248: Make the Lightning Great Again

This is the What Car Evie podcast for Thursday, November 13th, 2025, episode 248, Make the

Lightning Great Again.

How you doin?

Well, according to the economy I should be doing horrible.

And I know two people that apparently the bad economy right now is not potentially going

to affect them.

And it's not you and me, by the way.

Well, I hope not, but we'll see.

Well, you hope that the bad economy does affect us?

It does not.

It does not affect us, yes.

But I'm Phil Royal, I am one of the co-hosts here who was looking for a way to work his

way into the podcast smoothly.

So that was my awesome little, not a segue.

I guess it was a segue from nothing into something.

Is that a segue?

I don't know.

Whatever it is.

What do I say here?

I said my name.

I say youtube.com slash at the What Car.

You can watch our Spinaly Faces there.

Or listen to us.

Click on the shorts tab.

Oh yeah.

If you can only pay attention for about 30 seconds to a minute and a half.

We have shorts.

Watch those.

They'll kind of ease you in just like my bad transition did at the beginning of this episode.

Outside of that, I've been doing content poorly for a long time that's related to the

automotive world.

And you're still doing it.

Yeah.

For some reason, I still am able to do it.

Like people still pay me to do this stuff even though I'm convinced I'm a hack.

So there's that.

Are you a hack?

Ed Sanchez fills a hack in crime.

That does sound bad.

Anyway, likewise, been in the biz for two plus decades.

It's coming up on, I think, pretty soon, five years doing a podcast.

I'm really bad at math.

We're on episode 248.

So somebody else do the math.

I think we've only skipped one episode in that amount of time.

And I was like, how will we ever recover?

Yeah.

Well, we may be skipping.

We've got two back-to-back weeks that are really rough coming up.

So we might take another break.

So there may be a break for the holidays of a week.

I don't know.

Yeah.

We'll see.

What there is no break for, though, is the waterfall of cash that is coming down for

certain EV CEOs or presidents.

As we were discussing earlier, I've lost track as to who's president, who's CEO, who's

chairman.

It's time for corporate structures.

Yeah.

It's very confusing.

Not everything is equal.

So Ford has, what did we decide?

We're not about to talk about Ford.

We'll talk about Ford later.

Ford has a chairman, a CEO.

And a president.

GM has a chairman slash CEO.

And a president.

I believe Tesla, which is what we're about to talk about, isn't Elon-

Has a supervillain?

It isn't Elon.

Yes.

It is evil layer.

Isn't he president and CEO?

And then there's also a chairman?

Or is he chairman?

No.

He had to, as part of the SEC settlement, he had to give up chairman.

I thought that ended, though.

I think the period where that was binding ended, but Tesla still has a non-mask chairman.

Chairwoman, technically, if you want to get specific.

But he's still CEO, yeah.

So he's CEO.

Is he also president of Tesla?

I don't know.

This is where the corporate structures are horrible, and nothing is the same.

He's the guy that runs the show.

He's the head honcho for all intents and purposes, yeah.

And he is asked for, and this isn't new.

This isn't new.

He asked for a, I think it was 700 million something, so almost a trillion.

Is that what it is?

I thought he asked for a trillion, but it's 700 million?

It's not quite a trillion, but it's close enough.

He asked for $700 billion, a ball pit pay, or not a ball pit pay, a bonus, whatever it

would be.

And what does he have to do?

No, I guess the news is, he asked for it now, the news is that he's gotten it.

It was approved by 75% by a shareholder vote.

Which is ludicrous that that many people voted for.

What does he have to do to become, wouldn't he be the world's first trillionaire?

I guess if he were to meet all the milestones for this compensation package, then yes.

Which we know he's going to get this, no matter what.

It doesn't matter if he reaches his goals.

He's going to get it.

The structure of the board of Tesla is set up so that he controls it.

Everybody's a fanboy on there.

They're a relative for a fanboy.

They are all going to give him this.

They are all going to vote to give it to him.

All right, so what does he need to do in theory, even though he really just has to sit there

and not die in order to get the money?

Okay, well, first of the first, so this will be divided into what they call 12 tranches,

which are basically like kind of installment payouts of the compensation.

I think the first tranche or installment would be if Tesla hits the market cap of two trillion,

which they're already at least were over a trillion.

I don't know where they're current because their stock price kind of fluctuates, but

so they're already about half of there.

As of this recording, 1.37 trillion US dollars.

Okay, so they're not far off from that.

So probably, I would say probably within a year or two, they'll hit that.

And then it says the next nine tranches, so I guess maybe it's 10 total,

would be awarded if Tesla's value increases by increments of 500 billion up to a maximum,

or I guess not the maximum, but where he would get fully paid out if their market cap goes to

6.5 trillion, which is insane.

Is there a time limit to this, or this just kind of sits for whenever?

I don't think there's necessarily a time limit.

He doesn't get the payout till he reaches these certain milestones.

I think that's pretty much how it works.

Maybe there was a time restriction, but I didn't see it.

You've got a note here that says his ownership would increase from 13% to 25%,

which gets him back to where he wanted to be.

That was his big thing.

Remember like a year ago?

Where he had a tantrum and said, if you don't give me 25% control, I'm gonna leave.

So he sold a bunch of his shares to buy Twitter because he talked himself into a lawsuit

and had to cough up like 15 billion dollars, whatever it was, to buy Twitter.

And he lost, he went from like 13% or whatever the number was down to 11%, and then he threw a

little hissy fit and was like, well, I need 25% ownership of this because otherwise,

why should I be running this company?

And I think, I don't remember where the $45 billion payday came in all of this, but

all of this is, it's not becoming of a CEO.

And if he were any CEO of any other company in the world, pretty much, they would have canned him.

Or they would have said go-pounds down.

Yeah, they would have gotten rid of him with a demand like that, like you need to give me all

of this share or else why should I work here? Why should I continue to do this?

And then also re-diverting all the Nvidia chips to saying, well, Tesla's not ready for them yet,

and then having his XAI company buy them all. And so he made the decision that Tesla wouldn't

get all these chips. And then his other company went and purchased it. And then he did things,

oh, right before that, he was saying, well, Tesla's not a car company, they're an AI company,

and that's the future. Oh, and I've got XAI here. And it's direct competitor, apparently,

to what I'm running here, like literally all fireable offenses for any other CEO. Imagine

except him, anybody else. Imagine Chris Farley, Mary Barra, whoever the

Chris Farley or Jim Farley, Jim Farley, Jim Farley, Kumar Galhotra, who I just discovered is the

President of Ford. Imagine any of them making these commands, demands, outright demands.

Yeah, the board would say get lost. Yeah, fired in an instant. But pay him a trillion dollars.

Yeah. So anyway, so yeah, he's someday going to get a fat payday sooner or later.

I'll tell you who else is going to get a pretty decent payday, not quite to the same magnitude.

I mean, I wouldn't mind having this kind of compensation.

I'll argue that it is to the same magnitude. Because you think so?

I think when you hit a certain threshold of money, cash doesn't matter anymore.

Yeah. Since this is a family show, I'm not going to say the full word, but kind of FU money.

Yeah. Yeah. So dive into this one. This is RJ Scorinch. This is over.

Yes, Rivian. Which did I send you that text?

What?

The, but you know, you see all those bumper stickers on Tesla's that said pre Elon crazy

edition or I bought this before Elon went mad, all those things. There was one that I saw that was

Tesla Model 3. Model Model Y.

And it said, the bumper sticker on that said, I identify as a Rivian.

Pretty funny. Maybe I should get one.

So Scorinch, or I guess Rivian voted to give Scorinch a $4.7 billion pay package.

So it's not a trillion, but that's, that's still a chunk of change, I'd say.

For a company that I think is losing money, that's pretty good pay.

Well, they have a lot riding on the R2. I know they, they really want slash and or need that to

succeed for them to get over the hump. But anyway, very generous, not quite as generous as what

Musk was able to strong arm, but and of course they, they, you know, did the whole, you know,

PR package with this, they said the performance grant is quote, structured in a way that ensures

the options only vest should the company deliver a significant value to our shareholders.

I need to make money.

Yes. So they said he needs to add 32 billion in value to Rivian and that shareholders will see

153 billion of value creation if he hits his milestones. So however, they formulated that.

Rivian's market cap right now is 21 and a half billion.

Okay. So if they're seeing, if they want to see 153 billion of value creation, I'm assuming that

means market cap. Yeah. Market cap and or sales again, but yeah, most likely market cap, I'd

imagine. They got a long way to go. They got a little ways to go. Yeah. Good thing he's a young

guy. So I guess he could see get as many as 36.5 million shares under this package.

And this one does have a timeframe. This one says 10 years.

And if he hits those goals within 10 years, you would get another 3% of the company, which

I believe would raise his full stake. I think I read somewhere up to like 10%.

Well, and it would be 3% of a company that in theory is worth over $200 billion.

So that in itself would be a pretty huge bump in pay. Like that would, I assume,

that's on top of the 4.7 billion is that he would get 3% of the company that I'm no good

at math, but that seems like a big number. Yeah. So he's not going to be shaking his

soda cup on Main Street. So anyway, good for him, I guess. That's a lot of money.

That's a lot of money. And I would say Elon's asking. So remember like Austin Powers.

And in the first movie, he asks for $1 million from the world and they laugh at him because

it's such a ridiculously small number. And then they ask for like $100 billion.

Yeah. Which now is like, it's just another payday for Elon Musk. But then was like a ludicrous

amount of money. Like it didn't exist. So everybody's like, oh, you know, where we get this money from.

I would argue that with this, the difference between 4.7 billion and 1 trillion is really

almost nothing. So it's like RJ saying $1 million. No, I'm just saying that there is really,

it would be like if Dr. Evil had said $10 billion and then changed it to $100 billion. The actual

effective difference is nothing to an individual. Now, when you're running an entire evil empire,

as Dr. Evil was, okay, you can spend that money because all of those lackeys that you've got

to hire in the sharks with freaking lasers, none of that's cheap. You're blowing through a lot of

capital on that. But as an individual, if you're Elon Musk, or in this case, if you're RJ Scorange

and you've got 4.7 billion, lose half of that in taxes, you got $2.5 billion, what can you not buy

personally that you could buy if you had a trillion dollars or half of that in taxes? You've got $500

billion. Small country, private island, I mean. You could buy, you cannot spend, you've hit the

point with $2.5 billion in cash. You've hit the point where you cannot spend that amount of money

personally as a company. Well, effectively, yeah. As an individual, I can't remember who it was that

was saying it, that if you win the lottery and you win like, when it was the mega ball thing and

it was like a billion dollars, you pretty much cannot spend that amount of money. You go out and

your first day, and was it Bill Gates that was talking about this? You go out and your first

day, you go and you buy a $30 million mansion. And then the next day, you go out and you buy

all these like $20 million worth of cars, and then you buy all this, you know, you drop $10

million in clothes, and then you go and you buy in a state over in Italy, and you spend another $30

million. And by the time you're done, you've spent $150 million, then what? And then you're like,

now what? Yeah, you become Bezos and you buy a $100 million yacht, and then that costs you

$30 million a year, whatever it is, in upkeep and staff. But you still, you haven't begun to scratch

the surface of the money that you have, and your money is making money. So you are forever getting

richer. You hit a point where you are effectively infinitely rich. And must be nice. Yeah, I don't

personally know that feeling. I think RJ Scoringe is going to hit that if he gets to that nut that

he needs to hit, he will get to effectively infinite wealth, which is why I don't understand why Elon

Musk, other than craziness and ego, has come up and said, pay me basically a trillion dollars.

He's the Dr. Evil going $100 billion, like a ludicrous amount of money that you don't need. How

about instead, you say, I want, I don't know, yeah, say pay me $100 billion. And then the remaining

$600 billion needs to go into a fund to solve energy crisis, something or other that goes back

to the original fund of the purpose of Tesla, the grand plan that he had. I think it would,

it would look a lot better for him. Well, he's never really been one much for charity. So,

you know, I get that. He's the one who blew concrete into the sky in Texas and it landed in

like an elementary school and like pays a fine minivan or something. Yeah. Well, I mean,

wasn't there there's something called the X prize or something? What I could see him do and I think,

you know, it would get him some accolades and kudos is kind of like,

maybe he's already doing this and I don't even know about it, but like a moonshot prize of like

a really difficult, like physical or, you know, like kind of existential issue that,

that no one's really been able to tackle. But you know, if someone could demonstrate,

you know, we've cracked the code, they would get like $100 million or whatever, or that much in

seed money to start a company or whatever. I mean, it seems like that's something he could do and it

wouldn't, it wouldn't tarnish his capitalist image, you know, he's still like kind of,

kind of building, I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there. Anyway, we're talking about stupid

levels of money that neither one of us will probably ever see. And most people aren't,

there's like Bill Gates, there's Mackenzie Bezos, and to a lesser degree Warren Buffett,

and I'm sure some others that give their money away to various charities. And I'm only more

familiar with Mackenzie Bezos, I assume she still, no Mackenzie Scott, that she gives money away

with no strings, basically, she'll find a cause, and then she hands. Here you go. Yeah,

and it's not got, it's a very different way of giving money, but it ends in some interesting

results. I'm sure both good and bad, you know, like I'm sure there's some waste, whatever, but

it sure seems like Elon's in this for himself. And I'm not saying that RJ Scrinche isn't asking

for a ridiculous amount of money, he is, like that's a lot of money. But I mean,

I, I don't know, I don't have as much, and maybe it's just the magnitude, I don't have as much of

an issue with Scrinche's deals I do with Musk. Yeah. I mean, you know, Tesla and Musk, it is what

it is. But I mean, I think if Scrinche can achieve those milestones, they kind of laid out, it's

like, Hey, good on him, you know, you earned it. So yeah, and he's got a timeline that he needs to

follow. And I don't know, I think listeners to this podcast will be shocked. Elon Musk has

rubbed me the wrong way for a long time. And he would need to do something quite tremendous for

me to like him as a person at this point. Still like the company. But him as a person. And this

does not do anything for my opinion of him. No, leave a comment in YouTube on YouTube.com

tell me how, how wrong I am and why Elon deserves $700 billion and a bump from 13 to 25% of the

company so he can get ultimate control beyond the crazy level of control that he's already got over

this company. And if you think that Tesla can only survive with Elon Musk, tell me how a great

company leader or any leader rests 100% of the success on themselves and doesn't set up a succession

plan that the people can believe in. Because it seems like that's what he talks about is that the

company will fail without him and the Tesla stands believe that what kind of a good leader is that

that does not have a succession plan. My guess is they probably do. It's just not public. Maybe

I'm guessing someone on the board has come up with a succession plan. And Elon doesn't want to hear

he wants his trillion dollars. Yeah. Anyway, talking about making my soapbox.

So from making a lot of money to losing a lot of money.

So the lightning, the Ford F-150 lightning, which was kind of a kind of a pioneering vehicle,

it came out before the Cybertruck. I think around the same time, but I think even a little before

the R1T, I think they came out around the same time. I can't remember exactly, but anyway.

And it was a very, I think a very innovative product. It kind of balanced kind of very futuristic

technology with kind of a familiar form factor. So it was, it was more approachable. The R1T was

a little more avant-garde and the Cybertruck is kind of in its own universe altogether. But

you know, at least with the lightning, you know, it looked pretty much like a normal F-150.

Had a lot of functionality. The front was, you know, I think a good idea.

Super power mega front, wasn't it?

With all the plugs and everything. Didn't meet the cost target. I remember when they first

announced that they said it would start under $40,000, I think ultimately it started around $50,000

and went up from there. Well, that was them chasing Tesla because Tesla said that the Cybertruck was

going to be under $40,000 and everybody was like, under $40,000, sure. So they massively over-anticipated

demand and they had to kind of dial that back. Now they're selling a decent number of them. I think,

I don't know, I think, I want to say last year they sold like 20,000 of them or something,

which so by itself is the best selling EV truck in the country for whatever that's worth.

You know, so, but so there are a couple of components to this story. So

the first part actually affected all F-150s, not just the lightning. So

the F1, actually the whole F-Series, not now, not just the F-150, all F-Series have an aluminum body

and that started 2015, I think. Sounds about right. Model year for the F-150 and then later

the Super Duty went to an aluminum body say 2020, 2021. I don't know. Anyway, they're all aluminum

now. So there was a fire at their main aluminum supplier, which kind of gummed up the works for

all the F-150s. So they had, I guess they had to temporarily idle their Rouge assembly plant

where they make most of the F-150s. So I think they're starting to ramp that back up and make

the normal F-150s. But in terms of the lightning, they're still like, maybe we'll keep that one

pause for a little longer. So for sure it's on pause and some are speculating it could get the axe

indefinitely. So I don't know. I mean, I know dealers don't like sitting on unsold inventory and

neither does Ford. So I mean, I'm presumably they're just going to sell out their existing

inventory. And then I mean, assuming they can get the, you know, aluminum supply back online,

maybe they might bring it back, but they've been very non-committal about this up till this point.

So I don't know. The F-150 lightning is one of the most functional of the trucks.

And I like it because of that. I much prefer how the Rivian R1T looks.

Yeah. I am seeing the Rivians all over my neighborhoods now or my neighborhood. They're

the S and the T are just showing up everywhere now. Doing Halloween light shows. Yeah. Yeah.

That was fun. I went to a house and there was a guy who had his up there and had the little

green vroom vroom thing going and it was growling and it was pretty cool. Like he'd done a whole

show as well. Like he was doing the like standing behind a pillar and dressed as a mass murderer

and chasing people and whatnot. So he was a bit of a, yeah, he was a Halloween fanatic as it was,

but his Rivian was going at it. Then there was another guy that I knew that his Rivian truck,

I didn't even know he had one and he was powering his front yard with the Rivian. So he had his big

TV because the World Series was going on at the time. And so he had his big screen TV in the

bed of the truck and then everything was powered off of the truck, which was pretty cool because I

just said a couple of weeks earlier, like when I go camping, I never see anybody doing that.

And there's one of the guys I know. I don't know if you consider front yard camping, but

well, yeah, yes, he was powering his whole Halloween party, front yard party off of his

truck, which was pretty cool. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is for

Ford because we've discussed many times electric trucks are not very useful if you want to do

truck stuff. And I think there is a market for the lifestyle truck like what Rivian has.

But if you're getting to Ford and Chevy slash GM, you need a truck that could do truck stuff.

You expect those to do truck stuff. And Ford kind of has it with their long range. Chevy definitely

has it with their Silverado. So I don't know at this point if they idle it and then come back.

Is a better solution, I guess to look at Chevy sales and go, huh, is there a market for that

big battery and then only sell long range and super duper long range, like just go so honking big.

I have I have a whole different kind of hypothesis about this. So remember the

presentation they did a few months ago on their like low cost, you know, modular construction EV.

So they've already said the first variant of that is going to be a pickup.

They say they're going to sell for around 30,000 ish. I have a hard time believe I think probably

by the time it comes to market, it'll be basically 40 for anything anyone would want to buy. I mean,

they might have a one at this price, you know, configuration with like a dinky battery and

steel wheels and all that. But that price will probably rely on 7500 bucks, which may be coming

back in 28, you know, for all we know, who knows. But I think I think this may be the end of the

current generation lightning, they may just say, you know what, we're going to sell out the inventory

we had, we're going to, you know, we had a good run for a few years. But at this point, we're going

to stop it. And then we're going to start R&D on a future model. I think there will be another

electric F 150. But this may be the end of this iteration of it. I think I've read supposedly a

new F 150 is coming in 2027. So I would think they would prioritize the gas and or hybrid,

whatever versions first. So possibly we might see a next generation lightning, maybe like around 28,

2028. And that would also come alongside the new, you know, lower cost modular EV pickup.

So then it would say, Oh, they might do it like there, but wait, there's more, you know, everyone's

expecting the what a lot of people things maybe call the ranchero, the smaller one says ranchero,

but wait, there's more. Ah, look at the new lightning. Yay. So I mean, I don't know.

You don't think the answer would potentially be blow out the lightning name with do it dodge style.

You see, you get rid of the current lightning, and then right at kind of the end of the lifespan

of this F 150 lineup, you bring back like the super truck, the lightning super truck version.

Oh, was that like a big old gas like supercharged V8? No, like you know, you do an EV version, you do

a thousand horsepower. Yeah, you do like to be new with the super van, whatever it is,

you drop you basically make a Raptor lightning limited edition, 150,000, 180,000 dollars,

whatever it is, a truck that does zero to 60 in 2.1 seconds. And you blow out the rest of your

inventory that you've got. And all you've done really is just strapped in a different motor

and throwing your Raptor body on it. Possibly. I'm not seeing they couldn't make the lightning

great again, is what I'm saying. Could happen. I don't know. But yeah, a lot of people are

maybe prematurely riding the obituary on the lightning, but Ford hasn't really said one

word or the other. But I think it's safe to say they're going to prioritize the gas version first.

And if they have the capacity and if they feel there's enough pinup demand, they may

kind of reintroduce it. But this could be the end. So yeah, I don't know. I think it was a good

effort. I think it was a compelling product. I do feel was a little too expensive. I think that was

it's a Kelly seal that could be said for a lot of EV models. I would say that's the case for

almost all of the EV models out there. So you know, I think it would have been a lot more

compelling at about $10 to $15,000 than it is, you know, per the trim level, because even

like the sweet spot, I'm trying to remember that gosh, what was the they came out with one where

it was like kind of the XLT trim, but it had the long range battery. It wasn't the pro, but there

was another I don't know. I can't remember the variation off the top of my head, but it was

kind of the sweet spot where it had all the desirable hardware, but it didn't have like all

the gingerbread of like the the limited or King Ranch. It was just kind of pretty basic, but all

the good stuff, you know, you want, and even that was like 65 grand. And I'm like, you know,

if that was 50, you know, that would that'd be pretty sweet, but 65. Anyway, that's everything

in my life right now. Like I went to the grocery store today to buy apple juice and brown sugar.

And I ended up spending because you see things when you're walking through. I ended up spending

like $22. But you were planning or total in total, like it should have, it should have cost me

and spending to spend 10 bucks and you left not even twice as much. I left my $22 bill.

Well, that's how it goes sometimes. Trader Joe is like all the time.

I go in there with like one, one reusable bag and I have to get another one because I get too

much. So anyway, so that's such a California thing. I went to Trader Joe's, you know,

on my way to Whole Foods and the organic aisle wasn't enough there. So I drove there in my Tesla.

Of course, I don't have the anti-elan bumper sticker. So I guess I lost my

California cred there. Anyway, I'll print you one for Christmas.

You give me that identifies as a Rivian. So this is a company that we've,

we've criticized before for being kind of dragging their feet with EVs, you could say.

But and they've been talking, they've been talking this up for a while. So we'll see if

they finally deliver on it. So this is Toyota and solid state batteries, which, you know,

they've been talking a big game for I'd say probably about the last two or three years at least.

At least they seem to be the manufacturer that is in my newsfeed anyway comes up the most

for solid state battery development is Toyota. They get this, they are targeting a

40 year lifespan for their solid state batteries. So pretty on brand for Toyota,

because they're known for going the distance. So but I mean, I'm kind of wondering, is this

even necessary? As somebody that buys cars and runs them into the ground over the course of 20

years? Yes, yes, this is necessary. The thing that impressed me here was I read the headline

40 year lifespan and I was like, yeah, 40 year and what's the battery? Like, what's the capacity

on that at 40 years? Because everything degrades. This, the crazy thing is they're saying 90%

capacity after 40 years. I think their standard now is 90% after like 10 or 15 years or something

like that. So this is a massive, massive jump in that. And I really like that. Like I my newest

car is a 2011 my oldest car streetcar. Anyway, is a 99. And they like my 99 goes just as far as the

data bought it like nothing degraded on it. I mean, yeah, you know, the windows, the window

regulators couple of them need replacing as they're slowing down, stuff like that. But you can still

go the same 300 and something miles on it. And I kind of expect EVs to do the same thing. They should

they should go just about as far as when you bought it. Now, I mean, I know physics and science

and that is never going to happen. Like batteries are always going to degrade. That is the nature of

the beast. But I like this. And I said this many times like I'll make fun of Toyota all day long.

I think I didn't deliver. I think Toyota has the capacity to win if they really,

really played a conservative and a lot of people, you know, I'd say, you know, the peak EV hype

cycle is probably around 2018 2019. And everyone's like, Oh, Toyota is dragging their feet. They're

going to lose, you know, Chinese are just going to steamroll them and they're going to, you know,

they're going to be bankrupt in two years. It's like, well, that didn't happen. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think they've been very slow and steady and methodical, you know, with their EV

development. The first generation, when it was still called the BZ4X was a little underwhelming.

And there were major flaws with it. There are major charging flaws with it. But once again,

but the charging flaws were in order to extend the battery life. Like that's how conservative

if they play it. Yeah. The refresh, I think they really stepped up in terms of the features, the

specs. And I'd say even the general desirability. Yeah. You know, I look at the second gen BZ and

I'm like, okay, you know, that that's actually potentially pretty compelling purchase. The

first gen I was like, don't even don't even bother with it. It'd be a good the first gen would be a

good second car, maybe a good used car, a good car for like running around town. Yeah. Like if you've

got a kid and you're getting him a new car that that would, you know, it's like buying an old

Civic for somebody is basically you're buying them something that's good enough. It's good enough.

And that was kind of the BZ4X. Anyway, so what's interesting about this is when you're talking

about a timeline this long, they're not just talking about second life use, but even third life

used for the battery. So I mean, they're saying this potentially the battery could outlive the car

itself. So 40 years undoubtedly. Yeah. Yeah. Look how many 40 year old cars are on the road.

20 years easy. 30 years, you're getting to almost like nothing. I mean, 40 years ago is 1985.

How many 1985 cars do you see on the road? I have an 83.

But do you even see it on the road? You don't drive it?

No. Barely. No. And when I have taken it out, it's people be like, what?

Yeah. 40 years is a crazy lifespan for any vehicle. And somebody else make a comment of,

you know, I got 1930. What percentage of those cars are you seeing being actually driven,

daily driven? Yeah. It's probably the oldest I see maybe like 70s. Like on weekends, I'll see

like 50s and 60s cars. Oh yeah. No, like weekend cars, completely different. Yeah. But daily driven

cars, 40 years is a crazy lifespan. Yeah. So they're talking like the battery will totally

outlive the car, the main car itself to the point where like salvage, the salvage 40 year

solid state batteries could, you know, assuming they pass kind of like the load test and everything

could just be swapped wholesale as like replacement batteries, potentially.

Yeah, they'd probably be be, you know, marketed as like remanufactured.

And the but even after that, they're talking, you know, we could stack a bunch of these for like

utility, utility grade battery storage for like, for like renewables and stuff. So

I think that's so pie in the sky. I think they're dead wrong about that.

Do you? I think when you're talking about a lifespan of 40 years,

so you put it in a car first, you drive the car and at this point, you don't have an engine failure,

like you got rid of engine failures. I think with most cars, what takes them off the road

eventually is the engines failing, emissions go and then they just get pieced out.

What you would end up with when you eliminate that is the end of life for a vehicle would be,

you'd get some of that, you get window regulators, like I talked about,

stuff that just kind of makes the car unusable day to day, so then it'd get parted out. And in

those cases, okay, batteries become a secondary market. I would guess that in a case where if

those don't fail, then the time when that vehicle hits end of life from sale, resell, resell,

supporting the software is what I think. When it gets hit by another car,

like 40 years, a long time to go without getting into an accident, you get into an accident with

one of these things, you get hit by a car, your battery is compromised at that point.

Now, it's people that run companies like Redwood Materials, Redwood Materials.

Taking it as a whole, I think that's probably good in theory, but in reality, you're going to have

cars, more cars written off than you can just use to that. I mean, I would say if it was a bad

collision, I think there would be safety and liability reasons why they wouldn't do that,

but I mean, as we've seen, and I've seen this with both Tesla's and Rivians and probably,

I mean, you could probably say BMWs and Mercedes models, they get into what looks like a relatively

minor collision and they're totaled, where it just barely scrunches the front corner bumper,

and they're like, well, that's a $30,000 repair, and the whole car is only worth 25 at that point.

I could see at that point where the battery pack is effectively untouched that they could drop it

out, do a diagnostic test on it, look for any physical damage, they say, no, this one's perfectly

good. So, I mean, who knows, this is all kind of hypothetical. Yeah, I'm just thinking if you're

taking batteries out of crashed cars and then strapping them to the side of my house,

I don't know if I'm cool with that. Yeah, I don't know, but I mean, if they bring this to

market and actually do this, I mean, I love this pretty revolutionary. If I could have a car for

40 years, that's my dream. I would buy a car now and be buried in it. I'm not making it another 40

years. So continuing on the Toyota EV theme. So if you live outside of the US, the predominant Toyota

truck is the Hilux, which was made famous by Top Gear and many other and Al Qaeda and other

organizations. Anyway, it is the definitive Toyota truck of the world outside of the US.

Anyway, so they just unveiled a new generation. And this is kind of remember we talked about the

BMW X5 a few episodes ago, where it's going to have the all of the above powertrain strategy.

Well, they're kind of doing the same thing on the new Hilux, including a full battery electric.

But it's not going to be a 600 horsepower rock crawling tire smoking beast, exactly. But

yeah, the specs are you kind of look at them like, oh, okay, well, I guess that's useful in some

applications. So you have specs as 59.2 kilowatt hour battery pack. DT for a truck.

Pretty small. Yeah, combine power output rating 193 horsepower to the front motor 151 pound feet

of torque, rear drive 198. So that, I don't know, that's a lot of power. Well, it's a lot of torque.

Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, that's a lot of but that's what you want with the truck. You want torque.

That's yeah, with the front motor, rear drive unit rated to yeah. So it's a lot of torque,

very little battery to use it. You get up a very small vertical hill, 150 mile WLTP range, which

which would be like 125. I'm looking at that wondering if that's a typo in your notes.

Like that is nothing. That's what all the stories are saying. That's crazy. That's your size battery

pack in your model three, something that probably weighs about 2000 pounds more. Yeah,

it's a craziness. Max payload and towing is okay. I mean, towing is 3,500 pounds, but your battery

doesn't I mean, it might as well be zero because with a 60 kilowatt hour battery, you're not in

a range unladen. So what I what I see is what I kind of see this for is like a ranch truck,

just as general like utility truck for like agriculture or local delivery.

You know, that that sort of stuff when like it's whole daily route is like under 100 miles.

Yeah. You know, I you know, it would work fine for that. But you know, you wouldn't you wouldn't

want to go road tripping in this. I wouldn't. This strikes me a little bit like the and I don't

remember the specs, but I want to say they were somewhat around in this general area.

But the Lord's town. Oh, yeah, the endurance. Yeah. Wasn't it small? Am I completely wrong?

Wasn't it small? I want to say it was like 80 at least 80 something. It was a big,

it was a big heavy truck. The big Achilles heel that I remember with the endurance is

its efficiency was horrific. I mean, even relative to like a Hummery V, it was less,

was significantly less than even that. And it had less power. When I worked at the construction

company years ago, we would buy trucks like they were candy. We bought them all the time. Oh,

I got a new job and you order like 10 new trucks. And we would go and buy the Silverado

work edition. They were like, yeah, white bench seat, like no floor mats, like rubber on the floor,

like cheapest things you could buy. And we would buy, you know, five or 10 at a time for every job

site. And they go out there and they just get beat up. We were not towing with them. We were not

doing long distance travel with them. They were going within job sites from job site to back to

the headquarters. They were operating, moving things around within the job site. I don't know

everything because I was in the cushing office, not actually doing that. I would deliver some of

the trucks. But these are what this is what this screams to me is when I worked at that construction

company, this is what we'd order five off or 10 off is the Lord Sound Endurance or this model

Hilux. This would be perfect for that for anybody in the real world. This doesn't work at all.

No, I would I see this. So I guess they're going to offer this predominantly in Asia and Europe.

So like food like bakery, like if you want a bakery and you deliver to like restaurants in the

area, perfect. Yeah, florists, you know, just kind of local, kind of even even like urban delivery

for stuff. And like you said, job sites like construction sites or, you know,

like in Australia, I'm sure they're going to sell this in Australia. Hilux is very popular there.

Like Australia has these huge ranches. So you know, it's going to go feed the sheep, you know, I

don't know. I don't even know if they have sheep in Australia. I think they have a lot of sheep.

I thought all the spiders and snakes ate all the sheep. Anyway, so I mean, this has an application,

but you know, it's definitely not going to be the volume seller, probably going to be the

turbodiesel for the markets it sells in. So but interestingly, they do say they plan on doing

a fuel cell model in 2028. Oh, sweet. Okay, Tacoma concept at SEMA. So I don't know if that's going

to have the monster like 500 plus horsepower, whatever. My guess for the Hilux, maybe like 200

horse, but I don't know. So somebody there said, well, this doesn't go very far. This electric

vehicle only goes 150 miles WLTP. Is there a way we can make this go less far? And somebody was like,

we can make it hydrogen. We'll put a fuel cell in there. You won't even be able to fill it up to go

anywhere. It'll be great. Anyway, so yeah, I mean, there's there's that. No. So we want to wrap this.

We got okay, so I want to mention this real quick. We might do a deeper dive on this in a future

episode. So remember, we talked about powered travel trailers that had electric motors. Yeah.

So a company, I guess, has made the first EREV travel trailer.

What? I got to click. Is this I just saw a story of Facebook? I don't know on.

No, this is not it. I just saw somebody's got a pin in Farina designed one that I think had a

powered axle and then extended out, I'm guessing what like $2 million. Oh, I don't even I didn't

even get that far in the thing. So what's the deal with this? So this is EREV. So this has got

a gas engine that a gas range extender on board on the trailer, which is basically just a

generator. I guess also, well, yeah, effectively a generator, but generator that powers the electric

motors that power the trailer, I guess. So cool. Well, that so who is this? Who's there'll be a

link in the show notes. We've evo trucks, whoever evo trucks is. Huh. And did they yeah, I don't

know who they're backed by if they're like back by Thor or whatever. This is just a startup kind

of like pebble or whatever. Interesting. I'm gonna have to read about this because in about a week

or so I'm going off camping in my very non EREV trailer being pulled by my very non electric truck.

So yeah, I got I got to read all about this because I'll put that in my list of things

I can't afford and will never probably own. Anyway, so yeah, we might do one of our future

episodes. We might do like an all travel trailer episode because there's actually a fair amount

of activity happening in that segment. And then we could do like what we did with the EVs of like

what would the perfect one be like price and features and what are we looking for. And I'm sure

nobody listened to the episode. But it won't stop us from doing it because apparently we don't care

how many people listen to the episode. Speaking of that, I don't know why another bad transition to

end the show that began with a bad transition. Everything we talked about links in the show

notes that can be found in any of the podcast players or at youtube.com slash at the what car.

We're on all the social medias, but I don't care if you follow or like us or anything you could post

though on your own page links to the podcast, which you could do links from anywhere. You could

also go to the walker.com will have we have a link there to every single episode with show notes,

you can link to that or you know, the YouTube show button. Yeah, click whatever it is that you

want to do, just share it. And that helps us get more of a reach, I guess. Yes. And then maybe we'll

have some weird episodes in the weeks coming up because it's getting a holiday season or we'll

take a break to be determined. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see how we're feeling. And I'm feeling like

I want to go. See ya. All right.

248: Make the Lightning Great Again

About this episode

Tesla Model

Tesla Model 3

Ford F150 Lightning

Tesla Cybertruck

Rivian R1T

MSRP

F-Series

aluminum body

Ford F-150

Rouge assembly plant

Chevrolet Silverado

pickup

Ford Ranchero

Ford Lightning

zero to 60 time

Tesla

EVs

battery degradation

EV

Toyota bZ4X

daily driven

engine failure

window regulators

Redwood Materials

Mercedes

BMW

battery pack

Toyota Hilux

BMW X5

payload

towing capacity

kilowatt hour (kWh)

range

Lordstown Endurance

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