Electrek Nov 14, 2025

Apple CarPlay in Tesla cars, VW on Superchargers, Toyota electric pickup, and more

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Brand

BYD

BYD is a car company from China that makes electric cars. They focus on creating vehicles that are better for the environment.

Car

BYD Han

The BYD Han is an electric car made by a Chinese company called BYD. It's known for its modern features and technology.

Term

1,000 kilowatt charging

1,000 kilowatt charging means the car can charge its battery very quickly, making it easier to use electric cars without long waits at charging stations.

Car

Denza M9

The Denza M9 is an electric car made by a company that is a partnership between two big brands, BYD and Daimler. It's designed with advanced features for electric driving.

Term

trimotor

A trimotor means the car has three motors that help it go faster and handle better. This setup can make driving smoother and more responsive.

Term

rear wheel steering

Rear wheel steering means the back wheels of the car can turn, which helps the car turn better and stay stable when driving fast.

Car

U9

The U9 is a type of electric car that can jump and perform tricks. It's known for being very fast and having cool features that make it stand out.

Term

0 to 60 time

'0 to 60 time' is how long it takes a car to go from a complete stop to 60 miles per hour. It's a way to measure how fast a car can speed up.

Car

The Chevrolet Bolt is a small electric car that is known for being budget-friendly and having a decent driving range. It's a good option for those looking to drive an electric vehicle without spending too much.

Car

Hyundai Kona

The Kona Electric is a small SUV that runs on electricity instead of gasoline. It's designed to be efficient and has a good amount of space inside for passengers and cargo.

Term

Apple CarPlay

Apple CarPlay is a feature that lets you connect your iPhone to your car, so you can use apps and listen to music on your car's screen.

Term

Supercharger

A Supercharger is a special station where you can quickly charge your electric car's battery, especially Tesla cars.

Brand

VW

VW stands for Volkswagen, a big car company from Germany that makes many different types of cars.

Car

And we are live on the episode of the electric podcast.

I'm Fred Lambert, your host.

And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winshaw.

How are you doing this week, Seth?

I'm good.

All right.

As you can see, I'm now back home, back from China.

Plenty to talk about.

I haven't reported a lot of what I did in the last few days

in China while I was there, because I'm still

waiting from some cool, little footage to show you guys

before making some videos and post about it.

But I guess I can tell you a little of a preview.

I went to DOID's headquarters in Shenzhen,

just outside of Shenzhen.

And that, in itself, is impressive.

DOID is so huge.

It's hard to overstate the scale of it.

I mean, just the headquarters, now they don't have any.

They used to have a factory at the headquarters.

Now it's just they got so big.

It's just engineering and just office worker and all that.

And just that is like 100,000 people.

They have 100,000 just engineers.

Just in R&D, they have 100,000.

That's wild.

I mean, that's the size of Michigan Stadium.

Yeah.

There's a lot of people.

You know, like Tesla has 130 or so, 1,000 people.

Most of those in factory workers, like the factory

workers, is the main thing.

It's like, no, for them, just the R&D, just the engineers,

it's like a full Tesla size.

And then, total, they have a million people.

They are the biggest private employer in China.

The only thing bigger are state-owned companies.

Yeah.

The headquarters is like the parking lot.

They all park on top of each other.

Like, you cannot exit your parking spot

without being blocked by someone just parking in the way.

It's just the insane amount of people.

They hired 200,000 people just last year.

It's incredible.

The little district where they had in Shenzhen,

it's like a new district basically for them

that they built out at the outskirt of the city.

And it's where like the transit system for Shenzhen

ends.

So they connected with their, you know,

they are now in the light rail system.

Like, they built a light rail for Brazil

and they were selling a few light rail systems.

So they built one, two for their own little district there.

So yeah, so that they have their employees

have public transport.

We took it and it was like nice little monorail,

basically electric monorail.

And they're using their same battery and motor

that they use with their car, they repurposed that

but that analyzed the little basically metro system

but that's suspended in the air on the light rail.

And that's really cool.

But yeah, I went there.

They have a showroom that also has like the history

of the company and a very nice like small model

of their factory where it actually like work

program all a bunch of miniature robots

that are just like the manufacturing robots

to produce their miniature Dicast SUV

but actually makes a Dicast SUV from the robots.

It's really nice.

And the other entire lineup.

So for the first time I was able to drive a BYD vehicle.

I've never driven one before.

They put out not the entire lineup

but they were nice enough to put some

of their latest vehicle out there for us to try.

And it was a really wild experience

because it was literally in the employee parking lot.

So we arrived there at like 3 p.m. or something.

They did the little tour and then they were like,

hey, here's a few cars.

You can try them in the parking lot.

And among those cars, there was the U9,

their crazy super car.

Yeah, the U8, their insane SUV

that has the tank turn and everything.

There was the Seagull, the $10,000 car that they have.

That's their best seller.

There was the new BYD hand

that has the 1,000 kilowatt charging.

There was the Thai 3 that has the drone,

DJI drone that's as the garage

of the drone on top of the car.

What else?

There was the Denza M9 that has the trimotor

with several degrees of freedom on the rear wheel steering

that's able to, I don't know, I'll even call that now.

It's similar to a tank turn.

It can actually do a tank turn,

just not a complete 1,360.

It can do it on one axle,

basically on each of the front wheel.

And instead of doing it in center of mass,

it does it around one of its front wheel.

And what?

It kind of like flips itself around.

Yeah, so what it does basically,

if you wanna do a parallel park,

you can just go forward into the parking space

and just back your back wheels into it,

which is pretty cool.

It's actually like a real useful case

of a tank turn other than like off-roading

and having to like turn around,

which we did tattoo in the UA.

But the real crazy part said,

and it's really a good representation of China

and how their attitude of how the approach just,

oh, let's just do this thing.

Like I'm in the middle of their employee parking lot

and it's getting like 5, 6 PM

and I'm just like tinkering with these vehicles

and there's a documentary there too.

So they wanna film everything.

So we keep having to like redo things

so that they can film in different angles.

So it's taking a lot of times.

And obviously the first thing I wanna get into

is the U9.

We make that car like jump in the air,

which is fucking crazy.

And then-

I was gonna say that's my favorite car, U9.

And then, but again, I'm in this small,

it's kind of, it's a big for a parking lot,

but it's like relatively small

and I have this super car that goes 0 to 62 seconds.

And I do little launches,

but like there's, I have maybe like three,

to a hundred meter, 250 meters max of runway.

So I cannot like go crazy with it.

And there's people driving around

going back home from the day of work.

So, and they keep telling me like,

yeah, yeah, go ahead.

I have fun with it.

I'm like, are you sure?

Like there's people around everywhere.

And then they let me literally for 12, 13 times,

just for the cameras and everything,

launch the car and jump into the air with it.

And they're like, yeah, yeah, let's just do it.

Can you imagine like an automaker,

like even if they had the capacity in North America,

letting you do that in your parking lot.

They would be security all over the place.

It's like, no, no, no.

You need a helmet.

Oh, you didn't have a helmet?

No.

None of that.

Like they literally give you the keys

to each of these cars.

And they were like, yeah, go ahead.

The only thing that like stopped us at the end

is like the guy, so it was, everything was last minute.

So they were super nice to arrange everything.

BYD is just that you could see that it was all last minute

and they didn't have like anything planned

or anything like that.

So they literally have the guy

that's in charge of the BYD fleet,

like bring a few cars that they had available

and make it available for us.

And then when it was like 637 PM,

the guy that was in charge of the car was like,

hey, I kind of want to go home now.

I need to bring these cars back and everything.

So I was like, all right, sorry.

Like I couldn't film everything that I wanted to film,

but I'm gonna have some good footage for you guys

where we made that.

It's not a feature that's just there

for the marketing department to make a video about

and bring views.

Like it's actually in the car

that they are delivering to customer.

You can, you just have to accept a little warning

about how crazy stupid that is.

And then you can jump the car whenever you want,

the suspension loads up like a cat

that's about to bounce in the air

and just boom outside that,

which you can do it standing on park in place,

or you can do it from 30 kilometers an hour and up.

You can do it 130 kilometers an hour if you want

and just jump.

It's crazy.

The tank turn is also really well done.

The way that they did it, the UI is very smooth.

You can also do that wherever you want.

Same with the Denzel,

which is not exactly a tank turn, but pretty close.

The craziest part though,

honestly, was the Seagull or Mini Dolphin,

whatever you want to call it.

That's many different names depending on the market.

So I've seen the car around

and I actually was driven in one-on-one point.

Does it look like a Chevy Bolt in person?

It's a little smaller than a Chevy Bolt,

but not that much smaller.

And also the quality of it,

like I was just in a Uber earlier today,

here in Montreal, in a Kona Electric,

like the very base Kona Electric.

And I was like, the quality of it,

I kind of feel very similar to this.

And it was like a $35,000 car

versus this is literally $10,000

with over 200 miles of real range.

Officially they call it 400 kilometers,

but that's CLTC, so it's a little bit less than that.

But yeah, it was nuts.

I can't wait to show you guys some of that

and what we talked about with the UID

and their crazy ramp up that they had.

So we talked a little bit about that,

but what really happened in the early 2020s

that UID was not selling that many cars

until like four, five years ago.

And a few things happened that we discussed.

So we're gonna talk about that.

I should have a report coming out early next week.

All right, we're gonna talk about Tesla and Apple CarPlay,

the Powerwall Recall, Supercharger on Google Maps.

We talked about VW,

you finally having Supercharger access,

Waymo Expansion, Toyota Electric SUVs,

and a new Toyota plan.

After that, we're gonna have plenty of time

to talk to you guys.

So if you guys have any question for us,

you can put it in the comments section.

We see people are already doing that in YouTube and Facebook,

but they're live everywhere.

Put them in the comments and when they get to you

in just 20, 30 minutes, it shouldn't be too long.

All right, this was a surprising report this week

from Bloomberg.

Bloomberg says that Tesla has started testing

the capability internally for the Apple CarPlay integration

according to people who are familiar,

but don't wanna be indetified

because the effort is still private.

According to Bloomberg here,

the CarPlay platform long supported by other automakers

shows user a version of the iPhone software

that's optimized for vehicle infotainment system

it is considered must have options by mean driver.

There's not a ton of details in the report,

but it is coming from a nine to five Mac alum,

Mark Grumman, and normally, I mean, I haven't followed them.

You follow Apple closer than me,

but he has a reputation for being extremely accurate

with these Apple scoops, is that still the case?

Is that still the case?

That's still the case.

So there's credibility to this report.

It was surprising to me

because it would be quite a reversal of this strategy.

So again, not a lot of details on there

that they were working on it.

They say that it could launch as soon as in a few months though,

it could also just be killed

because they talked about it before

and it also didn't happen.

So, but it says that there's actual work

being done on this and it's for the regular CarPlay,

not the Ultra version that also has

instrument cluster control and climate function.

So it's just the phone mirroring of your app

into the Tesla computer

and it's apparently within the screen on the Tesla computer.

So it doesn't take the whole screen,

which makes sense, especially with the Model 3, Model Y

that don't have their own instrument cluster.

They are on the center screen,

so it's a window within the screen.

But yeah, I mean, of all the manufacturers,

like a lot of them are moving away from Apple CarPlay,

from Android Auto to own the entire infotainment experience

inside the vehicle.

But we've complained that,

this is normally subpar compared to Apple CarPlay.

Like especially with the Gestito maker,

the software is just not their priority.

And Tesla has been the exception to the rule.

Their software is actually pretty good.

Some people would still like

to have Apple CarPlay available.

So I'm on the side of like,

it should at least be an option.

People should have the option to have it

and if they don't want to have it

and just want to use this as software,

you can do that too.

Yeah, I wonder if Tesla's implementation of CarPlay

will just be, you know, like,

you don't need CarPlay for like Spotify

or you don't need CarPlay for Audible

or 16 other things that Tesla has.

But some things like messaging Apple's proprietary on,

especially when, you know,

like you have group messages and stuff like that,

I wonder if there's like a way

that Tesla uses CarPlay,

but only to kind of extract out the messages app

and use that natively or somehow

so that it's still kind of the Tesla experience,

but you do get access to things

that you can only so far get on CarPlay.

That seems more likely than actually having

like just Manila CarPlay,

like you would, you know, see on a Lucid or a...

Yeah, because like you said,

there's not that many apps that you would actually,

like using your car that you would actually need

from this because the audio app already has all that native

and then the navigation,

you're most likely going to want to use Teslas

unless, you know, you absolutely want Waze maybe,

but even then.

Yeah, I mean, for the most part,

Tesla's native experience is going to be better,

but there are some things that, you know,

like for instance, if you're so attached to your messages app

that you need that,

and that's keeping you from buying a Tesla,

then maybe that's something they need to fix.

Yeah, looking at the response from this on social media,

like the Tesla owner where most is like,

who we're asking for this?

Like there's not a lot of people who are asking for this,

but I'm sure there's some people that,

it's a difference maker.

We've seen it with GM when GM started phasing out

Apple CarPlay, got a lot of people upset,

but again, GM's software is also not really on par

with Tesla.

Yeah, that seems like the wrong direction.

Mike the CarGeek in the comments makes a good point.

Do you think CarPlay is a RoboTaxi only product?

Writers would be allowed to sync their phones

during a trip, but owners do not get it.

So for instance, if you're in a RoboTaxi,

you could sync your CarPlay up to it.

Yeah, that could be one of the drivers

of the reason for integration,

but if they are doing an integration might as well,

again, options are nice, like offer it to people.

They want to use it, they want to use it,

and I want to use it and want to use it.

So I don't think there's values to,

there's value to offering it just to RoboTaxi.

Yeah, I mean, Mercedes does a great job

of making CarPlay so bad that you want to use

the native system, and the native system is actually not bad.

So I found myself never using CarPlay

in that pretty good automobile.

And I should note the only other details

that were in the report was that it's going to work

wireless, so it's going to be wireless CarPlay too.

So most of it is wireless these days, I guess.

I haven't seen no CarPlay integration

that's just USB only.

All right, the next report is on the PowerWall recall

as now expended into the US.

So a few months ago in September,

we reported that Tesla had unofficial PowerWall 2 recall.

They see all PowerWalls 2 produced

between 2020 and 2022,

a recall in Australia following a few fires.

So there was a fire risk related to the home battery pack,

and Tesla just initiated a recall to do all that.

And back then, two months ago,

we did report there's like, all right,

what's happening with the other markets

where Tesla is delivering the PowerWall

because it's the same PowerWall everywhere.

If they are recalling it for a fire risk,

they should be recalling it everywhere.

And now it took two months,

but Tesla has extended the recall to the US market.

It says after receiving 22 reports of overeating,

including six reports of smoking

and five reports of fire

resulting in minor property damage.

No injuries have been reported,

but in the US it accounts for 10,000,

about 10,500 PowerWall 2s installed.

They will be remotely discharged

until they can be physically replaced.

So if you look at your Tesla app

and you see that Tesla has discharged your PowerWall

without the actual need for it around it,

it's because you're included in the recall

and you need your PowerWall replaced

and Tesla will contact you about it.

Yeah, it's kind of a big deal.

And we have a source of familiar

with the Tesla's PowerWall service

that says that Tesla has been aware of this issue

for more than two years now,

and it's only now doing the recall,

which is not too surprising

that they've known for longer than that since,

I mean, just with the Australian recall,

there's been a two-month delay that's unexplained

when there's an actual fire risk happening.

I have an image here that I'm showing,

which is the inside of a trailer.

Tesla even built thermal response trailer across the US

to respond to those events of overeating of the PowerWall

so that they can quickly lift them up

and put them in a water solution as soon as possible

to avoid any further overeating.

And possible thermal event.

It's hard to trust that Tesla

to do the right thing these days.

And this is the latest example.

It's like, we're talking about an actual fire risk

of a battery that you're installing people's home.

This reportedly, this issue happened

after a software update, like the BMS issue

where something goes wrong

and the protocol doesn't shunt thing down in time

that the system overeats for no reason

leading to these thermal events.

And the first fire in the US happened in 2023.

They saw a few other after that shortly after that,

clearly there was an issue

and they tried to let it run basically

as long as they could until they were forced

to do a recall in Australia.

And that looks like forced their hand across the globe

and now this is happening.

It's, I'm getting some GM bolt vibe of the fire,

the fire recall, like it's, it's just...

So, not great.

You know, I have two sets of PowerWall twos.

You have PowerWall twos, don't you?

Yeah, and they fall within the 2022.

Yeah, if mine did too.

Yeah, I looked at my app and they haven't discharged them.

So of course I'm in Canada.

So I don't know if they just not initiated

the Canadian recall or if my PowerWalls are not in that.

Your PowerWall haven't been discharged either.

Nothing, I know.

I was just looking at it now.

Yeah.

So I don't know, maybe you don't fall into the recall

but it is, you know,

I would like a little bit more communication like this.

I didn't get this recall notice from my owner

or anything like that.

Straight from the, what do you call this,

on a consumer production website in the US?

Yeah, United State Consumer Product Safety Commission.

So it's not official communication from Tesla

or anything like that.

And I know that Tesla has been replacing PowerWall twos

for a while now, kind of quietly.

You know, it's two of the ones in Colorado.

Got kind of a whole quiet recall that has been expending.

So Tesla has been doing this for a while

but just not officially, not telling people

that it's an actual recall.

It's more like sneaky one.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

I can't remember.

Do you have referral PowerWalls?

Yeah, I have one but it's not the-

The red one?

Yeah, it's not like the red one

that's signed on anything.

It's just DJ.

Yeah, so I have two sets of red signed ones.

So I wonder what they're gonna do with that.

And they are 20, 20, 20.

Oh yeah, you got them early though.

You got them 20, 20?

I thought that was right in the middle of the PowerWall twos.

Oh, you know what?

They might have been early PowerWall twos.

Yeah, yeah.

You might be in early for the recall.

I got mine way after yours, I feel like.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right, Google Maps has updated

to get Tesla data directly from the Supercharger.org

to now show live availability in the maps,

which is pretty cool.

So now if you click on the Supercharger station

on Google Maps, whether on web or on mobile,

you get not only the number of Tesla chargers

depending on the, there's 75 kilowatts,

that's just really, what's that?

What's that one, something?

The which one?

Oh yeah, yeah, you're right, the city ones, the city ones.

Yeah.

Yeah, I almost forgot about these.

So you get the number of charging stall based on their power,

but you also now get the live availability of them.

So we see that six out of eight,

the 150 kilowatt station are available here.

Here's six out of 12.

So that's really useful for,

especially for non-Tesla owners are not, you know,

I mean, if you want to use Supercharger,

you might as well already have the Tesla app too.

So you can look there, but you know, you're not,

normally it's not your go-to to just go to the Tesla app

if you own the Hyundai, for example,

you want to use the Supercharger network,

but you can just use the Tesla app

or if you have Apple CarPlay

and you're navigating through Apple CarPlay now

on your Google Maps on your car,

you can also get live availability of Supercharger.

So that's, I think a big step up

for non-Tesla EV integration into the network

because yeah, I mean, there's nothing worse

than showing up at a charging station

and it's full and you have to wait

and you didn't know it's just not an ideal situation.

And nowadays with, you know, the degrees

at which the Supercharger network is extensive,

you, it's not, you know, back in the day,

if it was full, there was no option,

you just wait and you get the charge,

but now most likely than not,

there might be another Supercharger station within reach

of where you're going or even if it's like a city situation,

there's a few of them available, most likely.

So that's, you can just change it to another one,

which is pretty cool.

Yeah, it's nice that I built in,

especially if you don't want to download the Tesla app

just for Superchargers.

Although I guess if you're going to charge.

Yeah, you're going to need it.

It's more about, I think you're route planning

than anything else.

Like if you're going to use Google map,

you don't have to get out of it

and check with the Tesla app.

All right, speaking of non-Tesla EV integration

of Supercharger network,

Volkswagen has now finally been integrated in the network.

I think it's the last one.

I think it's the last Tesla automaker

to be integrated into the Supercharger network.

There was a false start, the announced it prior

and it wasn't the case.

Now apparently it's official.

They have the detail of their integration here.

So as of November 18, it's going to be active

on the 25,000 Supercharger in North America.

So as you know, there's some Supercharger

that are still Tesla only,

but for the most part it's available to everyone.

In term of the adapter, what are they doing for adapter?

So Volkswagen vehicles we have to use

the next other in order to use the station

and these are available for $200 from Volkswagen,

304 Canadians in Canada.

You can purchase them at a dealer,

next other on the internet to use for DC charging.

There's no voucher, I think that ID4

can ID Bos owner for the model year 25 vehicle

is eligible for $100 rebate on the adapter.

Okay, so it's just for people

if they buy before July 15, 2026, a model year 2025.

Oh, and model year 2026 onward

will come on an adapter standard.

Okay, okay, that's good.

Yeah, cause I guess until NACS become native

on the vehicle, it's kind of standard to have one.

Like it's a game changer, Supercharger network

is the best thing Tesla has done by far.

Yep, most impactful.

I doubt it.

All right, just a few more articles to discuss

and then we're gonna have some time to talk to you guys

so we can jump into the comment section after that.

If you guys have questions you can put them in there

right now, it can be about any of the topics

that we're discussing today

or any other topics in the EV world

that you'd like my sleepy take on

sorry, I'm falling asleep right now, switch it back.

It's been a rough day, I've been up since like 3.30 in the morning.

All right, Waymo at the bid expansion,

big step forward, three way riders only

is now available in California

in their three major markets in California.

So that's maybe the Bay Area in LA, I would assume.

What's the...

I don't like you.

I guess they didn't have freeway access.

The Bay Area, which now includes San Jose.

Are they counting these as like,

because they said three major cities.

Okay, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco.

Okay, so the Bay Area is counted as one.

Then you have Los Angeles and Phoenix.

They were testing there for a while

with the supervisor, Ala Tesla,

but now it's riders only.

So you can order a Waymo from the entire service area

in the Bay Area in Los Angeles or Phoenix.

And now prior to that,

it would route you around three ways

to work around them.

Now you're gonna be able to take them

and get to your destination a lot faster.

And in the Bay Area, it's gonna be perfectly useful

now that they sort of connected

all the different service area

from San Francisco all the way to San Jose.

Before that there was like gaps in the South Bay basically.

Now everything is connected.

So literally you could take a three hour ride

in Waymo from San Francisco to San Jose

and then peak traffic and it would work out.

So that's obviously a big deal.

It's a huge step because it's show a level of confidence

that Waymo has in its driver right now

where going to higher speed,

you increase the level of danger quite a bit.

So the consequences are way higher,

but it's been testing it for a few years now.

We've seen it, we've seen some Waymo drives

without anyone in the car on the freeway.

And I've accumulated the data where they think

that now it's safe enough to do it with riders

without any supervisors.

And that you have some advantage obviously Waymo

with their sensor suit on the highway

with radars and LiDAR sensor

which are better at determining the distance

and the speeds quicker than you would

especially with static object,

something that Tesla has had issue with highway driving.

And something that this doesn't offer.

Well, in the Bay area it actually offers

its Rebel taxi service on highways

but that's basically a Uber driver with FSD

in the driver's seat.

So it's not exactly the same.

In Austin where they have the driver,

the supervisor in the passenger seat right at the driver,

they don't do highways.

And you can still get highways,

but if your destination requires highway driving,

they're gonna route you a car

with the safety driver in the driver's seat

as their passenger seat.

It's the magic of the Tesla Rebel taxi program.

And even Elon commented on this

which brought me to write an article last night about

is Elon delusional or lying about the stuff of self-driving

because he called Waymo's update,

which also confirmed that they have 2,500

Rebel taxis in operation now in North America

or in the US of Bay area, Phoenix, Atlanta and Austin.

He called that rookie numbers.

So people got really excited.

They were like, oh, that means Tesla

has like more Rebel taxis than 2,500

even though we know that they have like 30 of them in Austin

and maybe-

It's like calling it a child's toy.

Yeah, very similar to that comment

and we know what happened with that.

It took actually Tesla.

Like a decade.

Yeah, almost a decade to be

what he referred to as child's toys,

which was a 350 kilowatt charge rate.

They just now have been deploying 500 kilowatt station.

So yeah, maybe I hope it's not gonna be that long for this

but you know what?

I don't think this is it.

I think there's two explanation

which my conclusion to the question

is Elon being delusional or he's lying

is that it's a little bit about,

I think that sometime he is being delusional

and thinking that he's been saying for the last eight years

that Tesla's gonna solve unsupervised self-driving

either by the end of the year or next year

and he's been wrong every time.

But I think sometime he's delusional

and he really thinks that this is on the verge of doing it

but then when it doesn't happen, when he's wrong

he is quite willing to cross the line

and lie about the situation to make it look better.

For example, in this case with the rookie number

for Waymo clearly having 10x more

of a robotaxi than Tesla in the U.S.

and that's with Tesla's very loose description

of a robotaxi, I think it's either two things.

I think it's either that what we've seen from Elon's comments

about Tesla covering, Tesla robotaxi covering

in half of the U.S. population by the end of the year

and what we've seen from job listings of Tesla

hiring the safety drivers all across the U.S.

I wouldn't be surprised that in the next month or two

we see from Tesla, we saw from Elon announcing

that robotaxi is expending to half a dozen cities

with thousands of cars that are basically

just like the situation right now in the Bay Area

where Tesla is operating a ride-hailing service

like Uber with FSD with people in the driver seat.

It's very doable and then you can call that robotaxi

apparently and just say that you're beating Google

which anyone other than hardcore Elon fan see through that

but anyway, I think it could literally be that

or it can be even stupider than that

where he goes back to like,

oh, we already have a million robotaxi

with just people with FSD in North America

and that's what he's talking about

so that's why he's saying rookie numbers

is like we're actually beating that right now.

It's just would be even stupider than that.

That's the other ride-hailing kind of bakery.

Toyota as on bill, it's first electric pickup truck

and kind of underwhelming.

It's the, how do they call that that?

Hilux, is that all you spell that Hilux?

Yeah, Hilux.

Yeah, all you pronounce that, yeah.

But this is here is the new Hilux

and it's gonna be offered in three different powertrain.

And I'll just choose me four different powertrain versions.

So all electric, hybrid, diesel

and there's gonna be a fuel cell electric version

because apparently we're still doing that in 2025.

But the all electric version is equipped with only a 53,

I want to, no, sorry, 59.2 kilowatt hour battery pack

which is the smallest battery pack capacity

of any pickup electric pickup truck out there.

It comes with to win capacity of 3,500 pounds, 1600 kilograms.

Also the small SBV to win capacity we've seen

and a max pale capacity of 1500 pounds, 7,715 kilograms.

WLTP range is expected at 150 miles, 240 kilometers.

So this is right now meant for the European market

and the South Asian market

and I think they are talking about launching this

also in Australia, so there's no plan for the US.

But yeah, it's basically a city pickup truck

if I understand this correctly.

Yeah, I mean, those are quite popular all over the world

but Toyota pickups are just, you know,

like kind of the only game in town

and close to the third world.

So.

Yeah, I mean, the pricing would be interesting to have.

I don't think we're going to have that right away.

Okay, so it's going to launch next month

for the electric version.

So we should have pricing in some market next month.

That would, if it's like closer to like, let's say like

$35,000 or something like that, I could understand

but other than that, it's a very small batch pack

for a vehicle of that size.

Yeah.

And with that wind resistance.

Yes, it is a box.

Finally, Toyota again, the officially

have started production at their Cheyenne AV battery factory

in the US in North Carolina.

That's a cool name for the town, I skip it.

My brain is mush right now.

Is it Liberty?

Yeah, Liberty in North Carolina.

So it's a big plan, they are still investing

but when everything is said and done,

they think it's going to be a $14 billion investment,

5,000 jobs created and will produce

eventually 30 gigawatt hour annually of batch pack capacity

mainly for their hybrids.

So they are making mostly hybrids batch pack

but their global SUV, all the chicken SUV

that they plan to launch soon also will have

their batch pack produced at that plant in the US.

Toyota, it's their first battery plant in the US

in North America, everything else is in Asia

and they got one also in Europe.

So maybe steps towards Toyota going electric.

Just like I said, they're still doing fuel cells hybrid

so it's not like, yeah.

Don't manage your expectation a little bit.

All right, let's jump into the comment section.

All right, question, both Lyft and Uber

have committed to an all-electric fleet by 2030.

In the US, according to current metric,

is this realistic goal?

Do you think either company will be at all electric?

2030 is in about five years.

I mean, right a link, it makes a ton of sense to go electric.

You save a lot of money.

So I definitely see it happening a lot faster

than the broader market in North America, especially the US.

So I guess the reason for the question

is with the context of the current EV adoption rate

in the US being at 10, 12%,

so do you really get to a full 100%?

I don't have that on top of my head.

I would assume that the adoption rate for ride ailing

is already much higher than the broader market.

So yeah, I think it's actually achievable.

Now, are they gonna enforce,

if you're a Uber driver

and you still have a combustion engine vehicle,

are they gonna enforce that

and kick you out of their driver's network?

I mean, it's hard to even imagine exactly

what the ride ailing system is.

Industry's gonna look like in five years

with the advance of autonomy at the same time.

So yeah, it's a hard I want to predict.

But yeah, I think by 2030,

you're gonna be at very least pretty close

to all electric and ride ailing

and most likely autonomous starting

to have a real impact in the,

especially in the next two to three years,

starting in the next two to three years.

All right, 29Mato says,

have you seen announcement of 16 kilowatt hour battery

range extender for any EV connects to the main battery,

giving more range and better charge curve?

EV clinic presented it two weeks ago

in Zagreb, Green Fair.

I've not heard of this, have you?

No, are they talking like

an 18 kilowatt hour pack that you put in your trunk

and then connect, I mean...

It sounds almost like a capacitor,

like a super capacitor where you can charge it really fast.

It stores it and then it slowly charges your battery.

But EVs are not really set up for that.

Like, do you run out of the back a cable

and plug it into your chargers?

No idea.

Yeah, it's, I don't know,

like the only other thing that I can think of

is like a Cybertruck, the range, and that was a flop.

Of course, the program itself was a flop,

so that doesn't help.

But I don't know of any of these type of product

that pierce the market in the EV industry just yet.

All right, Tesla Malfeasants on full display

with delayed recalls and not universal,

who's responsible and why aren't they fired?

I think we know who's responsible.

I mean, I know why Elon wasn't fired.

Yeah, and I'm hearing other things

of who was actually fired,

what might have been the people that were pointing

at that issue.

Whistleblowers, yeah.

It would be a weird thing to be a whistleblower at Tesla.

Oh yeah.

All right, we had a powerwall with a burning smell

which was replaced in the UK.

Yeah, you don't want that.

Is there an official recall in the UK?

Like these are the same products everywhere.

They should be a recall everywhere, all at once.

You just do it, be done with it.

It's not like just the recall,

if it's really just 10,500 in the US,

it's a $100 million recall for Tesla, it hurts,

but it's like not the end of the world, do it.

You know what hurts?

People dying for this,

it would be, first of all, a tragedy,

and second of all,

probably a bigger financial impact than doing it.

It's the pinny pinching on that stuff

or from a major comparison like that is just not a good look.

All right, I tried Google Supercharger map info

and it's a useful feature,

even if it duplicates built-in info for Teslas.

It is nice, Waymo is extending to the lower bay area.

I wanted to try this out.

Did you all hear about the Elon Musk unveiled

documentary that is releasing

at an Amsterdam film festival this week?

Looks like a comprehensive expose

with the tagline, the Tesla experiment.

Nope, I've not heard that one.

Me neither, I wonder if there's any new information in there.

The high-look specs look disappointing,

but I expect Ford's new Ranchero mini pickup thingy

to also use a much smaller battery

with the target of not road tripping.

I don't know, cause if it's like we expect,

I'm like more of a Ranchero style vehicle,

could be more efficient,

could, you know, with a 60,

so the other batch pack is still small.

Like if you can go to 80,

I think get a lot more use case.

You can get fast charging and make it, you know,

get over 200 miles of range with it,

still be useful for road tripping,

even though probably not the primary use, I agree.

I think there's a way to configure this and price this.

I mean, I haven't seen the price of the Hilux,

but just the configuration of it,

it feels like they're not trying as much.

And again, if it's a vehicle

where you have four different powertrain options in them,

maybe you're trying to sell,

you know, other powertrain option.

And obviously Toyota still favors hybrids

over all electric vehicles.

All right, 150 miles range is great for rural folks

who live one hour from a city.

Yeah, but then you can't tow,

you can't, you know, that one time

that you have to do a couple trips.

I almost feel like this is, he's being sarcastic

because it's tight, an hour from the city, 150 miles,

you going, you come back, like you said,

in terms of if you actually are working with a load

or whatsoever, it's, yeah, it's not ideal.

All right, Dean McBannis says the EV Hilux is a joke,

it most likely will never come to the US

as it wouldn't be competitive against hybrid

or gas only models.

You know, I mean, with a battery that size

with the 150 miles, like the range extender

that Scout is building,

seems like a really like nice option to have.

Yeah, that's one of the things in China too

that I started to like make peace with, you know,

we're all electric, all electric, all electric,

but I've seen, you see right now in China,

a trend of some all electric automaker

adding range extender into the vehicle,

expung being one of them.

It's like, it's been known as an electric,

but like the, they put in,

they're all putting the same 1.5 liter engine

into their vehicle, all these automakers

that are going-

The coefficient runs at one speed, one whatever.

Yeah, I agree, I think for some people.

They're still keeping their big battery pack too.

So like you're still using like a 50 kilowatt hour

plus battery pack.

So the electric is still first, most of the time

you'll never put gas in it.

You're just gonna use it, you use it just the battery,

but everyone again, you might use the range

and the range gets up to a thousand kilometers

now with it.

So that's impressive.

And I guess the idea behind it in China

is that the Chinese market is already at over 50%

all electric, at least not that good as a hybrid

but it's like very close to 50% electric.

Those are to 60 if you had all the hybrids

and they are kind of maxing out the cities,

the market in the cities where

people are perfectly fine with all electric.

So if you go a little bit more rural

or get out of the biggest urban areas

where charging is no problem and everything,

people like to have the gas option.

So it helps the rural people ease in

into the electric vehicle platform.

So they're finding that very useful

and all the automakers say that they see it

geographically the impact of these models

of having the hybrid, the range extender power train

as an option there.

They say that it's pretty useful

for penetrating into those markets.

So I get it.

And yeah, like the U8, for example, from BYDs

you get over a thousand kilometers of range

and still like it's like 50 or 60 kilowatt hour

battery pack.

So you use it all electric all the time,

but then if you wanna go on a crazy long road trip

and you just, or you want to go really off-road adventuring

because that's what the vehicle is for,

you make sure to have a full tank of gas

before you leave and you'll never gonna be stuck anywhere

and you could use it as a generator

to power other things.

It's yeah, there's some value to it as long,

like I've always said, plug-in hybrids are great

as long as you use them as they are intended

to be used, which is charge a battery pack,

use the battery pack first

and only use your gas engine when you need it,

which is what at least was a problem at first

where a lot of people were just using it

as a regular hybrid and the battery pack

was only being charged through the regeneration

of the use of the gas engine, which is not ideal.

Yeah, and we saw came across the wire today.

Nissan has a interesting plug-in hybrid

coming to the US, three rows, some good miles.

Not like, I think 20-ish kilowatt hour battery,

40-ish miles of range on battery alone,

but I think these might be the next things

is like batteries for daily driving

and then a little gas motor for the longer trips

or the time you forget plug-in or whatever.

No, in North America, it might be

because there's still so much room to grow

from now to go to all electric,

so it looks like there's room

for these transitional technology.

All right, yeah, if Toyota put a 60 kilowatt hour pack

into a rapboard prime, it would work,

but 125 miles in a BEV is limiting.

I mean, 60 kilowatt hour pack is almost like

enough to get around as long as you have

good charging options.

It's plenty to get around to, to be honest,

it's almost like a Model Y, really.

Yeah, if they were as efficient, it would be.

All right, why are they supersizing every single car?

I can get a small electric sedan under 15K,

brand new with over 250 mile range.

China, you are?

Because I don't know anywhere else

where you can do that.

Can you even get a gas car?

What is a sedan that's $15,000 in the US?

Yeah, not a sedan.

You can get a compact car, but not another sedan.

Can you even still get that?

I feel like 20 grand is like.

No, I think I kind of am blanking right now,

but the Toyota Yaris kind of market, like on the axle,

I know that these vehicles might not exist,

but they have a new equivalent of that.

There's some of that, but it's rare nowadays,

again, like Dylan said, it's super,

they are supersizing everything.

Yeah.

All right, but that's everything for us this week.

Thank you for listening to the electric podcast.

I'm sorry that I was extremely low energy.

I'm super tired.

Seth also had a late night.

So we start our most energetic podcast.

We apologize for that.

Next week, we're gonna be back in perfect form.

I'm gonna be back in Xiaowen again too in the studio

and hopefully well rested.

And I'm gonna have a little bit more to you

about the Chinese trip with some video

and everything that's gonna be fun.

So stay tuned for that.

Almost say you same time, same place next week.

Bye bye.

0:00

52:00

Apple CarPlay in Tesla cars, VW on Superchargers, Toyota electric pickup, and more

BYD

BYD Han

1,000 kilowatt charging

Denza M9

trimotor

rear wheel steering

U9

0 to 60 time

Chevrolet Bolt

Hyundai Kona

Apple CarPlay

Supercharger

VW

Toyota Plan

Tesla Model 3

Tesla Model Y

Mercedes

wireless CarPlay

PowerWall

thermal event

BMS issue

Google Maps

EV integration

adapter

Volkswagen Id4

Waymo

radar

LiDAR sensor

kilowatt charge rate

Toyota Hilux

Ram 1500

Tesla Cybertruck

Ford Ranchero

Toyota Yaris

About this episode

Original notes