's an interesting thing, changing capacity to make a charger capacity based on what Ryder says.

Now, the original pricing for the Cybertruck, the Tessas Amai, was $150,000 for the 300-mile truck, $180,000 for the 500-mile truck. And Tesla was also separately selling a 200,000 Funder Series 1, whatever. They haven't updated these prices with the production version in late 2022. So we still only have those old prices. We assume that the price go up with inflation and everything. But we don't know by how much. As a point of reference...

Diesel power class A trucks, which there's a bunch of different ones. The price ranges normally for a new one in the US between 150 and 220 thousand dollars.

So 150, 180 was a very good price. We expect it to go higher. And it can go a little bit higher than that because, again, because of our operation would be lower and because our operation is bigger than the sticker price for a truck over a relatively short period of time. Like I've heard like tens and tens of thousands, if not close to a hundred thousands of dollars a year in fuel costs that some just single truck could spend if it's used optimally.

So now I had to do some math. So I was looking and I can't confirm this for a fact because, again, they don't go into the details of the MSRC application. But the way that they phrase things, MSRC says it doesn't cover the cost of the truck. But the trucks, the cost of the trucks are included in the entire program. And Rider matches the funds for $7.5 million.

And they say they don't want to change that. So they keep at 7.5, but they reduce it from 42 trucks to 18 trucks and six megachargers instead of four. Now, MSRC says they don't, they are not going to give them more money because of the price increase. And since the program changed and reduced the number of trucks, they actually might reduce the amount of money that they gave them. But if you do the math, it does sound like MSRC covers the cost of the chargers, maybe minus the change.

And Ryder covered the cost of buying the trucks, which actually makes sense if you do the original math, because if you divide 7.5 million by 42, it rounds up to about 180,000 a truck, which was Tesla's original price for the 500 mile version.

Now, if you divide that by 18 instead, you end up $415,000 per truck, which is wildly different. Now, I do expect that Riders is going to cover the cost of the increased mega charger expense too. We cannot know how much exactly, but I would expect that. But still, I wouldn't be surprised if this means that the Tesla Samurai now costs $415,000.

closer to between $350,000 to $400,000 per truck, which is basically more than double of the original price.

And also it changes the whole economics of it. Like at these prices, I don't think it is a revolutionary product. It is, you know, it's still an impressive product and everything. I'm sure they're going to sell a few, but I think it would need to be closer to $250,000 to $200,000. And then when you account the savings, the fuel savings, then it starts to make a lot more sense for people. But for now, I think it's somewhat limited. Did I burst your test on my bubble set or?

My bubble's been burst for a while. Yeah, you weren't as hype as I was for the program, I think. I was originally. I remember that launch event was pretty exciting, the whole thing with the Roadster as well. But it's been slow to get off the ground. Yeah, I mean, six years of delays, we'll do that to you. All right, let's talk a bit about the tariffs because that was the big story this week. And it does affect the EV world, does affect Tesla, does affect other automakers.

So Liberation Day was April 2nd, same day that Tesla released its delivery results too. So it kind of muddied the water there a little bit. But yeah, Trump announced a list of reciprocal tariffs. That's what he calls them. I think it's...

quite a kind of a stretch. And it's between, it adds on top of existing tariffs, it adds 10 to 49% on each countries, which was described by Trump on stage as they took the tariffs that these countries apply to the US and they divided by half because they're just so nice to them. And that's how they come up with the tariffs. However,

When you look at the list and you look China putting a 67% tariff on the U.S., European Union at 49%, Japan at 46%. And then you actually go look at Japan, China, and European Union's policies on U.S. tariffs. And it's nowhere near that. So a lot of slurs, sleuths, internet sleuths, the map. And they came up actually that they are...

taking the trade deficit with these countries and dividing it by their US imports to arrive at those tariffs. So basically, it's mostly based on trade deficit rather than actual tariffs. So it makes sense based on what Trump has been saying, because he's been very misunderstanding the tariffs things and focusing on trade deficit and blaming entirely basically trade deficit on tariffs, because he's been sort of confusing the two, which makes no sense.

So now the strategy from the U.S., like some of the biggest impact, obviously, is like 67% on China, which adds up to 34%. So 34% reciprocal tariffs on China added on the existing 20% tariffs on China ends up to 54% tariffs on China.

Which is wild. It changed the game for a lot of people. A lot of cars, a lot of EVs in the U.S. use Chinese parts. Tesla uses entirely Chinese battery cells in its energy storage business in the U.S. All these mega packs made out of Latrop in California, all these Powerballs made out of Gigafactory Nevada, all use Chinese battery cells, mostly from CATL or if not entirely from CATL.

those are going to go up 54% in price next week. Are the products still viable at this point? I don't know. There's a lot of these things that are happening. Now, Trump's strategy on this is that he thinks that these countries will then come back to him and then remove those tariffs so that they can negotiate down the reciprocal tariff. But the problem, like I just explained, these tariffs don't exist. They are trade deficits. So

How do you negotiate on that? If China goes back to the US and they're like, all right, I'm going to remove all tariffs in the US, so remove yours. But they're like, we don't have anything to remove right now. I mean, I'm sure they have some, but it's not 67%. So you're kind of stuck. Everyone is stuck in this negotiation of trying to remove tariffs that don't exist. You have to remove a trade deficit, but to remove a trade deficit,

Like, the US has to sell them stuff or stop buying their stuff. It's how it works. So you're stuck in a situation where the US needs to come to the realization that you don't make enough good stuff for people to buy. It's as simple as that. So until that changes, there's nothing they can do. It's an impasse. Did you understand that the same way, Seth?

Yeah, I mean, it's funny how like every single educated economist from both sides of the fence, Republicans and Democrats are coming out against us. Like most of the conservative, you know, like Ben Shapiro. And it's just crazy how unanimous everybody is that this is a really bad idea. I mean, the...

what you hear from the administration, it's a negotiating tactic and everything. But like I said, there's probably the negotiation that I just stated where we don't know what we're negotiating. So then you have to really ask yourself, is Donald Trump that dumb? Which might be the answer, might be yes. But there are other explanations possible.

the us has what nine trillion dollar in debt that needs refinancing this year and this is helping that now i by how much it's it's hard to tell exactly for now but this this kind of confusing nonsensical plan as one main product right now and it's crashing the stock market and stock market has crashed significantly this week

and would likely continue to do so. And that result in people taking their money away from the crash. The crash is because people are taking money away from the market and they're putting it elsewhere. So elsewhere is often treasury bonds. And when you put more money in treasury bonds, the value increase, the interest rates go down. And then that means that when the U.S. refinance their debt, they refinance it at a lower interest rates, which help

the US budget because they have extremely high interest, extremely high debt and payments on that debt. So there is that. But at the same time, I just I don't know how much Trump really cares about that, to be honest with you. Like I just said, just I don't I don't buy it that much. Another explanation is like, you know, this is king making shit right now that's happening because

He just, he basically, you know, kings used to do that all the time, like the lords and whatnot. They would tax their population. They will tax, you know, they would conquer a country. They would tax it. And then they're like, you don't want to tax? Like, what can you do for me? So this is exactly what Trump is doing right now is like he taxed everyone.

And he's like, what can you do for me? Come to the table. Come negotiate with me. What can you do for me? And that's his way of like some kind of, you know, crowning himself king and making his deals. That's a real possibility, too. But at the end of the day, like, don't quote me on anything like that because I'm not in Trump's head. Thank God.

I don't want to be, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't think there's a lot going on in there. Yeah, exactly. Like my, my old thesis, my old investment thesis, like I'm not complaining a lot on the country cause I'm short the market. I shouldn't make that clear.

I went liquid in December and January and I started shorting the NASDAQ in January and I've been doing very well doing it. My portfolio has been going very well. So I'm happy with that. But my

thinking was not necessarily all the tariffs are going to be bad and all that. I mean, I never believed in the tariffs in the first place, but my thinking is more incompetence. I just have no faith whatsoever in this administration, no faith in Elon Musk being involved in the government and any of that. So I think that as long as they are in power, they will keep just screwing up consistently. So that's more the thesis for being short right now. But yeah, this doesn't help. And this doesn't help the...

The EV market in the U.S. because prices are going to go up across the board. Now, Canada is, if you look at that list, is not on that list. Mexico either. So Trump decided not to do reciprocal tariffs on those. He's going to stick with what he previously announced on the steel tariffs, the auto tariff at 25%.

But it looks like they're sticking to the idea of respecting the free trade agreement. So all the parts that are going to be included in that are going to be OK. And then the tariffs on cars coming from Canada and Mexico apparently are going to be discounted if there is a 50 percent parts coming from the U.S., which for a lot of EVs, that might be the case. For example, the Mustang Mach-E.

like gets its battery from the us that's a big part of the vehicle i don't know how they they count the percentage of it exactly if it's by you know cost or whatnot but it's the same if they can want for sure so maybe the uh they're gonna be okay with that uh we'll see but the tariffs have been quite a mess

All right, we have plenty of more things to discuss, but before we do, I want to say a quick thank you if you're listening or watching live right now. And if you do, you can give us a quick like, a thumbs up, a subscribe. All these things are super useful to us and they are free to do. They take a second. We appreciate when you do it. Also, if you have questions for us, we take questions live at the end of the show, so you can put them in the comment section right now. I would appreciate if you started with question, dash, and then...

I can ask you a question so that we don't have to go through some of the conversation going on right now in the comments. All right. BYD released its Q1 delivery result, and that's some kind of scale that's just mind-blowing. They delivered in the first three months of the year just over 1 million electric vehicles, 1,804,000. That's up 60% year-over-year.

That's insane. 60%. Now, not all these vehicles are full electric. So full electric, it's 416,000. And PHEVs is the rest. So still extremely impressive. Just on the BEVs, they delivered almost 100,000 more BEVs than Tesla did in the first quarter. So impressive.

So it now looks extremely likely that for the whole year they will overtake Tesla because Tesla has 90,000 units, 80,000 units to catch up.

so uh yeah it's and I I don't see this the situation improving a ton this quarter they might they might sell a little more vehicle in Q2 than they did in Q1 with uh you know having non-launch edition of the Y and all that but uh not by us that much I think and the ID is like launching new vehicles every other week basically so well Tesla has the cyber truck

Ford has been doing well. They increased their output by 21% in Q1 with the Mach-E 11,600 deliveries.

Then you have behind that, you have the Chevy Equinox EV at 10,000. You have the Honda Prologue that is basically the same thing at 9,500 units. The Ioniq 5 up 25% at 8,600 units. Volkswagen ID.4, 7,600, also up about 25%, 24% to be exact. The Chevy Blazer is doing pretty good, 6,000 units. It's a little bit more expensive than the Equinox, but...

doing about 60% of the volume. And the BZ4X has surged quite a bit at 5,600 units. But I think that it's because they basically are giving them away at this point. So yeah, it's important to note that Tesla is the one retracting right now. It's going in a downturn. EVs are still growing all over the world. It's just not Tesla. It's important to note.

Not all automakers are growing though. Rivian went down also this quarter, but deliveries were actually on expectation. They topped in just a little bit, 8,640 units.

delivered in the first quarter. They did warn last quarter that they had a supply shortage of some component related to the enduro motor. So they had to basically shift around their production of different motors and commercial vans too. So it resulted in a lower production, but they still top expectation and they reiterated their delivery goal of 50,000 to 52,000 units in 2025. Rivian right now is like,

It looks like the R1s are kind of reaching their full potential. They won't deliver much more than that. It's more about learning as much as you can from them and moving to the R2 and R3. That's going to be the volume. And R2 is apparently still on track for early 2026 or first half of 2026.

Lucid is doing pretty good too. They had a record delivery in Q1 with 3,109 vehicles delivered. So the gravity is now contributing a little bit. I don't know if they break those down. I mean, it just started the gravity, so I'm sure it's not...

I don't think they broke down the two. It just started anyway, so it's mostly air probably. But still, it's a couple, like literally like 10 units higher than last quarter, but significantly higher than the less than 2,000 units delivered in Q1 2024. So significant growth from Lucid. All right, let's start. Let's talk a little bit new vehicles. Hyundai unveiled the new design of its updated IONIQ 6 and also the...

N line and they gave a little bit tiny little bit of a hint of the N model. So yeah, the N line and the N are not the same. So the N is the sport version. The N line has just some sport features to it, but not the same capacity. So the same thing as the IONIQ 5 basically. But yeah, the design, I mean, I wasn't the biggest fan of the IONIQ 6 design.

But I have to say, this update, they're leaning into it. They're leaning in their bold design for it. And I don't know if the changes are working or if it's starting to grow on me because it's still very much the same kind of bold shape. But I like it. Yeah, I like it too. It's different. I'd like to see with the lights on. It doesn't seem like the lights are going to be able to...

come out of that little slit very well. So this is the end line, so a little bit sportier, like the bottom lip and the diffuser almost makes it a two-tone vehicle, almost, but not quite. But it works. I like the end line, like the lip and the front and the side lip and the diffuser are so big and different color, it makes it almost two-tone.

but i think i think the uh front end works better we see uh like that with uh with the new grille yeah it's a good looking car the interior i'm not as familiar with the interior of the six to tell you the difference but then this is what's exciting here you have uh the gave you a little bit hint of the end line that's going to be a lot more aggressive it sounds not the end line the end

You can see it here. So you're going to have a big spoiler, vehicle backhand, and that's going to be a new top sports version of the vehicle. No, we don't have details on the specs here, but you can assume probably the same specs upgrade as the 2025, 2025 IONIQ 5. And the NACS too, probably, right? The 2025 at the NACS. I'm pretty sure, yeah. Hyundai is kind of ahead of the curve. Yeah.

Sorry, I'm kind of losing my voice now. Honda has kind of made a little debut of a camouflage version of their new electric SUV that's coming in the U.S. next year. They're going to launch it at their new production hub in North America. And it's strange looking. And I'm not just talking about the camouflage here. I really need to ask Peter and...

The way they're doing their galleries, you cannot click on them. It's so weird. Yeah, look at that. So again, I'm not talking as much about the camouflage here, but look at the back end. It's strange. That's wild. There's something that doesn't work with the back end of it. Yeah.

But it's still a prototype. It's called the new Zero Series EVs that they're launching, their next generation EVs. So I think they're moving away a little bit from using GM and trying to do their own thing. And we'll see. We'll see if that thing is still like that. Yeah, it's weird because Honda's not known for making ugly cars. Like, I think they've done some cool things with the Civic. I mean, the Accord's pretty compliant. But Prelude thing is coming out. Looks kind of cool.

They're pretty bold too. They did the... On the E, was it the retro one that they did? Oh yeah, the retro one that was in Europe. That was good looking too. I agree. They don't nearly do bad looking cars. We'll see. It's still a prototype. Speaking of good looking cars, Mazda is starting production of the... This is called the 6E. We talked about it before. It was a Chinese only electric vehicle from Mazda. But now they are...

making it for Europe, Southeast Asia, and other overseas markets. So they are expanding it. And in China, this is a $20,000 car, the equivalent of $20,000, which is still a decent spec, 600 kilometers, 272 miles of range, CLTC. So...

Take that with a grain of salt. Charged between 30 and 80%. They're kind of cheating a little bit here, but in 15 minutes. Offered in 68.8 and 80 kilowatt-hour battery pack options. And it looks just great. It looks like a legit Mazda. Again, I don't have that. It's a good-looking car on the interior too. I haven't been in a Mazda forever. I wouldn't mind trying that.

So yeah, this is going to be kind of a Model 3 competitor, I guess, though a little bit cheaper because it's started about $9,000 cheaper in China. It's probably going to be more expensive, obviously, in other markets, but it's coming. We'll keep track of the volume, see how it does, because Mazda is not generally the highest volume manufacturer. All right, let's jump into the comments section. Let's see what you guys have to say. All right.

uh carl says look at that cyber truck looks like this cyber truck can't rail recall is complex and the fix is crappy i suspected it would be so that's the uh previous recall we were talking about yeah i did the report on that this week i saw one of the first one and uh yeah i didn't didn't really include in the podcast but uh yeah it's it's not a good look like the uh it's

There's a confusing report because I actually found on the TESTA service website the video to show how to do it and to show how to do it, there's no weld on it. So it's just they removed the Cantrail, they applied some boot tape, some tape that removes vibration.

And then they removed the two nuts that are keeping the chemtrail together. They replaced it with new ones. And that's about it. But in the remedy fix on the recall notice, it does mention a weld of one of those nuts.

So, maybe it's evolving, maybe it's changing, I don't know. But one of the first owner to get it posted some pictures and it looks awful. The weld goes through the Cantrell trim, so you see a weld burn on the other side of your trim, which I don't know how easy that's going to be to remove.

And also, I mean, that's for a specific one. I would assume that some other people won't do that, but there's a giant panel gap on the Cantrell. So, you know, this is an 80 to 100,000 vehicle right now. And getting that is just not fun. But Tesla is lucky because Tesla has like a lot of early adopter customers, especially for new vehicle program or sort of new vehicle program in the Cybertruck where they don't care about that that much. So they're like, all right, we'll just deal with it. But

I mean, I think the vast majority of the market would just not. Yeah. I wouldn't tolerate that. Yeah. All right. Gonzalo says, traded my Model 3 on Sunday for a Lucid Air Pure, more range, smoother drive. Yeah. We've been noticing Lucid's numbers just going straight up. Yeah. The interim serial this week said that 50% of their new buyers right now are coming from Tesla. Like they're trading in their Tesla. So that's.

That's a big boost for Lucid. And you're going to love it, man. I mean, I love my Model 3. Multi-performance. I think it's one of the most fun cars to drive ever. But when I got into the Lucid Air last winter, ooh, I had a blast. I had the Touring version, but I'm sure the Pure is also very good. All right. I've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in my retirement accounts over the last few days due to the tariffs. I'm not alone. I think we feel comfortable buying a car right now. That's a good point. People aren't...

really excited about buying a car when their life savings is cutting 10% off. Yeah. And I mean, the chances of going into a recession right now is higher than it's been in years. It looks extremely likely at this point. I think the poly markets are switched to more likely than not this week. Oh, wow. So...

I mean, obviously big purchases like a car get delayed. So yeah, for the entire market, this is not good. All right. Musk will claim on the earnings that call that Trump has pre-ordered 2 million Optimus robots to replace the U S military members. Doge is firing. Nothing Elon has said out loud was true. That is a wild, but entirely possible claim. Uh,

i do expect the oh sorry i think we got a delay that going on but uh i do expect the earnings call is going to be an interesting one this this this quarter where elon's going to make some wild claims you know try to claim victory on this self-driving uh optimist progress and all that just to distract everything to the fact that this this main business of selling electric vehicle

is crashing right now and he's not doing anything about it because he, in his mind, he believes that self-driving is going to solve everything. Well, it's going to come this year, I'm sure, right? Two weeks. All right. Well, what about buying a car from the company that's aligned with the guy who created the tariffs? Oh, no. Tesla is so toast. It does seem like they're in big trouble.

uh justin from linkedin says rivian r2 r3x r3 will be game changing in 2026 to 2028 that's next year uh the r2 is coming out hope i've got an order for one so hopefully we'll see one uh liquidation day not liberation day that's a good

Hopefully. I didn't know that, too. Liberation Day, it's the third time that he used the term. It was supposed to be January 20th, and then it was supposed to be before that, too. It's the third time he used it. I mean, come on. The guy has just lost his mind. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I wish the Rubin R2 was out already. That SUV would be selling so many R2 and R3. It will be super hot items for the next few years. Yeah. I mean...

Yeah. I mean, it does beg the question, why doesn't Ford come out with an electric Bronco or something? There's opportunities right now. Maverick? How many electric Mavericks would Ford sell in a year, you think? I would buy one for sure.

Yeah. I mean, if they can keep it close to like 50, 55. I mean, they sell the gas version for like 30, I think. Yeah. But you still, you know, you still need a decent sized battery pack to get some kind of utility from it. But at 50, 55 with, you know, you don't necessarily need 10,000 pounds of towing capacity and all that. So, yeah, I think they would sell in the hundreds of thousands.

All right. Russian, Bulgaria, or sorry, Belarus, dodged tariffs. Yeah. Kind of weird, right? All right. I don't think they're huge trading partners with the US anyway. I mean, there's a little bit to the highlands that got tariffs this week. Right.

The penguins. Yeah. All right. Noah Davis asks, will Electric be at Formula E race in Miami next weekend? We did not get an invite for that one. I used to go to the Brooklyn one when I was there, but it moved to Portland. We don't have anybody in Miami, but maybe we should work on that. Ian Smith says, I hear a lot about the year-over-year Tesla sales drop, but not much about the multi-year drop. Q1 2023, Q2.

422,000, Q1 2024, 386,000, 336,000. Tesla is now selling more than a fifth fewer vehicles than they did in 2023. Yeah, they're going back in time. Yeah, it's a good point, especially going against like, you know,

Tesla right now, one of the main problems, obviously Elon Musk, but to just convince the market, you need to convince the market of the reality that's happening right now that Tesla's brand is just completely devastated and we need a turnaround.

And the shareholder are just so focused on keeping the stock alive and everything that they hold on to the idea that everything is the Model Y changeover. Even though if you look at what Ian just shared, it's clear that the decline has been going on for two years, that it's not new. It's not new to the Model Y changeover. And if you compare it to Q,

Q1 2024, there was the Model 3 changeover at the time, which, you know, it's not as big of a vehicle program as the Model Y, but pretty close. And that was happening. It was affected the sales. And then Model 3 sales are now down from that time. It's just, it's all, everything looks bad. People need to wake up. Tesla's main business is selling cars and it's not selling as many and it's selling them for much smaller gross margin. The self-driving pivot program

that's going to happen in June is just a distraction for the giant liability that Elon has created for the self-driving promise on consumer vehicles. We need to wake up. Simple as that. Yeah. Kick Elon out. All right. Roby Chap says, looking for a Model Y replacement to serve as a road trip car. Are there any equivalent options in the US with the charge port location that won't take two spots at a Tesla charger?

R2 or others. I mean, if that's your biggest thing about buying a new car, taking two Tesla spots, I would probably say you should look at other pieces of the car equation because you're only going to do that a few times on a road trip. And frankly, taking up two spots usually isn't a problem unless there's a crowded supercharger. Yeah.

To be honest, lately, for the first maybe five or six years of owning Tesla vehicles, never had... One time in Los Angeles, I had an issue where I had to wait for chargers. The chargers were full. But lately, it's been happening a lot more, though. When I went to Chicoutimi in Quebec, there was wait time or there was right before I arrived and things like that. So it is a bit more of a concern, but...

What's your best Model Y replacement? Model Y replacement? I guess it depends what you like about the Model Y. Like if you want the high end BMW iX, that's a nice vehicle. Yeah. I mean, like if price is not too much of an issue, I mean, the Q6 is pretty dope.

Yeah, and you won't have a problem with it when it comes to the charger. In fact, you can have a charger on both sides if you want. The one on the passenger side is going to be level two, but the level three is going to be on the right side for the Tesla supercharger. Yeah, so Carl says the Mackie. Yeah, but the Mackie, I think the Mackie you will block.

station. Yeah. So that's the only reason I didn't use it. But yeah, the Mackie would be a good alternative too. Just, I just didn't use it for that. But yeah, I mean, the Ioniq 5, if you want to go a little bit smaller and everything is a great one. And then you got to have the Naxx on it too. So the EV6, a little bit more sedan-like. Maybe a Blazer. Quinox Blazers are a little bit, in the lower end, that would be the option, I think. All right.

Moving on. If the R2 wasn't coming in the next 18 months, I'd be looking at the new Ioniq 6 to replace my Model 3. It looks really fantastic. Yeah, I'm impressed. It's a good-looking car. I read the Ioniq 6 doesn't have one-pedal driving that stays on all the time. Hopefully, they fixed that in the new one. I don't think that's true. I think there's a setting that you can turn off the regen. But all one-pedal driving is is strong regen. And I know that exists. I don't know how strong it is, though.

Did you guys see the out of spec is trying to get their cyber truck bought back due to constant problems with it? I didn't see that. Do you? I didn't, but I seen plenty of other people having this issue. Like I've heard from several cyber truck owners that Tesla doesn't want any trade in. And if you have, but that's not new to the cyber truck. This has been doing that for years. But if you have a lot of issues with your truck, like it's in service more often than you have on the road, then

A lot of companies will just buy it back. It's like, oh, sorry, it's a bad truck. We'll buy it back from you if you want a new one. We'd appreciate it. If not, it's okay. But for the Cybertruck, Tesla just doesn't want any of these trucks back because it has 2,400 units in inventory right now.

And that's like a whole quarter at this point for Tesla of Cybertrucks. So they don't want any back and they are not accepting any trade-ins and they are forcing you to go through lemon law if you're not happy with it. So bad. I don't like the IONIQ 6. The design looks terrible to me. The IONIQ 5 is better to me. Rivian, that is the best looking EV ever. Reserve my R2. I guess there's subjective stuff about that.

What are both of your thoughts on the used EV market in the U.S. if these tariffs remain this year? Well, I hate to say this. I really hate to say this, but like Tesla, used Teslas are going to be cheap as not. I mean, they're going to be very cheap because so many people are getting rid of them.

just because they hate Elon Musk. So there's going to be a, I mean, there already is probably a flood in the market on Tesla. Yeah, they're cheap now. I think they're going to go up in prices. I think all EVs, I think it's going to be a lot. I mean, if the tariff stays in place, I'm not saying they will, because I don't, like, who knows with Trump. But if they do stay in place, we could get a situation similar to like COVID, you know,

and the supply chain issues that increases the price of everything and including prices of new cars going up, then price of used car go up because people go more to used cars because they don't want to pay the new car prices. So the used car prices go up. I don't think it's going to be as bad as COVID, the COVID time, because there was also the big EV boom at the same time. But we could see that. So maybe take that into account if you are in the used EV market right now.

all right uh jo says i don't trust used evs for now they seem more risky than a used ice car i wouldn't say that um what's what's that company that we used to uh work with recurrent they kind of check the status of the battery so you can it's kind of like a car fax for batteries yeah um check them out uh you'll kind of understand what kind of battery you're getting

get yourself into and then the rest of the car honestly is going to have a lot less um damage than an internal combustion engine car so yeah the battery is a big concern because if you do need to replace it it is expensive so you're it's okay to have concerns about that but like you said

Most of the time you won't need to replace it. So it's not that big an issue. Also, it depends like how, how use of an EV, how old it is, because a lot of them are still on the warranty for the battery because most of them have an eight year powertrain warranty. All right. What are the chances Canada stops buying us cars and buys inexpensive China vehicles? I mean, I guess they already are a little bit, but well, no, we still have the tariffs on them. So that's, that's the main issue we see.

like right now we're putting a 25 tariff on all american car unless they are compliant with the free trade agreement so i think most of them are going to be compliant so we we there's no tariffs on u.s cars even though they are a tariff or there's going to be probably a 12.5 percent tariffs on canadian car it's not again it's not even clear yet but yeah if that happens i would

I would certainly hope for the Canadian government to apply a tariff on U.S. cars and remove the tariff on the Chinese vehicles and do a deal with China over this. Like you can, you know, increase trade with China because the main thing that this is accomplishing, the tariffs that the U.S. has announced, is isolating the U.S. I mean, today, why the market crashed? The market crashed a lot on Wednesday following the pandemic.

on Thursday following the Wednesday announcement or whatever it was. But today the market is crashing because of the Chinese retaliation. And then China, Japan and Korea all came together saying that they will partner up to form a trade strategy in the US. We are so screwed. To get China

Japan and Korea will all hate each other. I mean, hate might be a big word, but historically speaking, there was a lot of issues between the country and there still are a lot of issues between these countries. To get them to get together, you've done something wrong. You screwed up bad. So yeah, this is a real problem. So

It's a real problem for the US. I'm not saying the US has zero leverage. Obviously, it's a giant market that has a lot of buying power. So yes, people want to get in. But right now, you have a government that says, screw you, you're not getting in. So, okay.

If you do that, but then you have an opportunity for all the rest of the world to partner up and like, all right, the U.S. doesn't want in, but let's, we know how tariffs work and we know what the trade deficit is. So let's just focus on how to improve ours rather than, you know, work with just pumpkin spice palpatine in the U.S. All right. Why haven't electric pickups taken off as fleet vehicles better than they have?

I mean, I can't say for sure, but I imagine that there's a lot of fleet owners that just don't have faith in the range of electric vehicles over. We talked to Ford Pro quite a bit. They sell a lot of E-transits and F-150 Lightnings to companies. And when we talked to some of the fleet managers,

They were excited, but they were like, we're not sure how this is going to work in our world. So I think it takes them a little bit longer to get that confidence up. Yeah, that's a good point. Also, fleet-wise, is there more pickups or van? I think more van when I think of fleet. What kind of fleet has a lot of pickup trucks? Yeah, it's both. And then Carl says, new bumper sticker I bought for my Tesla for cheap used...

After Elon went crazy. I couldn't pass up the Elon goes crazy discount on this useless. That's not a bad idea. But we were working on our own stickers. Is that moving along? Yeah, the spring had a copyright issue on Elon's face. We're going to make a cartoon or something. Even with my AI one that I put together? I think, yeah. Yeah.

Damn it. All right. It's okay. We'll survive. All right. Thanks, everyone, for listening to the Electric Podcast this week. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope that you guys, you know, with all the craziness around the world, I hope you can find some calm and some peace into all this madness. And we're going to still be there. So next time, same place, next week. Have a good one. Bye-bye.