Battery holy grail too good to be true, NVIDIA open sources self-driving, Tesla Model Y 'Standard', and more

And we are live for a new episode of the Electric Podcast.

I am Fred Lambert, your host, and I'm joined by Seth Wintraum.

How are you doing, Seth?

Seth Wintraum.

I'm good.

All right.

You'll excuse me, everyone.

I'm a little bit under the weather today.

There's something going around here, and I might have caught it this morning, but I'll

power it through.

Just might hear some sniffles now and again.

But yeah, big show today because we have a lot to talk about.

It was CES.

A lot of things came out of CES.

A lot of other things only related to CES, too.

We have some new Model Y standard long range.

That's a new thing now.

We have some cells that I don't have from Tesla in Europe.

We have a few things that came out of CES that put a lot of pressure on Elon

Musk, and now he was skating around a bunch of the announcement this week, including

NVIDIA, basically open sourcing AI for autonomous driving.

So we're going to discuss that.

A little update, a little goalpost moving from Tesla FSD.

Then one of the biggest thing of the week went wild.

The entire industry went wild on the Donut Lab slash Verm motorcycle news about

the new solid state battery.

Would they claim to be the first production solid state battery in the world?

And I just got an email from them just now.

That's that little bing that you just heard because I've been trying to get

an interview with them all week.

Understandably, they are pretty busy, I'm sure, with this announcement.

And then everyone wants a piece of them and talk to them, but they are

telling me now that they'll make sure this happened next week.

So next week, I should have an interview with them and let you know.

But what I really want about this, I'm going to talk about later.

It's not an interview.

I want an actual cell and test it because that's the only way we can actually

prove this, they can say everything, but we need, we need independent testing on

this and actually have, for people who don't know, a brand new battery lab

in my garage right now.

So we can actually test this thing.

Ford making its own autonomous driving announcement this week.

I'm going to discuss that.

Volvo teasing us with the EX-60 with some of the first specs, which as

the says, they are monster specs already.

And then a bunch of new Kia GT EVs at the unveil.

All right, let's start out with the Molo Y.

Standard long range.

You know, Seth, we've been covering Tesla for a long time.

Do you remember at any point in time, because I was thinking about it

earlier and I don't think I can remember a time where Tesla had one

model with five different trims?

I don't think so.

Yeah, me too.

I don't think so.

That's the case now in Europe.

So they launched this new, so the standard is this decontented strip

down Molo Y that they launched in October last year.

So now we have like two main thing that differentiate, you know, before that,

you have like short range, long range, rear wheel drive, all wheel drive.

And then you have the performance version and there's some mix

and match between those.

Sometimes one is available with the other and not that.

Now on top of that, you have standard and premium.

And that means in the standard, you don't have the vegan letter.

You have textile.

You don't have the rear screen.

You don't have the light bar for the Molo Y.

You don't have the rear screen that I already say that you don't have

the temp, some damping windows or at least not as good

something with those and you lose the glass roof.

Actually, it's still there, but from the inside you lose it.

Um, and the goal of that, as you can imagine, was to reduce the price

of the Molo Y and the Molo 3, which also got the same treatment.

And it also came with a smaller battery pack, but now they also

launching it with the bigger, long range battery pack, making it

the model Y standard, long range, rear wheel drive.

That's the actual name of this thing now, pretty crazy name.

And, um, yeah, 657 kilometers of range WLTP, 12.7 kilometers, kilowatt

hours per 100 kilometers.

So it is now the most efficient Molo Y in the world.

So that's, uh, it's pretty impressive.

And, uh, and yeah, it starts at 45,000 euros.

So it's, um, a decent, uh, step up over the, uh, standard, the

Molo Y standard rear wheel drive, because I guess if it's not long range,

you just don't say long range, but yeah.

Um, then at the same time as they did that, they also launch in

Canada, the Molo Y standard.

So the one that I just described, uh, which is the same thing just

with the smaller battery pack, 463 kilometers of range, but that's

EP, uh, EPA versus WLTP.

So in miles from my friends in the U S it's, uh, I should have put it in the

article, but it's 288 miles.

Um, yeah.

And, uh, so other than that, the price is the most interesting thing.

It's a 50,000 USD, which is interesting.

That's, uh, that's a really good price.

So $15,000 less than the previous premium all will drive.

And, um, it's a big difference and it's important for the Canadian market

because Tesla, since the tariff situation, Tesla is not getting, uh, is not

sending us made vehicles to, um, to, to Canada.

And since there's a hundred percent tariffs on Chinese main vehicles,

we're not getting those either.

So for the Molo Y, we have to rely on Berlin.

And since they started making those in Berlin, they're shipping

them out to Canada now and it's a $15,000 drop in the price on the Molo

Y in Canada.

So it's, it's quite significant.

Is it going to make a giant difference?

You know, it's probably going to be significant because some incentive

also going to be able to stack them up on it.

But, you know, I think Tesla went down to probably 10,000 units or so.

Molo Y in, in the Canada in 2025.

So it's, it's not a huge market anymore for, uh, for Tesla.

But in Europe, you know, with five different trims, the standard range, the

standard, the standard with standard range and then the standard with long

range, uh, it could, it could make a significant difference and Tesla needs

it because this week, the biggest article we have this week was the

Tesla's full 20, 25 data from Europe is in and it's a total blood

bat and it's not, you can, it's not an overstatement.

It's an hyperbole.

It's, it's pretty good.

It's an hyperbole.

It's, it's pretty bad.

So I produced this charts here that showed that this is down 28% year over

a year on the 2024 that was already down versus 2023, uh, when Tesla

had it speak in Europe.

So it's, uh, you know, they're almost losing a hundred thousand units

of cells, uh, in 2025 in Europe.

And then you look at each specific market in Europe and that's

where things get really interesting, where every single market is

down for Norway.

Yeah.

That's the only one.

And then for Norway, the Norway exception.

So I, I, I did something just for Norway.

You look at the, um, trend here and you can see like early in the

year was rough, but like model Y refresh, normal, picked up in the

second quarter, makes sense.

There was some, you know, demand that was backlog because of the model Y

refresh, and then it's basically flat and down, uh, actually in October.

And then big difference.

So the 40% increase is in basically in the last two months of the year,

that's where most came from.

And the reason for that, and even before that too, is the end of the

significant reduction in EV incentive, specifically for more expensive EVs,

which Tesla vehicles falls into.

So obviously those new cheaper EVs at Tesla are targeting that, but nonetheless,

a little bunch of diamond was pulled forward into Q4, especially the last

two months of Q4 for, for Tesla in Norway.

And that gave a big boost and that will obviously slow down in 2026.

Cause now a lot of people basically in Norway would be even if they're

looking at the new model Y standard range, standard range, even standard

long range, ah, those names are pretty bad.

They, uh, they won't be very quick on the trigger because they're basically

paying the same price as they would be paying for this, the long range

premium vehicle, uh, just a few months ago.

All right.

Um, and very interesting article from Bloomberg came out this morning

that kind of spin that a lot of things around for the, uh, Tesla X AI

situation and I want to discuss, because I think a lot of people are, are

missing something quite big that's happening here is that Tesla could

actually end up owning X AI, well, at least Elon must take in X AI.

So we talked about this lawsuit before, which is a breach of

judiciary duty lawsuit that, um, the lunch at this point is a year

and a half ago, uh, almost.

And, um, the lawsuit from some Tesla shareholder alleges that Elon and

the board are in breach of the fiduciary duty for letting Elon start a

private company X AI, um, which is an AI company as the name would

imply, and that's a direct competitor to Tesla, which Elon's claim is an AI

company, but, um, the, uh, the interesting part here is that, you

know, Elon's defense has been that, you know, X AI is an AGI company is

trying to make general and artificial intelligence while Tesla is a real

world AI company.

And, um, and, you know, some of the shareholders in the, in the lawsuits

are arguing different thing that, you know, even if it's not exactly the

same shape of AI, you're still competing for the same talent.

So that's already, uh, a breach of fiduciary duty.

Then there was the resource diversion stuff we talked about when

you know, Elon had ordered 1000 and NVIDIA, uh, H 100 chips for Tesla and

then diverted that to X AI instead, which is, you know, very problematic.

Elon has his whole excuse for that, but it's not a great one either.

But now the entire idea that, uh, Tesla and X I are not actually

competing on the product level has been challenged seriously this week

because, um, earlier on, on Wednesday, X AI announced that they, um,

closed a $20 billion financing round around that Elon had denied a month

or two prior that he said that it was not happening.

And then it just happened.

So, you know, when, whenever Elon denies a story, it's basically

confirmation at this point, but, um, now Bloomberg to the report coming

out where the obtained some of the documentation that they were

presenting to investor for the round and in the present in the information,

they mentioned that X AI will develop self-sufficient AI to power robots

like Tesla's Optimus, a statement that can be interpreted in two ways.

Either X AI will actually develop the AI, the brain behind Optimus, or

it will develop a brain for humanoid robots like Optimus or competitors.

Either way, it's a direct competition to Tesla and basically giant ammunition

for, for, for this lawsuit, this lawsuit that, you know, would result in

giant fines and, uh, and, and, and, and predictive action and all that,

but they're ultimately seeking, like you had no right to start this,

this company, this company you started in breach of the trees.

So you're staking it must go to tesla shareholders, which would

be a mess to say the least.

But yeah, I mean, in short, you cannot leave.

not start a public company, sorry, not start run a public company, you know, Elon is the

de facto king, technical king of Tesla, you can do everything in Tesla, but it's a public

company. So, you know, your mom and dad is probably a shareholder in Tesla to their 401k,

like it affects everyone out there. And they, you cannot start a competing private company

that you own and move resources between them. So there's a bunch of smaller resources

that have been moved between them. But at this core here, they basically, Elon is taking

away a core feature of the Tesla Optimus of the robot, which, you know, we can debate

about how useful the robot can be. But, you know, according to Elon himself, it's critical

to Tesla's future. And move that into a private company, which then Tesla would have to

either license our technology, buy the technology from that company, creating a ton of value

specifically for Elon, who has a controlling stake in XCI, while he doesn't officially

have a controlling stake in Tesla, even though effectively he's been

It sure seems like he does.

Yeah, he's been acting like he does, that's for sure. And shareholders have been perfectly

willing to let that happen. So I think this is a big development. This lawsuit, like

I said a year and a half ago, it's going to take probably another two years before

it goes to trial if it goes to trial. So don't hold your breath from what happened.

I think this basically seals the case that XCI is a direct competitor to Tesla and, you

know, no business starting it.

All right. Oh, no, there's not a big thing that shook the industry this week. And NVIDIA,

and one of them, NVIDIA is like probably one of the most anticipated presenter at

the CSES every year. And this year was no exception. And there was a bunch of different

part to the presentation. A lot of it has very little to do with electric vehicle and

the space that we cover. But there was one part that was a pretty big deal, Alpamao.

That's what it's called. Is that how you would pronounce it? Alpamao?

I guess so. It's like Alpaca and mayonnaise.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. So it's a new open source reasoning AI for

autonomous driving. So basically, NVIDIA want to, the Tesla FSD end-to-end neural net,

that's what they want to sell in open source sources to people. So the idea basically is

that NVIDIA sees NVIDIA has a lot of compute power in new cars, especially more iron hand

vehicle these days. And they see that market threatened, which is like a $10 billion market,

I think for them right now. It's a huge market for NVIDIA. I mean, though it's

nothing compared to Delecent or stuff, it's still a big market. And NVIDIA felt a little

bit threatened in the last few months to years with first Tesla doing its own custom

silicon for the inference computer. And then Rivian, more recently doing the same

thing in China, you have X-Pang also doing its own silicon, even though they also still

buy some NVIDIA stock from some of the version of the car. Basically their low-end version

is NVIDIA and now the iron version is their torrential. So NVIDIA found some way to slow

down this transition and incentivize people to stay within the NVIDIA ecosystem by

open sourcing their own extremely advanced reasoning AI for autonomous driving, which

works understacks. So basically, if you buy the NVIDIA inference computer, you can easily

run Alparnaio on it. And you have FSD for free at the software level, at least. And

you can obviously build on that software too. You can add features. That's a vision

neural net like Tesla, but you can combine it with radar or LiDAR, which is what

Mercedes-Benz is doing. So the bigger news here was that this is happening now and it's

already in the market in production vehicle, specifically the new Mercedes-Benz CLA. Starting

this quarter is going to ship out with the NVIDIA stack with Alparnaio reasoning AI,

which is going to enable... They are talking about Level 2 Plus, who's been talking

about Level 2 Plus here at GM, right? Yeah, they won't call it Level 3, even though it

kind of is. Yeah, so it's kind of a new thing that Tesla invented basically with

FSD, because it's like it's Level 2 at the law level, but it endles point to point

navigation, which is what they're aiming for here. So yeah, Q1 launch in the US,

Q2 launch in Europe for the Mercedes-CLA and later in Asia. So they are calling Level

2 Plus, but obviously they are aiming eventually for Level 4. And then they

have the Vera Rubin, which is the new hardware stack that's replacing the

Blackwell that's going to power that. So yeah, it's basically the Android to

Tesla's Apple. Like Tesla wants to be the closed system and they wanted to

license that to order it to a maker, so it's not that close. It's just that there

was basically no takers. And now you can basically guarantee that it's not going

to be any takers because who's going to want to pay the $8,000 Tesla fee or

$100 a month when the Nvidia give it to you for free. And I think this...

Where does Waymo fit into all that though? Like, isn't Waymo the Android?

Because they're kind of... They are Android.

Yeah, they are, but they have their own hardware too, even though they use

some Nvidia in their stuff right now, but their 6th gen is apparently no

Nvidia. It's not clear. But yeah, they... I mean, they're not open source.

I don't think Waymo has open source of their software. So at least they're

not Android on that level. They also... Here I'm talking more about consumer

vehicles. I'm talking about FSD rather than the RoboTaxi. I'm talking about

integrating advanced autonomous driving features into a consumer vehicle like

the Mercedes-Benz CLA. While Waymo has been focused more on its own

internal fleet, even though they've been working with Toyota and Hyundai to

implement their technology into consumer level vehicles also, it's just not

quite there yet. But yeah, you're right. That plays a role into that too.

But on a larger level scale thing, the way I see this move is more...

It's a continuation of the trend of the commodization of autonomous

features inside consumer vehicles. Level 4 autonomy is another thing.

It hasn't been achieved yet, especially in the consumer vehicle level.

And I don't see it happening anytime soon. I think we're going to see a lot

more level 3 before we see level 4. But this level 2 plus thing, I think,

is being completely commoditized. We see it in China with BYD, with Expong,

with Xiaomi, with Huawei offering this at a fraction of the cost of what Tesla

has been doing. Even Rivian is sitting in their own thing at a fraction

of the cost of Tesla, even though completely agree that it's not on par

with Tesla yet, FSD at all. But I don't think we're going to see a trend

of that price going up, even though that's what Rivian, I think, said.

But I see it the other way around. I see the price of this level 2 plus

autonomy going way down in the future. And in video open sourcing it,

I think is an example of that. Yeah. And that kind of goes to

Tesla's future model. They were originally like, FSD is going to be worth $100,000

because it'll be the only game in town and there won't be any other options.

But it seems like there's going to be quite a few other options.

Yeah, exactly. And also, the $100,000 price was also if you actually achieve

unsupervised self-driving. Everyone can recognize the value difference

between like super advanced autonomy that you still rely on a driver versus no

attention needed whatsoever. But we're still not there at all.

And it means it's talking about getting there too, but they basically

prove that what Tesla can do, even though I don't think it says as

well as Tesla just yet, but I think you're going to get there pretty fast,

is just that it's not that hard if you still rely, if you don't want to

take responsibility. The hard part is when you take responsibility,

and no one is doing that right now other than Mercedes-Benz and some

level three vehicle in very restricted areas.

And kudos to BYD for like the autonomous parking feature stuff.

They're taking responsibility, so that's good too, but other than that,

you don't see everyone jumping into a we'll take responsibility for this.

And what was interesting is that we saw Elon comment on this

because I saw a bunch of investors, Tesla shareholders on X that were

getting a lot nervous when this happened on the was it on Tuesday, I think.

Yeah, Tuesday, Wednesday, people started commenting on this and you saw a bunch

of Tesla investors that were all interested. They were like,

okay, did the video just open source FSD? Like what's what's going on?

And Elon was quick to comment on it and there was a bunch of comment

that I want to discuss. But in general, he basically tried to

calm everyone down and said something the long tail of real

edge cases is incredibly hard. And honestly, hope they succeed.

You know, basically saying like, yeah, it's good first try, but you're not quite there yet.

He's talked about this, I think a five or six year lead.

But, you know, how do you calculate that makes no sense.

So he was very chatty about Envisio and Alpamaio.

But one thing that I found interesting is that Elon didn't say anything about

Atlas, this robot right here, which was Hyundai's.

So for people that I don't know, but most people know Boston Dynamics,

but Boston Dynamics used to be on my Google, but Hyundai actually bought them a few years ago.

And they've been going pretty quiet, you know, other than their classic,

like YouTube videos of abusing robots. We haven't heard too much about them.

And Tesla shareholders and Elon have never taken them too seriously either,

because for the longest time, they were still dependent on like hydraulic system.

And the focus more on the robotics side rather than the AI side of it.

Everything, even though I haven't seen much AI in Tesla's robots yet,

it's mostly remote operated. But this Hyundai Boston Dynamics Atlas robot

kind of stole the show at CES this year. It was very impressive, the demonstration of it.

And some of the key announcements that I should say are first off,

already in use in Hyundai factories. So Hyundai went quiet for a while, but it actually

built a new generation of the robot that's all electric rather than hydraulic.

And it can be used for a few hours at a time now and can swap its own battery.

So it's as swappable battery pack with several of them. So you can keep one,

remove one and still work, put a new one in there, and then swap out the other one.

And it's pretty cool. You have that, you have it's a, it's 62 rather than 58 for Tesla.

It's able to lift over 110 pounds versus Tesla's 50 pounds, 45 pounds. It has,

it's, it's built more for like real work while Tesla is like very obsessed by making it like

human-like with like very detailed hands and all that. Hyundai, you know, it's still a

united robot in the sense that it's like two arms, two legs and everything, but they are more about,

you know, yes, we mimic the human function, but we're in the human form, but we make it super

human so that the robot can like turn around on itself without its legs turning around.

It can, you know, it has gripper for hands that has like three fingers and one tongue

and can do pretty much everything a human can do with them, but it's not as complex

and as fragile as the like muscle-like human hands that, that this has been trying to

replicate in that. And like I said, it's in production right now.

In 2026, all the production is allocated to Hyundai for their own manufacturing capacity,

but in 2027 it's going to ramp up production and going to start shipping customers.

So I think, I think this is like the new robot to beat in the human robot space.

And I found it interesting that Elon was quick to like talk about NVIDIA and I've

had for Mayo, but not, but not Hyundai's Atlas.

I think Tesla has a better relationship with NVIDIA and Tony than Hyundai, I think.

Yeah, that's one of the point and I met him article is that, you know,

Elon has to be careful too because NVIDIA, Tesla, but also his other companies such as XAI still

relies heavily on NVIDIA. He just, he just announced a $20 billion data center in

Mississippi that's going to rely on NVIDIA compute. So something to think about.

All right. But one of the things that came out of the NVIDIA stuff, you know,

around it, you know, people getting nervous, that's all within the context of Elon missing a

bunch of deadline for timelines for cell driving in 2025, big ones too.

And now people are so, so people are double nervous where Tesla is lagging,

competition is ramping up. And Elon had a very interesting comments through all of that

that I thought shook everything is that when he was trying to like justify when NVIDIA is not

going to get close anytime soon, he said, roughly 10 billion miles of train data is needed to achieve

safe on supervised self-driving reality is a super long tail of complexity, which is wild

because we've been saying that for a long time. Elon has been said that too, but he often

forgets about it when it's time to give a timeline about self-driving. But what I find

interesting is like we have that data. That's one of the only thing that Tesla shares about

full self-driving in terms of data is that total training data, total miles of full self-driving.

And last we heard this is around 7 billion miles right now. So between seven and eight,

basically. So Tesla at this current rate, Tesla won't achieve 10 billion until

June or July. So and then by June and July, you have a 10 billion miles that that means

you then you have to train the data, you have to train on that data, you have to

test it, you have to debug it. So the way he's talking about now, this is to achieve

safe on supervised self-driving. Tesla is not going to get there until next year based on

Elon's own timeline with this. So did he actually know that when he said last year,

just last month, he said in three weeks, we're going to unsupervised self-driving.

It started to become when you look at things like that, it becomes clearer that Elon is not

just like over optimistic about this stuff. He's trade-off lying a lot of the time here.

Because that's the problem when you're a compulsive liar is like you have to keep

track of all your different lies in there. And then sometimes you have two lies that

cross and like doesn't make sense anymore. And this is one of them is like you cannot

be saying just a few weeks ago that Tesla is going to have unsupervised self-driving

by the end of the year. And now say that you're still another year away from actually even getting

the data from it or at least six months away from the data and another six months for

I mean, I think having full self-driving this year, next year is kind of tradition for Elon.

It's been, you know. Someone took an interesting charts out where you see like

Elon says by the end of the year, all the way until June and then from June it says next year.

It was the other way around though last year, but mostly about the rubble taxi stuff, which

again, I do think that Tesla could have some sort of unsupervised self-driving

in a geofence area in Austin this year, even in the next few months, you know, with a lot

of remote monitoring and it's probably possible, but it's going to be so limited because if you do

Yeah, you're basically just going to have a remote control car.

I think that's difficult to achieve even though we've seen Tesla's patent applications

and job filings that would point to that. You're right. But I think this is

very hard to execute. I think it's going to be like a super small fleet

so that it doesn't actually make too much mileage. And if you don't make too much mileage,

then you reduce your chance of crashes quite a bit. So I think we're going to see

something like that. Maybe next like three or four months or something,

which is still like way past Elon was planning. All right, we're past the Tesla stuff for

the people that don't like it on the 30 minute mark too. That's pretty good.

And then we are jumping through the comments section and just maybe like 15 or so minutes

after we get some really interesting stuff. It's so if you guys have questions for us,

you can put in the comment section right now. We're live. It can be about anything that we

discussed today or any other topic that you want us to discuss in the EV world or the Uniball

Energy world or you know what trends you think we're going to see in 2026. Sorry, I'm looking

for, all right, this is perfect. Yeah. So that was the big news of this week. This week

is like a dual news situation. It's the donut lab battery and the verge motorcycle

using that solid state battery from donut lab. But I mixed the two of them together because

they're basically the same thing. So the people behind donut lab or the people behind the verge

not the verge but verge motorcycles are same people or at least the CEO Marko is the

same person behind both company. But verge has been around for a little bit. Maybe you

learn about it on SETS other podcasts. Wee Lee with Micah our own expert in the two-wheel

electric vehicles. But verge has been around for a while. It's Finnish motorcycle maker. They

are known for their hub motor in the back. So there's no rim in the back of the motorcycle.

As you can see here is just a donut. Hence the name of the company, a donut hub motors that is super

power dense and energy efficient, meaning that it's really light and powerful and also efficient.

It's been on the market for a little bit now. I don't know exactly how long but

those vehicles are around. You can buy them. You've been able to buy them for a little

bit. They're not cheap but it's like a high-end electric motorcycle. But like most high-end

motorcycle, they're still limited in terms of energy. So motorcycles are relatively small. So

it's hard to pack a lot of batteries in them. So the range especially at higher speed. So a

highway range are often limited. You don't have a lot of motorcycles that go past 100 miles of

highway range. It's pretty rare. So you need a solution to that and solid state batteries has

been touted as a solution to it for a long time. Solid state has been kind of like the hydrogen

of the EV world where it's always coming soon but it's never really implemented at scale at any

time. In the last few years I've been making some prediction that actually we're going to get some

production vehicle with solid state batteries by the end of the decade. By 2030 we're going to

see some vehicles. There's been a lot of progress. Solid power out of the U.S. Quantum

Scape out of the U.S. You have fractional in Europe. You have a bunch of companies that have been doing

great work with solid state. They're getting closer to Yoda, has been investing in the E2

even though there's plenty of timelines. Sorry. But yeah. So what is surprising about this is

this relatively small finished company out of nowhere this week. We have the first production

battery, solid state battery cell and it's already in a production vehicle. The new Verge

Pro, the Verge TS Pro. So the Verge TS Pro, like look at those packs here, set up to 370 miles

of range, 600 kilometers of range on a single charge. So that's when you double the battery

pack so you can have one batch pack or two batch pack. That's going to be a huge battery.

Yeah. Charging of 106 miles, 200 kilometers of range in just 10 minutes. Now actually claim

that they slowed down the charging because it was too fast. And yeah, a ton of power,

zero to 62 miles per hour, 100 kilometers an hour in 3.5 seconds. It's just a beast of a

bike. It just solved the entire energy problem with the electric motorcycle. You have a long range

vehicle in there. Then Donut Labs, Marco from Donut Lab does an entire demonstration

about it. They release some testing features of the actual power capacity of the cells.

And again, they say that this is in production right now. You can buy a TS Verge and you're

going to get to deliver this quarter with this capacity. So it's hard to not believe them

at this point, but then it's a small company that kind of leapfrog the entire market in

delivering what is the holy grail of battery technology here. We're talking about 400 watt

hour per kilogram of energy density, you know, what 40% more than the best lithium ion NMC cells

these days, maybe giant move, 100,000 cycle set. That's crazy. That's when like red flags

happen for me. And again, I don't, people are going to think, I don't want them to think

that I'm like quit like I don't, I think they're liars or anything like that. It's just

I've been doing this for like 12 years at this point. We've seen all the battery breakthrough

announcement out there. There's always something that doesn't work. And even Marco in his

presentation, which was by the way, go check it out on YouTube. It's a great presentation.

He did like he hit everything, all the nails right on the head, which again,

red flag normally, but the classic with the battery cell is that it's either like great

performance, longevity, and price. And you have to choose two of them. You have these

trees main thing is like the actual performance, meaning like energy density, charging capacity,

power density and all that. Then you have longevity. So the number of life cycles,

and then you have the price, it's choose two. And Marco was pretty clear that they have

all three. He said like cheaper than lithium ion cells. He said, I get 100,000 cycles, which

for people who don't know normally like five, 10,000 cycles with with 20% degradation is

like pretty good in the industry. For 100,000 cycle, like you said, said, it's like,

this thing's gonna ask you, it's gonna hot live, not just a bike, it's gonna hot live you, it's

gonna hot live your three next generations of your family. Like it gets to 73 years if

you charge it once a day. Okay, so you can imagine like red flags all the way through.

But again, then I have to play devil's advocate. The very virgin motorcycles are real company

that I've heard a real product. Their Donut motor is very cool tech that they develop

it themselves with the help of some researcher or two and everything. But it's it's a real

innovative product that they delivered. So you have to give them credit too. So I have no

proof on the other side that this is not real either. So I don't want to make any accusation.

And I have to do some research on this and a bunch of people also send me a bunch of research

because again, that thing just blew up this week. Everyone's talking about this.

And do I have my research here though? I thought that put my

or it's on my other computer. Damn it. But yeah, I found a link between Donut Labs and

another company that's called Nordzik Nano that they developed basically,

we have someone that found it too right as I say it in the chat here.

And the company is more focused on solar and energy system than battery. But they do have,

if I understand it correctly, licensed the technology or actually or bought the technology

that they then license or other from a young researcher from Finland from a Finnish university

that developed a new material, a new material to use especially at the electrolyte level,

I think for solid state batteries. So it again, that's not Donut Labs saying that it's like my own

research, other people's research looking to it, that's the link to it. So there's a real

technology innovation in it is just strange that out of nowhere, no one knows about it

and it's in production already. Again, playing devil's advocate, like I said earlier, we

every other week there's a big announcement of battery breakthrough.

Most of the time it's based on the real research from serious scientists at research firm companies

or universities. So at some point we kind of become numb to it. So it's possible that our

research came out and like it's just no one spend a lot of attention on it because everyone

assumed that there's going to be a problem with it like there's always a problem with it.

And then they were able to test it and it worked and everything. So it's a real possibility.

So I go back to what I said earlier on the show at the beginning of the show,

I want to get one of these cells. So I'm supposed to talk with Donut Lab and

Virgin Motorcycle next week. I mean, I would love to get a motorcycle to and test the motorcycle,

but I, you know, in Quebec, it's not the greatest weather for it right now. So maybe

later on the year, but before that, you know, if this thing is already in production,

I should be able to get a cell. Just send me a cell. I have an actual battery lab in my garage

right now with a bunch of battery testing equipment, a bunch of battery manufacturing

equipment too. And I can test it and tell you exactly the energy density of it. I can test

the cycles, you know, it's going to take a while to test the cycle, but you know, I can get

a good idea of it in a reasonable period of time. Maybe I can test the charging capacity,

the discharging capacity. I can test all of that. So I would love to get a cell.

And I think that, you know, again, Marco's presentation was top notch. You can have,

you can have the answers for every interview ever. I don't think no one's going to believe

him and the claims until there's a dependent testing of the cells. I think that's,

that's just a fact, in my opinion. So I would love, I would love to do that. And the lab

too, I would love to do more of those testing for electric like I would love the electric to be

kind of a, the go to publication to check if a battery, battery breakthroughs and new batteries

are legit or not. I think that would be pretty cool. And we can start that with, you know,

what, what would be the only grail of batteries and the biggest battery breakthrough in the

century. I mean, we're talking about here, if this is true set electric planes,

automatically, there are a thing, these, you know, flying car slash, you know,

man drones and all that, I'll switch to that. Everything that's high capacity, high energy,

demanding, Jesus, I'll just slip off my roof. It's, yeah, I think it's a game changer. So

I would love to be able to confirm it. And then I would love to talk to this researcher

Finland and a young researcher that came up with this idea because I'm understanding it's the same

active material in sunscreen. Really? Yeah, that they managed to use for the electrolyte,

basically, sink or something. No, it's Titan. I wish I had my other computer right now.

Everything is on there. We'll give you guys more details next week, because again,

I'm supposed to talk to Marco early next week. All right, Ford also had a big announcement at

CES this week. They are talking L three stuff. They say that they're going all in on the

autonomous effort. And they're going to start with their upcoming AV pickup truck. So they're

new AV platform. That's going to evolve cheaper electric vehicles, your universal EV platform

that's led by dog field, former Apple and Tesla engineer that's leading the electric vehicle

effort at Ford. The they are attaching to that platform, a new blue blue cruise that's going

to be entry assistance and aiming for highs free assistance. So L three eyes of the road by

2028. So

but again, at the same time, I think I think that kinds of confirm that the truck is coming in

2027. And with Ford, I'm always a bit confused. Sometimes you talk about the year that it's

come out. Sometimes it's not model year. It's always a bit confusing. But the way it is starting

is that the first vehicle to have the latest blue cruise technology that's going to be

ants free is the four door midsize pickup truck. You know, that's supposed to start

around $30,000. But yeah, we're thinking maverick size or ranger size

midsize, I think it's maverick. And then small sizes rangers and rangers are the smaller

you sure? Wait, yeah, I think the old ranger was small. Anyway,

yeah, I might be confusing the two, but pretty sure the maverick is the midsize one.

So here what we have here, I didn't actually see that video.

Some kind of offroading.

That's the Bronco. Yeah, it looks like Bronco. So they plan to do their driver assistance system

at off road. For the people that are not watching right now, they show the video,

they show the Bronco getting up to a rock on the off road situation. And then the,

I don't know if it's autonomous, or he's just suggesting you a different path,

because to get across the rock. I don't know if off road people, that's the kind of thing

that they really want. I think they, you know, you want to discover your own path. That's

the main thing about offroading. Have you ever driven a Bronco? No, I haven't. They're not

okay. They're not good, really? No, no. I heard people love the new generation, but yeah, they

look kind of cool, but they look cool for sure. Yeah, they are talking about their own software

stack for it. They have the Ford AI Assistant that's going to come with it, and they are

designing their own compute modules for it too. So I'm sure I don't doubt they are talking

about their own silicon, but maybe we'll see. All right, moving on from Ford,

Volvo said, so that was your article this week, you got some of the new specs for the EX-60.

Yeah, it's a Volvo's kind of like midsize SUV between the EX-30, EX-90,

and, you know, they have the S60, they have a bunch of like 60 vehicles already, but this one is

built on the new SPA3 platform, which is, I think it comes from Geely or Geely. I think this is kind

of like from a powertrain standpoint, this is basically a Chinese car coming from China. Yeah,

400 miles is an insane range for an SUV. I don't think it's going to have a huge battery. They didn't

say we could kind of extrapolate because, you know, we know what kind of midsize SUVs, so it's

probably going to be over 100 kilowatt hours to get 400 miles. Yeah, 400 miles, that's

like you said, it's a Chinese EV and everything, but I think that that news was like more

European innovation is probably WLTP they're talking. No, actually, I got clarification on that.

You can see in the quote right there, Ranger figures preliminary, but they was going to be

based on the EPA testing. Yeah, so it's going to be, it's going to have some range. And then

also, it's going to have some really fast charging. They say that in 10 minutes, you'll

get 173 miles of range, which is almost half the charge. Obviously, that's going to be the

optimized, you know, probably 10% to what, 60% charge. But that's pretty impressive. Like

that's, you know, that's a cup of coffee, maybe a bathroom break if you rush it.

It's getting close to gas in terms of charging speed. Of course, you need a 400 kilowatt charger,

which aren't super common. But, you know, those are going to be built. This is obviously a global car,

so in China and Europe where there's more faster chargers, that might be a good thing.

Also, third kind of piece of news on this, by the way, this is kind of a drip drop of stuff that's

going to be announced on the 21st, I think. The full-out billing is onto the 21st?

Yeah, they're going to, and there's going to be a couple more drip drops of news that,

you know, they like kind of an industry secret is like when they have some news, they like to get

like many stories out of it. So they kind of like divide the news and give some out to press and

then take some other pieces, give it out to press. And a lot of times I'm like, I'm not

going to play that game, just give me all the news and I'm not going to, but you know,

these are pretty, pretty big specs. Yeah, those are spec that are, you know, headline wordy.

Yeah. And then the third piece of news was that they're going to use like a mega casting,

which obviously that's a trend now Tesla and others forward, you know, eliminate like 10 pieces

or many, many, many pieces of the frame and turn it into one huge piece. The downside obviously is

if you get into an accident and you dent the mega cash, then you're probably totaling the car a

lot easier than if there's many parts. But the upside is that it's cheaper, it's lighter, it's

stronger, firmer, all those things. So I think the pros outweigh the cons. Yeah,

generating makes for more efficient car. I like our more efficient car. Yep.

All right, last quick piece of news and then we jump into the comments section. I see

a lot of comments today. So you still have a little bit of time because we're gonna get a little

quick on that. But if you're watching live, you can put your question in the comment section

and we'll get to it in just a few seconds. So Kia and on Villa brought a bunch of a lineup to,

I think that was CS or was like, I don't know, that was Brussels, Brussels like it.

So many shows this week, I get confused. So Brussels, they brought the entire lineup of

new GT EV models. So you have the Kia EV3 GT here. So that's on the smaller side of it. I think it's

a smaller GT yet, because I don't think the EV2 as a GT version just yet. But good looking car,

I like the wheels, they're pretty cool wheels on this. And you know, it's like a bunch of new

design accent that they changed everything, but in a little bit more power in there.

So for the GT3, 145 kilowatts, about 200 horsepower in the front motor and 170 kilowatt 94 horsepower

in the rear month. And that's interesting. They don't see that too often having the big

motor in the front and the smaller motor in the back for a combined torrent 15 torrent 88

horsepower, a bunch of different design accents in the GT version to inside.

81.4 kilowatt battery pack, I don't think that changes from the regular versions of it. So

but the efficiency goes down a little bit with 590 kilometers 267 miles range.

And that you have the GT, the Kia EV4 GT, which looks really good, really aggressive vehicle.

Almost kind of a little hot hatch, hot wagon type of thing. I like it.

A same same powertrain on this, I think, or a little bit more powerful.

We don't have it listed. So it's probably the same thing.

Here you have the interior. Also a little bit more racing inspired. Still not the crazy

fast car, those 0 to 62 100 kilometers an hour, 5.6 so not slow but not crazy fast too.

Then you have the EV5, which is our midsize SUV that can also get a GT version, maybe not as

popular because none as fun to drive. But still good looking car.

The EV5 GT starts at 47,000 pounds, 63,000 dollars. Oh, really? That's that being a

difference between the pound and doll? Surprise. All right, let's jump into the comment section.

All right, Electric Brian says that I don't like how Tesla took their standard trim,

made no changes to it. Then all of a sudden they called it the premium model.

The premium models have had some more premium features added.

Yeah, that's right. Normally you do the other way around.

They did the same thing like, well, they added a little bit of things but with the

more S and X, the luxury package, but it's like, you know, just all the options in there.

Yeah, I have to admit it, that's not, doesn't feel like value.

All right, Spikes 43, can you please investigate the apple green contracts

for state funded charging? Whose brother-in-law is on the appropriations committee?

Sounds like somebody's not happy with the service. I don't even know what apple green is.

Is like it's a charging company? I think it's a charging company, yeah.

CS display of longbow featherweight EV reminds me that there's plenty of room

for upstarts to build more simple EVs without that self-driving garbage and return to a

lightweight at 2,000 pounds. Yeah. Yeah, we were pointing on longbow before.

And like Carl says now in the latest comments, they are one of the first partner with Donut

Lab. So Donut Lab on top of, so now they have the battery, they have the motor,

and they have the software stack too. So they're combining everything and

well, or you can pick and choose, but any EV company can like decide to use

one or all of them and they even have what EV that took all of it and then made an EV

platform out of it. So you can just buy the EV platform and then build your car around it too.

So I think that's cool too. Yeah, longbow, but I don't think longbow is actually did that. I think

they just, they took the technology from Donut Lab and build their little speedster kind of little

cool old school speedster. 61 bold wagon says I think it's more like a super capacitor,

but I can't explain the energy density. Yeah, I'm with you on that. I'm with you like

everything like the the longevity, like the charge cycles, screen capacitor,

the discharge and charging capacity screen capacitor is just the energy density that makes no

sense. You cannot get 400 kilowatt hour, a front of one hour per kilogram on the on the super

capacitor. But everything else makes sense. And then if you look at, so I went and deep dive

into Nordic Nano stuff, which is linked to Donut Labs and the Finnish University that I discussed.

And on their website, they do mention that they are on top of their solar panel stuff,

they do have a capacitor. So and you can make a capacitor at solid state. So

but again, there's still a missing piece because the energy density part of it doesn't make sense

with that. So yeah, there's a, I need to talk to them.

All right, we're talking a little bit about the Verge motorcycle coming out before cyber cab.

We're talking about the green, what was it called apple green? I'm sure they're

fine average in the UK. I think I saw one on the New York's throughway, like somebody else here,

more concerned about the maintenance uptime and cost. These could cost five, 10 times as much

as a supercharger over their lifetime. Yeah, they're, they're kind of like that generation one of

EV chargers where they're very complex and don't work very much. All right, moving on,

the best case I can think of, okay, we're still talking about that. If Donut Lab battery

is real, then every battery company and EV automaker would be dramatically affected.

We will see them when the production Verge bikes come out in months 2026 cold fusion.

I mean, it wouldn't be as impactful as confusion, obviously, like confusion, if it works

at scale, you know, it's game over, but it would, yeah, I would agree with Dean that it

would be ultra impactful on the industry with not only that, it would like I said,

electric planes now are in game, like everything is within electrification. If that happens, so

we'll see. Yeah. Good luck with them sending us. So that's a big target for reverse engineering.

A 61. My argument is, they say it's already in the car in the in the in the bike. So if

it's already in the bike, every battery company in the world is going to buy a Verge bike

and get those batteries. So like you don't, if you're scared of good old Fred reverse engineering

your battery when I don't even want to open it up really. I mean, if they send me a couple of them,

I'm going to open it up for sure. But I want to test them. I want to see if what they're

saying is true. So it's mostly testing than rather reverse engineering. But I don't think

that the fear is warranted because like I said, you can just buy a bike if it's that shoe

and you can get the sales from there. It's an expensive bike starting at like $30,000,

I think. But if you're a big battery company, it's worth the investment. It's nothing.

Yeah. And the 61 volt wagon makes a good point. If the battery tech is real,

who cares about hubless motors and motorcycles, they should be 100% focused on scaling battery

manufacturing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So the devil's advocate here on this side would be, you know,

Verge was in bad need of that. So they needed that more like any other EV out there that's

non motorcycle like cars can do with an FP cells now. So, you know, they're not going

necessarily for the higher energy density stuff and even anymore, but the motorcycle you needed

that. So they were like, they were looking for it. They claim to have found it and then

they claim to have licensed it and then now they are building it and so on.

All right. Okay. Hear me out on this one. This is from Ian Smith on Facebook. Tesla gets

split into two companies. Kind of like this idea Tesla Motors for continuing advancement

and proliferation of electric vehicles and energy storage. And then future X pronounced

future X is the other the latter will be dedicated to silly robots, robot axes,

AIs and shit, flamethrowers, fighting woke bind virus, all the other pretend

that doesn't make any money in exchange for Tesla Motors stock, must get 100% a future X.

I like that idea. I like this guy. He's all do something right there. I mean,

that would be perfect. Like if I can never talk about Elon Musk again and talk about all that

robot stuff that makes no sense and all that. And we can get back to Tesla focusing on what

brought it here, which is incredible, advanced, efficient, high volume electric vehicles.

Yeah. I mean, it makes a ton of sense. And, and you know, all these

now like white nationalists, uh, Tesla shareholders that just follow the run into this madness of like

kid I'm an induced, uh, late night tweeting, they can all, you know, follow him in the future

X stock. And then I and all the old school Tesla shareholder will come back and buy this.

All right. One volt wagon. I'm at CS now and over her donut saying they are focused

on battery trailers for charging. I'm not sure that's the best piece of resources.

That doesn't sound like a good idea. Yeah. I don't even know what he means to battery trailer.

Yeah. I don't know. Like generators. Yeah, I think so. Dan overstay says I can't wait till

I can send my four by four to go out rock calling while I stay at home on the couch.

That's what I was thinking too when I was watching the video. But I don't know. I

don't know if it was like a suggestion on the route or are you actually driving off road

self driving? Yeah. All right. Cal Trans, the department of transportation in California

just delivered 453 Rivians a great way for progressive states to lead by example. Yeah,

I just received their order of work trucks. They'll use throughout the state. Yeah, that's cool.

You know, Coltrane, is that, is that the organization that's spending like

$10 billion on a train? They might as well, they might as well, you know, buy expensive pickup

trucks. No one is going to go to Coltrane is like, you guys are spending too much on these

pickup trucks. It's like, have you seen we're spending a billion dollars per meter of tracks?

Donut also fitted that Longbow speeds through and more hub motors. That's what I was saying.

Yeah. Here in Finland. Longbow might just be using the motors, not the batteries actually.

Okay. Here in Finland, Donut Labs claims they are a mixed bag. The majority seems skeptical.

But the fact that F secure founder and former Nokia chairman, Risto Salamala is a donut board

as a counterweight. I don't think Risto would want to ruin his reputation, but he might not

be aware of the genuine situation. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. And I guess I

think I think we could, you know, dig deep as deep as it come. We could, you know,

interview the guy all the time and he could see everything perfect. Nothing's going to

matter as much as independent testing of the of the cells.

All right. The donut battery might be a hybrid technology emerging super capacitor and solid

state battery technologies. Here's hoping that Fred gets a sample donut battery to test.

Yeah, that's something that I was thinking too, because if you can just stack them up together

and and just use what you need to use depending on the situation. So that's possible. But even then,

I think you still need another breakthrough in solid state technology for the battery level.

So yeah, but but my Dean is on to something with that. All right. Ian Smith for president

and then our last comment, the donut battery trailer is a companion product for their donut

powered semi trailers. 600 kilowatt hours pack to quickly recharge remotely.

Okay. So okay, so you have an electric semi truck and then you have this semi trailer in the

back and you can can charge a truck with a trader or something. Yeah, I mean, we've seen

those kind of products before. I guess if you have a more energy dense product and the

weight of the battery doesn't add too much to 600 kilowatt hours pretty big. Let's say like you can

put like a fairly light 300 kilowatt hour pack at the bottom of trader doesn't take too much volume

and doesn't take too much weight off of the capacity of the trader and then can charge the

truck with that. Yeah, I mean, that's probably a good solution for it. On the same time,

like if Tesla is able to do a Tesla semi truck with 500 miles range of capacity,

which what I would assume is an mc battery cells, but who knows, I think,

I think you can just put those donut labs or the state cells in that truck instead and you don't

need, you know, trailers. If you cannot put technology in a trailer, it's a good thing.

Like, you know, trailers, you leave them, you know, sometimes around you move them and,

you know, it's not ideal to have a ton of technology in those.

That one last one from 61 volt wagon. Yep. The battery trailers would be used for large

scale fleet charging airports, commercial site. I may not understand the reasoning because it

doesn't seem like the best path. You have the best battery. Yeah, okay, okay. So it's more like

for charging station and to have high power charging station with the peak load and all

by the by the batteries by the trailer in the back, the battery in the trailer. That's what I'm

understanding. Yeah, also, like, yeah, that that's that that it doesn't seem like the first intuitive

product to have like the only grill of battery cells. I understand your point with that. But

at the same time, again, if you haven't watched the presentation from donut lab from Marco,

his presentation on YouTube is, you know, he hit everything on the head on that is like,

yeah, I mean, now we have anyone can do a car with those cells. That's the goal. And then you

have the what EV you can buy the whole platform instead. Or, you know, you can match everything.

So he's just, I guess, listing examples of what you can do with them, including that. But obviously,

the EV market would be the the first finish fishery of that cell, whether it be motorcycles

or electric cars or electric trucks and everything. So I think that's where things are going.

Again, if it's real, I hope it's real. I think if it's real changes everything. I think if it's

real, I think everyone's going to line up to buy them and when it's going to line up to build them.

But let's see, let's see first, because, you know, I'm just naturally skeptical. My journalist

that's comes with the practice. But I again, I have nothing I can prove that it's not true

right now. So I need to give them the benefit of the doubt also. All right,

that's it for this week episode of electric podcast. Hopefully we have a lot more on this

next week and a lot more of other news because the world never stopped. And

we appreciate you watching the show. We'll see you same time, same place next week. Have a fun one.

Battery holy grail too good to be true, NVIDIA open sources self-driving, Tesla Model Y 'Standard', and more

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