269: Mutually Assured Destruction

This is the What Car Evie Podcast for Thursday, May 7th, 2026, episode 269, Mutually Assured

Destruction.

Let's talk about the other side of the Earth for a while.

Like Middle Earth or Eastern Hemisphere, I guess?

Yeah.

We talk a lot about, well, you know, I was going to say, we talk a lot about what goes

on in America.

You know, we've been talking more and more about China because this being an Evie podcast,

Chinese are coming.

And we can't determine if that's good or bad.

Is that a correct assumption?

Well, as I like to say, it's not if but when.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I guess it doesn't matter if we think it's good or bad.

It is coming.

It's coming.

Yep.

I'm Phil Royal.

I will happily point you to two websites, youtube.com slash at the What Car where you

can watch our smiling faces or find us at any podcast platform.

And if you're listening to us, you already know which one you found.

Go and also download the other one and watch every episode twice or share us on social

media or kind of everywhere.

But yeah, you know, I say that and I'm wrong.

I don't care if you connect us to our social media thing.

Like when you share is you don't have to add us.

You just share the content.

That's all I care about.

And the other URL that I go to is the what car.com slash store where you can buy things

like the hat that Ed is wearing and shirts and whatnot.

Some of them say the what car and some of them don't.

Some of them are just kind of fun, interesting, irreverent, various assorted, whatnot.

That sounds description.

And for me, professionally, I do words for a living.

As you can tell from my assorted comment, the best words is what I have and I've been

using those best same, the same best words.

You know, I actually had a really, I don't know if it's a compliment or an insult for

my day job.

We'll get to introducing you in a minute in my day job.

I wrote this article and it went up and, you know, a bunch of people read it on social

media.

Somebody commented, they use chat GPT for this.

And I'm like, actually, I have the ability to write just because you can't doesn't mean

other people can't as well.

Ouch.

And so I reread it because I like I use chat GPT for things, you know, if I'm struggling

with an idea or whatever, I've just got a punch list, something I might put the thing

in and be like, you know, help me out.

And then it pumps something out and it gets me going like I can use it the same way that

I used to search Google for ideas, you're just using it like that.

It's not an evil thing.

It's not a bad thing.

But like, wow, so, you know, actually, I'll talk to you offline about this other thing

that's come up.

We'll jump to you right now.

All right.

Ed Sanchez, also user of the best words about EVs been doing this a while in various iterations,

even pre EV, but for the last five years, podcaster extraordinaire, if I may, to my own

horn, along with my partner crime, Phillip.

So anyway, let's just jump right into it.

Yeah.

So today's episode, we dance around China a lot.

And this episode is like at least 50% China.

A lot of China.

Well, I mean, part of is they just had the Beijing auto show.

So some of this is kind of related to that somewhat.

But the first item, I did not understand why you're interested in it, the Timu Range Rover.

Is it actually a Timu Range Rover, or are they just calling it the Timu Range Rover?

That's kind of a pejorative nickname.

So I was excited for a second.

This brand I kind of maybe heard about before, but it's not one that typically comes up in

kind of mainstream EV conversation.

And this particular model, I think is actually an E rev or a plug-in hybrid.

It's the Jku J7 and it's earned the nickname in the UK of the Timu Range Rover.

So, but I don't know, it seems to have caught on in the UK, because I think it was the best

selling vehicle there last last month.

Really?

Or at least at least for SUVs.

I don't know of all cars, but I think in its segment at top of the sales charts.

Yeah, I always love sales because they're always like, like exactly that is best selling.

Oh, well, in the segment of midsize SUV priced between blah and blah, this was the number one.

So, yeah, I don't know if that's all cars or just SUVs or whatever.

But anyway, sold 10,000 units in March, which I don't know, it's kind of.

I mean, that doesn't seem like a lot, but you know, it's between the UK and the U.S.

And it's it's kind of hard to do exact apples to oranges comparison, or I should say apples

to apples, I guess this would be apples to oranges.

But anyway, so if you hadn't heard the brand, you probably heard of the parent company, Cherry.

So like the big, I guess, well-known EV companies in China, outside of China, I would say are

probably BYD, Geely, Cherry are probably what I would consider the big three.

And then there's some smaller ones.

There's like Chang'an and, you know, a bunch of smaller ones.

So Jakku is kind of, I guess, Cherry's kind of maybe like mid-level division.

So yeah, it's kind of funny.

So this has been in the UK market for a few years and some of the initial reviews on it

weren't great.

The reviewers kind of, you know, that the ride dynamics and performance, they were just like,

this thing's not that impressive, but consumers are impressive enough.

They bought a whole bunch of them.

So I was just digging for the number of sales is what matters.

I was digging into that sales number where you said 10,000 units roughly sold in March 26 in the UK.

I'm like, just recently, we've talked about like some EU sales.

Last week, we talked about Toyota EV sales in Europe was up 85% in the first quarter to 25,640.

For the quarter?

For the quarter in Europe.

This is 10,064 units in March in the UK or England, which I don't know which one in particular.

That's a whole other debate.

So that seems like a solid number compared to the likes of Toyota selling it.

I mean, that very melt, very well, maybe the best selling vehicle in the UK in March.

I don't that's don't think that's inconceivable.

The pictures in the article, there aren't a ton of them, so I can't really get a great idea.

And because I'm me, I didn't bother to Google it.

I mean, if Chad GBT can't write it for me, then why should I do anything?

But I mean, it's no, it kind of reminds me a bit of maybe not a Range Rover,

but like a Hyundai or something like it, like a good looking, but not crazy expensive looking SUV.

Sure, seems good.

Yeah.

So it's like the infotainment, it's got like, you know, Android Auto CarPlay, all that.

I mean, I don't know, people seem to like it.

So so watch out.

We could all be driving jacos.

Maybe I don't know what their ambitions are for the US, but they definitely struck a chord in the UK.

So getting back to the Chinese big three.

So BYD BYD has been like the Chinese boogeyman that everyone's been like afraid of for past several years.

Maybe there's good reason to because they're they're making moves in a lot of markets.

So this report, this is from Electric.

So supposedly I never mind the just the Jku itself.

I guess as a brand BYD is now the top selling EV brand in the UK, surpassing Tesla Kia and Volkswagen.

BYD was also the best selling EV brand in Australia, Brazil and other overseas markets.

And in Brazil, BYD leads not just EVs, but overall vehicle sales in Brazil.

Surpassing VW GM and Hyundai.

And Volkswagen has historically been really strong in Brazil and South America.

But so BYD is the best selling EV brand in the UK.

BYD is on the march, it seems like.

There'll be a link in the show notes to that electric article.

And when you click on it, they've got all these BYD, whatever they are, tiny cars, like a whole fleet of them.

And that must have been like a media day drive or something, I'm guessing.

There's somebody taking a selfie.

There's somebody like with a camera, like walking down the side.

I really like the wrap on the one on the left.

It's like this funky little multicolored wrap thing.

I don't know.

Yeah.

This car looks that they're showing in this.

What is this?

This is the Dolphin.

Dolphin Mini.

So that's like the mid-sized or mini?

The, well, it's called the, that one's the Dolphin Mini, I guess.

And they like to name their cars after Marine mammals, I guess.

And they are all like neon green.

According to these pictures, they come in one color.

They come in, what is it saying?

It comes in any color that you want, as long as it's neon green.

As long as it's neon green, I guess.

Yeah.

I mean, when they come to America, that's, I don't know where this stands.

We are so anti-China here.

That they're taking over the rest of the world and we're not going to let them in.

Which I don't know if that's good or bad, but we're not by us.

I don't know how to word this.

I have all the best words.

We're just weakening ourselves.

No, I'm, we're, to me, I don't know if we're weakening ourselves, but we're

showing that we're weaker by forcing them to be.

To stay out, we're saying that we in America cannot generate a product as

compelling as what they have.

And the only way to compete is to ban them.

I don't think that this is a security issue.

Because if this were a security, it's a competitiveness issue.

If this were security, we would ban all Chinese made smartphones.

Which is pretty much all of them.

Yeah, which is pretty much.

And even the ones that are made in America, probably, and I'll say this without

any fact to back it, have some Chinese components in them, whether it's

software or hardware.

There were, there was a couple of years ago at least, there was a couple that

when I was replacing my last phone, that I looked at getting this US quote

unquote made phone.

And by goodness, that was expensive.

And probably in the fine print, it says of imported components.

Yes.

So I, I just don't know where we stand at this because I view they're taking

over Europe and it's like, okay, so the Chinese is kind of, they're kind of

taking over this market.

And if you let them destroy the European manufacturing of vehicles, then now

we become more reliant.

I'm, I'm for a world economy where everybody relies on everybody else.

As long as everybody respects that you all rely on everybody else, then you've

got this, this kind of like the Cold War, this guaranteed destruction of everyone.

If you usually show destruction.

Yes.

But they've come in and they're doing well in Europe, which says these are

compelling products.

And so America goes, oh, no, we're going to lock the door.

And to me, that shows weakness on our side that we can't compete.

Yeah.

Case to be made for that.

Yeah.

So this next item is also a BYD brand, one we've discussed before.

Um, the Yang Wang Unine Xtreme.

So this is the 3000 horsepower supercar, EV top speed record setter.

Um, so they actually are going to build, supposedly only 30 of these they're claiming.

Um, so very limited production.

We finally know how much it's going to cost.

Any, any guess?

Uh, I cheated, but it's a lot.

It's a lot.

We thought the rematch Navira was expensive.

Well, this is pretty much right there.

What, so that was where I wanted to go with this.

This is the Unine Xtreme is 3000 horsepower, 1200 volts.

Uh, you got a note of the base model is 1287 horsepower and sells for about

236,000.

This sells for the 3000 horsepower version sells for two and three quarter million

dollars.

The rematch Navira is about 2.2 to two and a half million, at least when it came out.

I don't know what it is now.

If you can even buy them, like I, I don't even know how you find that out.

But they were going to make, man, I had all these numbers in my head and now they've

gone out that rematch was going to make something like a couple hundred, yeah,

a hundred, a hundred and fifty of the Navaras, which were like 2200 horsepower,

zero to 60 in 1.8 seconds, zero to 60 time, whatever.

So I assume that this is comparable in acceleration.

The price is a little bit more expensive, but I would guess if you order a rematch

to vary it out, that was two and a half million several years ago.

I imagine it's prices gone up.

Probably be about this.

Yeah, they'd sold by middle of 2024, something like 40 or 50 Navaras.

Then they came up with another limited edition, basically like this,

an extreme version of the Navara, and they were planning to sell like 40 of those.

And then remember, Mate Rematch ordered his own Navara and had that delivered.

And I took that as pretty cool.

You know, he could finally afford a guy that came from electrifying his own E30M3

or E30BMW9M3 from electrifying that out of a forklift EV to being able to order

a multi-million dollar EV that he probably, even if he paid cost that,

is still probably a million bucks.

Yeah, easily.

So, you know, that was that seemed like a heartwarming story.

But I took it as they fulfilled all the orders of customers.

And now Mate gets his, which means they've run out of orders.

And this was a publicity stunt to try and go, oh, you know, remember us.

Yeah, I don't know if there's a market for this is where I'm going.

Is I'm not sure that in that realm that we've had this conversation before

with Rolls Royce Bentley and whatnot.

Is there a market for this that is more like is 30 units too many for

this Yang Wang U9 Extreme?

Is this market actually like 20 or 15?

I mean, I think they'll sell them.

I mean, I think that the good thing with the U9 is, I mean, I don't know

how like bespoke the extreme is compared to the regular ones.

I don't know if it's just motors and some different components that are different.

But they have the quote standard U9, which is only about a quarter million.

So I imagine if, you know, the demands a little life for the extreme, they'll say,

oh, we'll just build more regular ones.

I mean, even so, that's still a six bigger car.

It's still not cheap.

But in regard to rimouts, they pretty much, I think, pivoted to focusing

mostly on Bugatti rimouts was, you know, it was kind of a proof of concept

like, hey, look, we can do kind of a technological showcase.

But yeah, I'm not I'm not hearing a lot of like new, like, oh, we're going to do

a new Navara or we're going to be do a lower cost sports car.

It's like, nah, we're pretty much all in on Bugatti on hybrids.

And you know, this and that.

And even Mate has said that that the Bugatti crowd is not necessarily into.

They're not super going to know about EVs.

Yeah, maybe hybrid.

Sure. Yeah.

But I mean, and I think I don't know if it's Maté or someone else, but they

kind of made the comparison with like a Swiss watch, like, you know, an Apple

watch, you know, like, like this, I mean, from a functional standpoint, can do way

more than like a Rolex or whatever.

But just the craftsmanship and the mechanical, like, nuance and

intricacy that goes into, you know, a hand built Swiss watch makes it special.

No, functionally, it can't do as much, but it's more of a status symbol.

And I kind of feel in the ultra high end, you know, we're talking like, I'd say

500,000 plus vehicle realm, it's more that specialness than even technological

capability or anything else is the customers want to feel special.

And if that means, you know, a representative flying out in person and

opening up like, you know, a binder with leather swatches and, you know, wood

samples and, you know, this and that, like, oh, you get to pick whatever you want

or, you know, that's more important to them than what powers it.

So having an EV is not that much of a flex.

I think saying you have a V16 for those people matters more.

Yeah, like quad turbo W16 engine, like, and it sounds, it sounds loud

when you start it and it, it does something, it does a function.

The exclusivity thing where you're going or where you introduced whatever with

that, all the best words.

Do you think this, I also think that there's a problem.

There's a gap somewhere here.

If you can buy one version of the car for $275,000 and then the other

version that you buy for 2.7 million, when you buy that 2.7 million and then

you're driving down the street and there's another one that looks like

75% of the car that you own for a quarter million sitting next to you.

Like, yeah, it the rematch was exclusive.

There was no half million, quarter million version.

You you parked next to some, you're driving down the road, you come across

another Navarra, that person probably spent over $2 million for their car as well.

So you're not going to see a ton of them.

This could almost look like when you show up and it's got the carbon fiber

splitter or something that, because I'm sure that's tons of what this has got.

It's probably got a bigger carbon fiber wing, bigger front splitter.

Is it just going to look like a Timo version of itself when you're driving down

the road? I think that that's a possible problem with this vehicle.

Well, I mean, the other, this is kind of a larger discussion, but I think

the brand proliferation in China is a little bit out of control.

Even within BYD especially, I'm finding out every day like a new brand

that's part of the BYD family.

No, isn't it crazy?

I mean, you started this episode with exactly that.

I mean, not exactly, but the the jacu was like, jacu was cherry.

Yeah, but I've never heard of it like or maybe I had, but I'd forgotten about it.

It's I think it's almost as bad as like GM back in the 80s.

Yeah, I think BYD itself has something like 10 or 12 brands, half of which I

haven't even heard of until like I see some story about, oh, this new something,

something model.

Oh, I didn't even know that was a thing.

Yeah.

To the point where they have brands that, you know, at least from the

conventional standpoint, almost kind of compete with each other.

You know, like where, like what's BYD's other high end brand?

I'm trying to remember.

Like Yang Wang is like the ultra exotic Denza.

Then there's Denza.

Then BYD is kind of like the Chevy, but there's one in between BYD and Denza.

There's and then I think there's another one between BYD premium Denza.

Luxury Yang Wang, specialized off road brand Fang Cheng Bao.

Fang Cheng Bao, that's right.

And that's not weird enough.

Fang Cheng Bao is like off road, but so supposedly Fang Cheng Bao showed a

like exotic sports car at Beijing.

And that's in addition to the Denza Z Roadster that we talked about last week.

And that's a whole other division, even though they looked very similar.

It's like at some point this kind of has to stop.

I'm just wondering if they're just doing it because they can and they're just

kind of flexing and they're like, oh, look what we can do.

We can create a new brand.

We can make a 3,000 horsepower car.

We can, you know, there has to be a rationalization at some point.

And I don't know when that's going to come or what it's going to look like.

But it's, yeah, it's kind of getting a little crazy, I think, but.

Not that America didn't go down that road.

Yeah, no, we.

Many decades ago.

We did.

I mean, that was GM before, what was it?

2011 or 2010?

Yeah.

So I guess they're not at quite at that arc in their history yet, where they've

had to go through there.

When do we see the Yang Wang, you nine extreme shootout between that and and a remit?

Dude, I have a feeling I know who's going to be one of the first to do it.

I'm going to go on record right now.

It's going to be Jason Commiss at Hagerty.

If there's a shootout between the Navarra and the Yang Wang, you nine extreme,

I'm putting my money on him if they can get one over here.

So and this stuff is always very entertaining.

So and they'll probably do it about an hour from my house is where they see

to film a lot of stuff.

Probably is not like a private airport or something where they.

No, they do a lot of it out at Willow Springs.

Oh, OK, there we go.

So this next item, I felt kind of validated by this

because I've been saying this for a couple of years and some people are like,

yeah, you might be right.

And other people like, yeah, no, it's going to be BYD.

BYD is going to just come in and steamroll everyone's like, no,

I think someone else will be first.

So this was a video from CNBC.

This just came out the day before we're recording this, actually.

This was Robert Ferris, I think, did this.

So this is basically their analysis and, you know, backed up by some other people's

input, they think Geely is going to be first in the U.S.

And I agree for many of the reasons I've talked about before, Geely is the parent

company of Volvo and Polestar.

They already have a U.S. manufacturing plant, which is currently under capacity

in terms of production.

So yeah, I think that is that is a part for the course for many EV

manufacturers plants right now.

Yes. And another interesting tidbit, which I also have speculated about.

They said the first Geely brand outside of Volvo and Polestar that could come

to the U.S. is they speculated Zeekr.

And I think that's probably pretty good.

Noice.

So if it's the the 001 I'm all for that.

So it's kind of like a strange thing to say is that Geely is best

position for entry into the U.S.

You've already covered it.

They're already in the U.S.

Yeah, pretty much.

Like not even pretty much.

They make the cars that come to America.

No, I mean, that's the thing is they already have the infrastructure set up.

I mean, whether you're talking dealer networks, service networks, parts,

distribution, manufacturing, they're here.

So it's basically it comes down to corporate decision.

When do we want to do this?

Whereas anyone else, whether you're talking BYD, Cherry, Jaikou, whoever,

they're basically going to have to start from scratch,

which would be probably a three to five year process.

I mean, I know the Chinese tend to move a little quicker than

the rest of the automotive world.

But even still, that's still a multi year process, setting that up.

Yeah, they can buy into production in America

at other plants.

Yeah, and based on the way things are going, it's it's a good

there's a good chance that they may buy someone else's shuttered or mothballed

plant, yeah, and just say, OK, we're going to take this over.

But we'll get to this in a second with Rivian.

In fact, that's the next thing I think we're going to talk about.

Like Rivian is under capacity.

In I don't know.

Do they only have one plant?

Right now, they're their main plants in Illinois.

So they're they can they could

sell capacity to somebody else.

Like it wouldn't be straight like, oh, let's just start tomorrow.

But with these Chinese brands that want to come in, there are companies

like Rivian that have a plant or two that are not at the capacity

that they want them to be.

And as a stop gap, they can say, OK, you know, all right,

Geely, we will start making your whatever it is.

We'll give you this part of the production facility.

You can start making that while Geely starts producing its own

plant, manufacturing its own plant.

And then Rivian gets the additional money

and eventually can phase out because that's only going to be

for a certain period of time, can phase out their production as they

as like Geely or whoever picks up production in their own plant.

Like it would work out really well for other plants.

But at the same time, Rivian says that it plans to expand its Georgia

plant to raise its capacity, presumably for its own vehicles.

Not for Chinese vehicles to come in.

This is for their own.

So this was one that's for a while was kind of on again off again.

When Trump came back into power and he's like, you know,

trash talking EVs and pulling all these subsidies and stuff.

And for a while, I guess there was a freeze on the DOE loans that went out

and they were quote under review.

But I guess there was a judge rule they had to release the funds.

So now it's kind of back on.

Anyway, so this is something that they've been talking about for a few years.

They're planning Georgia.

So originally, I guess the plan was to have that.

Build that with a capacity of 200,000.

So they've announced they've raised that to 300,000.

And this would be in addition to the normal Illinois plant,

which also happened to be the old Diamond Star motor plant that used that made the.

Oh, gosh, what's the Mitsubishi Eclipse?

Mm hmm.

Eagle Talon and Plymouth was the laser, right?

Yeah.

I forgot about probably dating myself.

But yeah, those were kind of a hot ticket in the mid 90s.

But anyway, so yeah.

So they're, you know, they're kind of expanding their ambitions.

I'm personally excited for Georgia because I think that's it's also going to be

the home to when they get to it, the R3 one I keep kind of holding out for.

So and also in addition to this, I guess VW increased their stake in Rivian.

It was previously 12.3 percent.

Now it's 16 15.9 or 16 percent.

So and I guess this now makes VW a bigger shower holder in Rivian than Amazon

because Amazon initially, I think, made a 20 percent.

Had a 20 percent stake and then they kind of scaled that back.

I think I think Amazon's still like 10 or 12 percent.

So yeah.

So I guess VW has faith in Rivian, I guess.

You know, that's an they spend a lot of time

when Volkswagen joined forces, well, Scouts joined forces with.

Rivian to do Rivian was doing something.

I don't remember exactly what it was, but they joined forces with Rivian

doing something with Scout and people were like, Oh, is the scout

just going to be a Rivian R1S and they were like, No, no, no.

You know, it's going to be its own vehicle, whatever, whatever.

And now Volkswagen increases its stake in Rivian is like, goes back to that of.

Is is that where we're going?

Is this is this fast forward five years is Rivian Volkswagen

and the R1 line and R2 and whatever their Scouts.

And maybe the R3 never happens and maybe very sad.

Yeah, but it might be the next generation of golf all track or something.

I mean, it very it could they could call they could release the Rivian R3,

call it a rabbit, change the nose on it and it would fit like.

There's nothing wrong with that as a solution.

It just makes you rethink back to a year or so ago.

Whenever that was, we were having this Scout Volkswagen

conversation, Scout Volkswagen Rivian conversation and how much involvement

do they have and Rivian denying that they're being bought by Scout and Scout

and Volkswagen denying that Rivian is producing their vehicles for them.

Yeah. And they they went from saying, Oh, yeah, we've got this partnership to

well, it's actually this tiny little component that we're we're sharing.

It's like almost nothing, you know, never mind the fact that we did a little more.

Yeah, you know, maybe never just forget the fact that we made a big deal out of this

announcement now that it's not going our way and it's looking like

this is more of a merger kind of situation down the road.

We're going to deny everything.

Yeah, it makes you wonder.

I mean, yeah, who knows, but it's kind of interesting.

And especially when you look at their just to go back real quick,

the capacity of the Georgia plant increasing from 200,000 to 300,000,

as they're building this out kind of well beyond what they need.

They sold, according to the Internet, about 42,000 vehicles in 2025.

And they're on track to sell fewer than 70,000 in 2026.

Now, granted, as we just said, like ramping up to production takes a while.

But it's going to take a while before they could hit 100 percent capacity

of the 200,000 unit production facility.

So Rivian is obviously looking at something else here.

Yeah, well, I mean, they have a much larger ambition for the R2

in terms of unit sales, obviously, and that's starting to go into production.

But even even so, that's like you said, between the normal plant

and the Georgia plant combined, I mean, if you add those together,

that's like 45500000 units.

There's still quite a ways off from that.

So yeah, I think there's something else happening here.

Something to keep an eye on.

So Tesla Semi, the truck that was shown almost 10 years ago at this point,

I guess is finally starting to come into production.

I guess last week they announced their high volume production line

in Nevada is finally actually starting to produce.

So that's that's probably also still going to be a slow ramp up.

But only seven years later than their target.

But yes, that's cool.

That's cool.

But so one of the critical components specifically for

electric class A trucks is the charging infrastructure.

So Tesla, now it's something that I found kind of interesting.

So we already talked about the mega charger.

So this is a lower charge rate, but it still uses the MCS plug.

It's called the base charger.

So I guess this is intended for either basically overnight charging or slower charge.

It's still DC, but it's 125 kilowatt as opposed to like

one point two to one point five megawatt.

So about a tenth of the power, but they're claiming

sixty percent range replenishment in about four hours.

So and quite a bit lower price in the mega charger,

$40,000 as opposed to I guess 180000 for the mega charger.

So this is this is designed for trucks that kind of

like a kind of a cap.

I'm trying to think how to describe this captive route.

Like if they're going between different depots owned by the same company,

like they kind of make a round trip in a day

and they come back home and park overnight.

Like that's this is kind of kind of seems like it's intended for kind of like overnight charging.

So like kind of a depot fleet model.

Or yeah, but I think it's a good idea.

I mean, also, too, I mean, some truck stops,

you know, half like overnight parking lots for trucks.

I mean, it would be good for something like that.

What does your model three charge at at a supercharger?

Like the highest I've ever seen.

Yeah.

I think the highest I've ever seen is about 200.

OK, how big is your battery?

Fifty, about 50 kilowatt hours.

So if you take something that's got what did we decide that the the truck is like

800 kilowatt hour battery, something like that at the long range.

And you've got superchargers that are capable of charging your car at.

Whatever, 180, 200 kilowatts.

Why so slow for this?

Well, because it's not meant for quick charging.

They already have that with the mega charger.

But why would you just not throw in a supercharger?

Like, are these significantly cheaper than a supercharger?

A unit to install?

Did you not just hear me?

No, for a mega charger.

So it's 180,000 for a mega charger is 40,000.

Uh-huh. OK, so that's 125 kilowatt.

Yeah, 188,000 for the mega charger, which is like 1.2 to 1.5.

Uh-huh. So how much for a supercharger?

The supercharger is irrelevant for the trucks.

They don't. But it's not.

OK, explain. They already make superchargers.

OK, why are they now making something?

Because the charger.

The charger is the unit that takes the electricity, does its magic

and then spits it out of a cable.

The the mega charger, the MCS plug is just the end,

the cable and the end to it.

You could connect a supercharger,

Nax cable to that and it would output whatever you need.

Like it's just the interface.

So I'm just looking at this and going,

they're designing something that's less powerful than what they already have

at the superchargers and they're putting a mega charger end on it.

Why are these not just superchargers with an MCS plug that that have got to be?

Like, I can't imagine that a supercharger deployment is 40,000 or more for a single unit.

Well, but I think I get what you're saying.

But again, getting back to the apples and oranges thing,

this this is purpose built for commercial trucks.

Yeah, that is the market they are targeting.

Like an ACS is for passenger cars, passenger cars and light trucks.

This is strictly for big trucks.

Yeah. So they're addressing a different market.

Yeah, I'm just saying that the the electronic infrastructure is already being built.

I'm guessing the cost is roughly the same of the slow MCS versus

a supercharger that can put out more juice.

Like, it seems like they are building an inferior product and charging as much.

And don't have the capacity for it to increase unless it does have the capacity to increase.

And this actually is a supercharger and they're just slowing it down.

We then potentially a later software upgrade.

I mean, they didn't really get into what the headroom is on it.

I mean, you could be correct in that there is.

They could crank this up to like 250 or 350 maybe.

I don't know. So I just looked up.

Electric says

the in the the estimates for for a post of the superchargers,

55000 dollars, roughly the same.

So I wonder.

I can't imagine.

So I'm just I'm I'm just wondering if these are old chargers that were old stock.

If these are, I mean, I don't know, under your current superchargers.

Yeah, it seems.

I don't know. All the prices seem to align and the rate seems lower.

And but I understand the purpose of this and that seems great.

And this seems like something that they need to do for depots

where you park the truck and they charge overnight.

That all makes sense to me.

I've just got kind of hung up on this incredibly low charge rate

at a at a price that's the same as a supercharger at Stahl.

But again, I mean, my guess is I think something's a foot here for dollar to dollar

on this, that they're they're either getting rid of old stock or

it's actually supercharger and they just are my using at a lower rate

for some reason at the trucks.

So here's here's this purely my hypothesis and hypothesis in my mind

is with their early trials with like Frito Lay and DHL and all that,

they the original like pre refresh had that weird,

which I actually guess was an essay standard.

I didn't realize that that was a Tesla proprietary play.

It was more square looking.

I don't know if you remember seeing that.

I guess that was they called the MCS 2.4 or something.

Anyway, who knew? I didn't know.

But so they did that and then kind of like

when we talked with Charon to Oleg and Rustam,

they they called it years ago, they said Tesla will adopt MCS.

Yeah. And at the time, it was like, well, they won't they, you know,

even when they said that, I was like, OK, when this was this was before

Nax became what it became.

So it was not like a fate at complete that, you know,

the charger wars are over, Tesla's won.

So there was some speculation that, well, Tesla might do their own thing

and then the rest of the industry will adopt that.

But it seems like MCS has effectively become the universal

heavy truck charging standard. Yeah.

I mean, I'll bring this home, I promise.

Is this the weave you're doing the weave?

So DHL, Frito, La, whatever, they probably they have probably had those.

They Tesla probably installed the fast chargers at their depots.

And they're like, cool, this is great and everything.

And my guess is in the early trials, they probably gave it to them.

They probably didn't even charge them.

So we want you to test out our truck will facilitate this, this and that.

As they got more enthusiastic about those trucks, they're like, hey,

we think we might really want to adopt those.

But we're looking for something potentially lower cost than the megawatt

chargers, a lot of these trucks just have a day route.

They go back and forth, you know, they did spark overnight.

They said, what do you have?

And they're like, well, we could do something like this.

And so I'm wondering if this is in response to

vendor demand or vendor request for something like this.

Um, that they said, we want something lower costs, lower power.

It doesn't have to be super, you know, 30, 45 minute, you know, full charge.

They're going to sit for four to eight, 10 hours overnight,

something that'll be able to top them off overnight.

We could get, you know, lower cost electricity, you know, something lower cost.

That's, that's kind of what I'm thinking this is.

And the other thing too is the Tesla semis don't have an axe plug.

They only have MCS.

So, you know, you couldn't use an axe plug on them if you want it.

So yeah, they needed something that used the MCS standard.

But, and a slightly, slightly different use case.

So to me, this makes sense.

I mean, I, I mean, I know some people look at, well, why, why wouldn't they use

an axe, you know, it's like, well.

Yeah, I'm not really questioning the next part.

I'm just questioning the speed, but now I wonder, I, I bet these are just

superchargers that are under a different guys.

I bet that that's what it is.

I wonder if they're lower powered due to the number that they need to plug in at

night, the number of trucks and that there's a restriction.

Because if what you say is true, then this is probably very specific to

lays or whoever has a bunch of these trucks and what they're anticipating

their rollout and they've probably done the math and said, well, if you're going

to plug in all 20 of your trucks, whatever the number is, we can't exceed

125 kilowatts for charging if they're going to charge at night because yeah,

per vehicle, because we can't be splitting as we do at a supercharger

station, we've got to hit that max number for everything.

And then are the transformers that we've installed when you were doing this

test are for the megawatt.

And this is how the math works out.

I wonder if that's what it is.

I bet these are just superchargers.

I bet that will come out at some point.

Maybe.

I mean, the other thing is certainly for the plug itself.

I think the MCS is built to a higher durability standard than next.

Yeah, I mean, no, there'll be like the board where it connects.

That'll be different.

The cable will be different.

The end will be different.

But electricity is electricity is still charging DC power into a truck.

Like it's just the interface that we're talking about.

You might be right.

But I mean, I'm not I'm not mad.

I think this is a logical solution.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it just it seems it's like a big announcement or a big,

you know, they're doing this big thing.

And to me, it's like, oh, they put a different head on a supercharger

and installed the delay.

Like that's what it is to me and not this whole new thing.

I I'm going to I would say I'll do a little bit of digging.

But I don't really know if I can surprise.

We've gone around this far in this and you haven't commented on the other items in there.

What other items?

Payment terminals, optional.

Oh, look at that.

Sweet on the mega charger and the base charger.

They shouldn't be optional.

They should be mandatory.

But if they were installing them, well, but again, why would you do it?

And I guess the difference would be if it's a private,

like a depot fleet, you wouldn't need a payment terminal

because it would be within your network.

But like pilot loves Flying Jay.

If they install those, if they're going to need a payment terminal.

And if they put a base charger in the areas where the trucks

are a park over night overnight.

Yeah, that creates other chaos because now you got trucks pulling in and out

and invariably, some of them taking out some of the chargers

if they're putting base charges around.

How many of those get knocked down every single day as they pull out?

No, that's it.

I it sounds it.

Yes.

Well, and also I think it's a good solution.

I think it's great.

I think this is needed.

I just hooked on to that one.

That one.

Sorry.

Well, and also too, I mean, and I promise I'll get off my sew bucks

in a second, but with the national price of diesel approaching $7 a gallon.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I think there is more interest in the Tesla Semi.

I mean, before it was like kind of cool in a hypothetical sense.

Like, oh, yeah, that's cool, but not for me.

Now it's like, no, I think I think this might be for us.

This may be one of Tesla's biggest blunders.

If they would have launched this in 2019, like they originally said

that they were going to do, if they would have had the semi out there

testing, doing all of this in 2019, by now, we would have fleets of these.

They would have production ramped up.

This would have happened and there could have been orders made and production

ramped up and vehicles sold and money made and mega chargers installed.

See them all over the road.

Yeah, by now, the adoption would go very quick.

But I still I still think they may have that opportunity.

But to your point, how much better would it have been if they would have been

on the road sooner?

But yeah, having said that, I still think potentially, you know,

however long this eventually goes on.

Yeah, but but eventually it goes this way anyway.

The price of gas is never going to go down.

Like renewables, you can always do something like there's we're going that way.

Yeah, I just I wonder how much money Tesla has lost in theory.

What was on the table?

Had they have been prepared for this?

Had they not?

I mean, again, they weren't they were never going to produce this thing in time.

Anyway, the number that Elon gave back in 2017, I think it was like that was

never that was pie in the sky.

That was that was never going to happen.

But if they could have hit that.

Yeah, like I like to say, Tesla usually does what they say they're going to do.

Just not when they say they're going to do it.

Yes, they'll do it eventually.

Another another example.

Let's scoot through the last article that we're going to talk about

that was not really an article.

It's a press release from AAA studies affect the high and low

temperatures of EVs and the hybrids.

Wait, temperature affects EVs.

What? This is news.

This certainly hasn't come out every winter since EVs started to get popular.

Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, news flash.

But I guess what's kind of interesting about is they kind of quantify it.

You know, before it was like kind of anecdotal, like, oh, cold is bad or hot is

good or hot is bad or yeah.

But they actually guess they actually have a lab in Southern California

like a temperature controlled lab where they can they can kind of

adjust the variables and test it.

So anyway, kind of interesting.

95 degree Fahrenheit, hybrids experience, 12 percent decrease in fuel efficiency.

While EVs show a 10.4 percent reduction in efficiency.

So about the same.

Yeah.

So it seems like the happy place is again, not a huge surprise.

Like 75, 80 degrees is kind of they're optimal.

So cold is where it's hybrids lose 20.

The big one.

About 23 percent in fuel economy and EVs lose just over 35 percent.

And a 39 percent decrease in calculated driving range, which is all fake numbers

anyway, with calculated driving range.

Your favorite measurement, MPGE.

Yeah, I whatever.

Yeah, I mean, I think the answer is why would you live anywhere where it's

really cold or really warm?

So you just lost our audience in Michigan and Minnesota and Arizona.

It's always nice in California.

I don't understand it.

Well, maybe they don't want to pay a seven dollar gallon gas, maybe.

Yeah, no, that's I suppose.

I suppose and crazy expensive electricity rates that we've got here.

And crazy.

So that was that was the other thing on the study.

They said, I guess this would also depend on where you live to.

If you live in a place with high electricity rates.

So DC fast charging, I know in California, at least it's typically between

about the lowest I've seen is about 35 cents kilowatt hour.

I have seen it over 50 cents a kilowatt hour.

So if you charge at home, if you charge an EV at home, like on off peak rates,

they're cheaper to drive than hybrids.

But if you're always using like superchargers and DC fast chargers,

EVs are actually more expensive than hybrids, I guess,

in terms of cost of operation.

So as the saying goes, your mileage may vary.

And I can't remember what the number was because I blocked it from my mind.

But there was a certain time period at my house where if I charged

an EV at my house, it was actually cheaper to go to a charging station.

Oh, same. Yeah.

Yeah, if I charge during peak power periods,

I'm better off going to the supercharger down the street.

So there you go.

Temperature affects your EV and keep an eye

on what your charge rates are at your house, especially if you live

in southern and northern, I guess, California, in sunny California,

because we pay for it.

Well, we're another.

We're paying for all of this last one real quick, real quick.

There was no picture.

So as far as I'm concerned, it's disappointing.

I was hoping for this, but so we're all going to die.

Not to not to an on a down note, but.

But you may be going out in the future in a lyric hearse.

That seems good.

So there you go.

But yeah, disappointed that the story did not have any pictures.

So I would imagine imagine a lyric but longer.

Yeah, that would be my guess.

So again, no pictures yet.

Who's making it? Is it Cadillac make a lyric coach builder funeral hearse?

Are they saying who's building it?

So this is this is what I don't know, like typically with like Cadillac limos.

They have a specific like package that they send to third party.

Like, yeah, I guess modifiers or whatever.

And they they literally chop the chop the vehicle in half, stretch it,

put in the center section and weld it back together.

So I don't know if it's this is going to be that or if they're going to build it

straight from the factory ready to go.

That wasn't immediately apparent.

So because if you cut this one right down the middle.

Cut in the high voltage battery.

You have slight issues, slight issues.

But the cool thing with this is if you have an all wheel drive lyric or any EV.

Well, so the releases that's going to be offered rear wheel drive only.

Even I mean, that's fine too.

Like anything where you had front engine and you had to drive the rear tires.

You were looking at you had to beef up the transmission, which maybe I mean,

this should be able to take it, but you had to do a custom drive shaft.

You had to like look at how you were going to be applying more torque at the front

and how much that's going to twist the chassis.

And there's all this stuff that you've got to look at when you're lengthening it

because of the way leverage works and pivot points and all this stuff.

And with this.

OK, you're you're adding more weight and that is going to add more twist,

you know, on the motor and everything.

But it's all just being done at the back.

So it's kind of easier.

Yeah, I mean, if you drop the battery, this is aren't like high speed cars.

Yeah, I mean, getting so.

Starting is where you have issues

because that is where you apply all this torque to the tires.

When I bought the last set of I think there were Toyo tires for my F 250,

you could buy two different types of them.

They were the same same e range tire, but you could buy a diesel version

and a gas version because it was the amount of torque that was applied

at a stop at a stop, you throw, you know, 10,000 pounds behind you

and you start to go and the diesel can actually supply so much torque

that they had to design a different tire.

So I bought the gas version because I got a gas vehicle.

But that is a thing.

And to go back to the I meant to talk about it a little bit with Tesla.

Truck semi.

Trevor Milton popped out of the woodwork with that.

I don't know if you saw that trash.

Yeah, it's talking trash about the Tesla semi.

Just he talks as much trash as I do about that thing.

It's craziness.

Everything we talked about links in the show notes.

The show notes can be found at the walker dot com and in YouTube

just below or in your player, wherever it is in your player.

YouTube dot com slash at the walk car.

That's what I'm talking about there.

Share us in social media, but you don't need to find us and like us.

You can if you want.

I don't care, but just share the content.

And that could be the podcast player.

That could be the YouTube player.

That could be the walk car.

We've got an embedded thing there, like whatever you can do, all of that.

The walker dot com slash store helps sport the blog of the podcast

because this episode is brought to you by us.

So any sale helps fund this endeavor.

And if we sell enough of them, you will see me driving a Yang Wang

Unia next week.

How many hats do we need to sell for that to happen?

A lot of hats.

See you next week.

Yep.

269: Mutually Assured Destruction

About this episode

EV brand sales rankings

brand proliferation

3,000 horsepower

DC

battery capacity vs charging speed mismatch

apples and oranges

MCS 2.4

delay

private depot fleet

Trevor Milton

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