Electrek Feb 27, 2026

Cybercab dead on arrival, Donut Lab's miracle battery, Waymo expands, and more

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Concept

solid state battery

A solid state battery is a new kind of battery that uses solid materials inside instead of liquids. This can make the battery last longer, be safer, and charge faster.

Car

The Tesla Model Y is a small electric SUV that many people like because it can go far on a single charge and has lots of space inside. In 2025, Tesla made some improvements to make it even better and more modern.

Term

factory capacity

Factory capacity means how many cars a factory can make in one year if it works at full speed.

Term

tariffs

Tariffs are extra taxes countries put on products coming from other countries. This can make those products more expensive to buy.

Concept

workers' council

A workers' council is a team of workers chosen by other workers to speak up for them and help decide things about their jobs and workplace.

Concept

union

A union is a group of workers who join together to ask their bosses for better pay, safer work, and other good things.

Concept

IG Metall

IG Metall is a big group in Germany that helps workers in car factories and metal jobs get better pay and working conditions.

Concept

collective bargaining

Collective bargaining is when workers and their bosses talk together to decide things like pay and work hours.

Term

FSD

FSD means Full Self-Driving, a system Tesla cars use to help drive themselves. It can do things like keep the car in its lane and change lanes automatically, but the driver still needs to pay attention.

Car

Tesla Semi

The Tesla Semi is a big electric truck that helps carry heavy loads without using gas. Tesla is making it in a big factory in Germany to sell more of them around the world.

Car

Tesla Model 3

The Tesla Model 3 is a popular electric car that runs on batteries instead of gas. It has cool features like self-driving technology and is made by the company Tesla.

Term

self-driving

Self-driving means the car can drive itself without a person controlling it. It uses cameras and computers to know where to go and how to avoid things.

Car

Tesla Cybercab

The Tesla Cybercab is a possible version of the Cybertruck that might have more space inside for people. People talk about it to see if it would be more useful or popular than the regular Cybertruck.

Term

unsupervised autonomy

Unsupervised autonomy means the car can drive itself without a person watching or helping.

Term

cost per mile

Cost per mile means how much money it takes to drive the car one mile, including gas and repairs.

Term

Megacharger

Megachargers are special fast chargers made for Tesla's big electric trucks to fill their batteries quickly.

Concept

Supercharger network

The Supercharger network is a group of special charging stations made by Tesla that lets Tesla cars charge their batteries really fast, so drivers can travel long distances without waiting too long.

Term

MegaWatt level charging

MegaWatt level charging means charging electric vehicles with a lot of power very quickly, much faster than usual chargers, so big trucks can get charged in less time.

Term

used Tesla price

Used Tesla price means how much a Tesla car costs when someone else has already owned it before you. It helps people know if buying a used Tesla is a good deal.

Car

Hyundai Kona

The Hyundai Kona is a small SUV that people like because it's useful and not too expensive. The electric version is becoming cheaper to buy used, which means more people can afford it.

Car

Volkswagen Id4

The Volkswagen ID.4 is an electric SUV that many people buy because it's easy to use and not too expensive. Used ones are getting cheaper, so more people can afford them.

Car

Tesla Model S

The Tesla Model S is a fancy electric car that can drive very far without needing to recharge and is packed with cool features. It's one of Tesla's most popular and important cars.

Car

Porsche Taycan

The Porsche Taycan is a fast and fancy electric car that is fun to drive and looks nice inside.

Company

VTT

VTT is a big science lab in Finland that tests new technology to see if it really works.

Term

charging rate (11 C)

Charging rate tells us how fast a battery can fill up with power. 11 C means it can charge really quickly, much faster than normal.

Part

battery cell

A battery cell is like a small container that holds electricity. Many of these cells are put together to make a big battery for electric cars.

Concept

thermal management

Thermal management means keeping the battery from getting too hot or too cold. This helps the battery last longer and work better.

Term

C-rate (charge/discharge rate)

C-rate tells you how fast a battery can be charged or used up. Higher numbers mean faster charging or discharging.

Term

1.5 megawatt charging

This is a very fast way to charge electric cars, giving them a lot of power quickly so the battery fills up in just a couple of minutes.

Term

charging speed

Charging speed means how fast you can add power to an electric car's battery, like how many miles you can drive after charging for one minute.

Term

battery pack

The battery pack is like the car's fuel tank but for electricity. It holds the power that makes the car go.

Car

Dodge Charger

The Dodge Charger is a fast and strong car from America that looks bold and sporty. In some places like China, they have special versions that are even more powerful.

Term

dual charger

Some electric cars can charge from two plugs at the same time to fill up their batteries faster.

Concept

electric vehicle production increase

Lucid plans to make a lot more electric cars next year, about 40 to 50% more than this year.

Concept

Waymo Driver 6

Waymo Driver 6 is the newest version of the computer system that helps Waymo cars drive themselves.

Car

Hyundai Ioniq 5

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 is a small electric car that looks cool and can charge its battery quickly. It shares parts with other cars, which helps keep it affordable and reliable.

Car

Tesla Cybertruck

The Tesla Cybertruck is a new kind of electric truck that looks very different from normal trucks. If Tesla lowers the price a lot, more people might want to buy it.

Car

Mercedes-Benz EQS

The Mercedes-Benz EQS is a very fancy electric car that can go a long way before needing to recharge. People ask about how far it can go because it's important for everyday use.

Car

Gmc Sierra

The GMC Sierra EV is a big electric truck that can do a lot and has modern features. It costs less than $100,000, which makes it easier for people to buy compared to more expensive trucks.

Term

EVs

EVs are cars that run on electricity instead of gas. They use batteries to power the motor, which helps reduce pollution.

LIVE

All right, we are live for a new episode of the Electric Podcast.

I am Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub.

How are you doing, Seth?

I'm good.

Sunny Florida.

All right.

Florida, beautiful Florida, escaping the last little bit of winter we have.

How's the temperature down there?

Probably 75, sunny.

Oh, nice.

That's a good one.

It's not too bad here, too.

I think we have, like, one more snow, and then it's coming down.

But you like the snow, anyway.

You're always snowboarding.

All right, what we have on the Electric Podcast this week, we're going to talk a little bit

about Tesla.

We usually do it on good Tesla news this week.

We have some decent, not so good Tesla news first, but then some decent Tesla

news.

We're going to talk about a little bit of an update on the Donut Lab, I've been calling

it the Miracle Battery, solid state, some actual third-party testing is starting to

trickle in slowly, and so far so good.

So we'll check that out.

Still remains somewhat skeptical, but we'll see.

We have Lucid that had their earnings this week.

We're going to talk a little bit about that, and then Waymo is having a giant expansion.

But first, let's talk about one of the biggest EV factory in the world is kind of in a tough

spot, and we're going to know a lot more within the next week, but that's Tesla

factory Berlin.

We've been reporting on Tesla's issues in Europe, which are quite significant.

We're talking about the total collapse of demand for Tesla in Europe.

They're peaking in 2023, a slight decrease in 2024, a crash in 2025, brand issue, like

this picture here of Elon doing a nice little salute that was projected on the factory.

In Europe, they're taking Elon's turn in this kind of doomsday billionaire club that

they're doing right now quite seriously, and it's affected them in quite a bit.

People thought that we saw the bottom in 2025, apparently not, because we got the numbers

from January, and it's still down, even compared to January in 2025, when Tesla was doing the

Model Y refresh, and we thought that was the main explanation for Tesla's problems at

the time.

Turns out it wasn't.

Even with full supply, Tesla is having issues, having any kind of momentum in Europe.

What happens to the factory in Europe then?

That's Gigafactory Berlin.

We discussed a bit about the capacity situation going on.

It's technically Tesla can produce up to 375,000 Model Ys per year in Berlin.

Last year, Tesla delivered 235,000 total vehicles in Europe, and some of those came from China,

so it's quite under capacity.

Now also, Tesla Europe is sending cars to other markets.

For example, in Canada, we're getting some Model Ys from Europe now because of the tariffs

on the US.

However, we used to get them from China, and now we are reducing the tariffs on China,

so Tesla might end up moving back to Chinese cars, so that won't help Berlin either.

So it's really just a bad situation all around.

And then what has been escalating lately is the conflict with the union.

So in Germany, every factory has a workers' console, and it's kind of a mini-parliament

within the factory where you can elect representatives, and the representatives represent certain

factions, including unions.

Tesla famously in Thai Union, one of the few manufacturers in the US, which still operates

large-scale manufacturing, auto manufacturing without any union.

In Germany, it's literally the only one, if I'm not mistaken, and they've been trying

to...

IG Metall is the big one for automakers, automotive workers, I should say, in Germany, and the

last workers' console vote in 2024, they got the biggest faction voted in, but still

a minority of around 30-something percent.

And they've been trying to gain a majority to get collective bargaining against Tesla

and bring Tesla's workers' conditions up to the German standard, which now include

like, I think, a 35-hour work week, too, so you would reduce the hour, better pay,

vacations, all of that stuff.

Tesla's been fighting against that quite a bit, and there's been some weird things

in the last few months happening, including a concert with...

They brought in a rapper that was like, doing in some anti-union stuff, and a few weeks

ago, it escalated to a workers' console meeting that Tesla claimed an IG middle

representative was filming, the IG middle denied that, Tesla called the police

on IG middle, tried to get the representative's laptop, the representative refused, they

waited for the police, the police got a laptop, and now IG middle is suing Tesla

over the situation.

We don't know exactly how that will come out, but this is all leading to a vote

that's going to happen next week now.

And this week, Tesla had another ace up its sleeve.

I don't know how much of an ace it is these days.

The head of the factory went to California, or I should say Texas,

probably was probably Texas, Austin.

And then they interview Elon Musk, and then they play that recording to the employees

there, and it was a lot about Tesla's plan for Europe, trying to reassure people

that the big one in Elon's mind, according to the interview, is FSD.

Like he's convinced that FSD is on the verge of being approved in Europe,

and he thinks that will save Tesla in your...

He didn't use these words.

I don't think he used the word like Tesla needs saving in Europe,

but he thinks it's going to boost demand.

But as you and I know, said, FSD is available in North America,

and the take rate is in the low teens.

So how is that going to save Tesla in Europe?

If, I mean, I guess there's some like autopilot features too

that are not available there that could be available.

So there could be, there could be like tears that they can release.

So it's not just going to be FSD.

But at the same time, that would force Tesla to change up its offering again.

And Elon has been more talking about, we're just going to release FSD.

So I don't know what's going to happen with that,

but I don't think that's going to be the savior in Europe.

He didn't talk about cybercap.

I'm going to have a little bit more to say about cybercap.

So he just hinted that maybe they could produce a cybercap

in the Gigafactory Berlin too.

Tesla Semi, which has been one of the most likely candidates to help the factory.

But then he said, well, not in so many words.

I think the words he said is outside influence rather than union.

But he said that all of this won't happen if the union gets in basically.

Again, the exact word was like if more outside influence takes over the factory,

influence Tesla, it will automatically influence it in the wrong direction,

he said, which I think most people get the idea.

And he did emphasize that we will not close the factory, he said.

But realistic, he will also not expand it.

Now, in my view set is that if they don't expand it,

then if they don't expand and produce something else there,

there's no point of keeping the factory going.

Because if you're operating at less than 50% capacity,

it's just not sustainable.

Are you with me with that?

You're muted right now.

They could distance themselves from a fascist leader.

That might help demand a little bit.

I think everyone agrees with that.

Like it's kind of the, it would be the easiest, fastest move, right?

Like you just, you know, go down, do SpaceX, XAI, whatever.

Robots, whatever.

Yeah, keep a roll or whatnot.

But he's not CEO anymore, distance yourself and everything.

I would see literally a 10, 15, 20% boost in demand right away, I think.

I think double that.

Yeah, possible.

I think conservatively like high teens to low 20s.

But yeah, possibly even higher than that here, right?

And when you think about it, it's kind of, well, I don't know if it's a breach of the

board's fiduciary duty not to do it.

Because at the same time, it wouldn't even justify the current stock price either.

I think the only thing that justified current stock price is the delusion of

believing in the goal, the potential of humanoid robots and rural taxis.

So those are attached to Elon rather than car cells.

I don't think that's even helping.

But my conclusion was sad to this article is that no matter what happens with the

vault next week, and obviously I think the vault is going to go Tesla's ways.

Because if it doesn't go Tesla's way, I think it's going to be used to close the

factory so workers lose then.

And then if it goes Tesla's ways, it's just you keep going for a little bit.

Maybe you get Tesla's amide there.

Maybe you get CyberCAD there.

Even though CyberCAD is our next story, and it's not a good one.

Speaking of the CyberCAD, the program manager, Mr. Victor Nicitta, the head of

the vehicle program for the CyberCAD at Tesla, announced that he's leaving this

week after seven plus years at Tesla.

And he was also the program manager for the Model 3 Island, which is my daily driver

right now, and I do enjoy the vehicle quite a bit.

So thank you, Victor, for that.

Thank you for your contribution.

It's a great vehicle program.

But when it comes to CyberCAD as a vehicle program manager, it must be kind

of a frustrating vehicle because you find yourself, you do everything in the

vehicle to already achieve the first production unit.

It's not in volume production just yet.

There's still work to do on that, but they achieved the first production unit.

So you took the vehicle from a prototype and I'll keep getting some alerts on this

even though I put my DUNUP disturb on.

Let me put it back off and back on.

Hopefully that's going to work.

You took it from a prototype to a production unit on very well on the road

to volume production starting in April and use them a month and a half away.

But the vehicle, if it doesn't have a steering wheel, it doesn't have pedals,

you need to solve self-driving for make it work.

So he was most likely told, like, do your thing, Victor, bring this car to

production, make it work, make it work fine.

And I think we'll take care of the rest.

We'll solve this in the meantime, upload it in your vehicle, and you're

going to have a successful vehicle program and then he keeps, keeps watching

what's happening with this rebel taxi program and everything.

He's like, I think I just build a car that's useless.

That's literally what happened.

You know, there's still a few months, but we, we know that the other

thing is that the hardware five was supposed to be inside the, inside

the cyber cab and that got delayed too.

So it's stuck on the hardware for technology, which I mean,

again, yeah, yeah, but I don't think it's a giant improvement over, over

four, it's, it's, it's marginal.

But said this week, I did a few hundred kilometers on, on FSD, incredible

product, FSD, like truly amazing.

The latest version, super good, like very good, nowhere near ready

for level four or five, but incredible.

Like you can see the car thinking very well.

Everything is just the tail end of what can happen with the vehicle,

especially at higher speed is just, it's so large and so dangerous that

there is no way that this is going to let any consumer version of this be

unsupervised.

There's just no way.

So until they figure that out, which I think is still, you know, a

year or two away at least.

And probably another hardware revision away, you, you find yourself

with a vehicle that's going to be limited to being used on the, the

kind of, the, of geofence, robotaxi service that you see in Austin

right now, which is extremely limited and, you know, not really

competitive with Waymo and others.

It's a very, very poor decision making all around to like this

happen, all within the context that Tesla has something pretty incredible

with FSI is just not what was promised.

The other thing too, in the comments that I saw in my, in my

articles on the cybercab this week, I made a couple of them and it's a

lot of people actually argue like this person here that the, even with

unsupervised autonomy, cybercab is like not a really great product

because it's just a two seater.

Limited space and it's not a bad point.

Like if you, why did they make it so, so small?

Like, like a vehicle that big can hold four people.

Like what's going on in the back?

I mean, the, the, the focus, my understanding, the focus on a

cybercab is the cost per mile.

So they want to reduce the cost of the vehicle itself as much as

possible.

They want to reduce the aerodynamics as much as possible in order

to have the most efficient vehicle to have the best cost per

mile possible.

And the idea is that most of the time, there's only one or two

people inside of a rideshare or ride hailing vehicle.

So it makes sense.

And yeah, I agree.

I agree on that.

So, so I do see this vehicle, if you do solve unsupervised

self-driving within a ride hailing system, it's going to

be super efficient per mile.

I agree, Tesla would have a great product there if they do

solve for it, which they haven't.

But they keep talking about selling it for consumers.

Like even if, like, if that was like a $30,000 car and, you

know, a Model 3 with FSD would be like 45,000, whatever.

The Model 3 is so much more, so much a better product at

45 than this at 30, like for consumer to buy it, both unsupervised.

I mean, so yeah, it's just it doesn't solve that much of a

problem as other, other solutions.

Moving on to good Tesla news this week, Tesla released the

Tesla Semi Megacharger map.

So there's 64 Megacharger location planned in the US.

They also coming soon, other than the two that are already on

in Nevada and in California, but there's, there's a bunch of them.

A bunch of them are planned, especially in California, Texas,

those, the bigger corridors there, some in the Northeast,

but very limited, a lot in Florida, I said, well, you

are right now, Tempa, Orlando, Gainesville, Jacksonville,

Jacksonville is there's plenty of them and including in Georgia

and the Coralinas.

So yeah, it's an extensive network that's planned and it's

something I'm pretty hyped about because let's admit it, the

Supercharger network is probably Tesla's best product right

now, most successful product ever.

It's the one that's currently encouraging EV adoption more

than anything, even from other automakers because since they

opened up to the next, if, and it's a big if, if they can

replicate that for Megachargers, MegaWatt level charging for

commercial vehicles like the Tesla Semi, they're gonna have

something very successful on their hands, I think.

I agree that probably I don't quite understand why they're

just doing like little areas.

Like why, I mean, like why not have a corridor from

Texas to California?

Well, I think there is like, I didn't show the full map here,

but I think they connect, most of them connect.

There's gaps, there's definitely gaps, but if you look

between New Mexico, like there's a, there's along the border

all the way through Arizona, I think, I think those connect.

If I want to be honest, I think the way it looks at,

it looks like they are building this specifically for

Tesla's own supply chain.

So yeah, you see that, you see that, you see that

route between Austin and Mexico and we've only on where Tesla

has a lot of suppliers in Mexico around there, so this

connects directly to Austin and then obviously Nevada,

Nevada, San Francisco, Bairria, big route for Tesla,

Los Angeles, San Francisco, obviously, you know, a lot of

actual vehicles being transmitted to that, but also

ports, big ports.

So yeah, I think that's the build it around that primarily

because they're going to want to, you know, as if they do

hit everything they claim to hit with the Tesla's own

supply, it does reduce the cost of transportation quite

a bit, so it does, so that costs, everyone that uses

them will have an advantage, them and the order

customers, so why not be the first customers to use

it and reduce your logistic costs?

It just makes sense on that front.

All right, moving on, use Tesla prices are coming up quite

a bit, so that's good news for Tesla owners because, and

Tesla is breaking the trend too, so I think there was

clearly an overcorrection last year because we saw

the prices just going down like crazy, like at one

point, the average Tesla, use Tesla price was not only

below the average EV price, which, you know, Tesla is

a little bit of a premium product, so that's weird

in itself, it was below the average used car price,

so any car, a huge Nissan, a used Nissan Centra was

like, could have been more expensive than the

average used Tesla, it makes no sense, just absolutely

nuts, so there was an overcorrection and now it's

going back up, despite most other EV, used EV prices

going down, you see the Kona going down 6%, not too

surprising, ID4, 6% down too, the Mackie is still

down 5%, by the way, this is over from September

to January, so September has been since Tesla

basically started now to level up, it found the bottom

and it's been going back up since, the other thing

that's affecting it a lot, because if you look at

Model Y, the buy-for, the more popular, just up

1.3%, so it's nothing crazy here, and Model 3,

2.6%, but the one that are making the big

difference is the Model S and X, at 8.5% and 10%

up, which we have to assume is due to the

announcement that they won't be anymore of them

starting in June, and production is most likely

going down quite a bit until then, so there's never

going to be as more Model S and X, so that

priority does contribute to that, and the price

are still going up quite a bit at over $50,000

now, Taycan is also up, there was also a big

overcorrection there with the Taycan, so you could

find some cheap ones out there, so it's up 4%,

so only the Teslas and the Taycan are breaking

the trend right now.

I got myself a very inexpensive Mercedes EQS,

$45,000 on a $110,000 car, it was like two years old.

There's deals out there for those that look,

especially for luxury stuff, there's good deals.

Very good, yeah.

All right, moving on from Tesla News,

we're going to talk about the Dunlap, but before we do,

I want to remind you guys that we are alive

and you can ask us questions, it can be about

any of the topics we're discussing today,

or any of the topics in the EV world that you

would like set our eye stake on,

you can put them in the comments section

on YouTube, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, whatever,

we are streaming live right now,

and we're going to get to it in just a few minutes.

But yeah, the Dunlap battery for the people

that haven't been following, it's been this big story

since CES, the announced at CES that they are

the first solid state battery in a production vehicle,

namely the Verge motorcycle, which is kind of

a sister company to the Dunlap lab,

Finnish motorcycle manufacturer, which delivered

a few hundred bikes out there, it's a real company

and everything, so that gave them credibility.

Then the fact that they say it's already in a vehicle

gave them credibility as well,

but and why did they need credibility is

because the specs were absolutely insane,

they were talking about, you know, 100,000 cycles,

11 seat charging, so five minute charging,

talking about the higher the top of the line energy,

the line energy density, so that the enabling,

you know, electric airplanes and everything,

it's just everything too good to be true.

But I interviewed the CEO and, you know,

even though he wouldn't,

didn't want to go into the details or anything,

he said that, you know, we already announced

that this isn't a production vehicle,

so if everything I'm saying is bullshit,

then you'll know fairly soon,

so I mean, he's kind of putting his reputation

on the line, and the fact that he wasn't

trying to raise capital at the time,

which was the only kind of upside that I thought,

like they're like, if this is not true,

then we'll know you're bullshit in a few months

and that's gonna be it,

so unless he's raising capital right now

to try to bank on that bullshit,

there's just no point in lying whatsoever, so.

But lie is not the only thing

that could happen here too,

is like they could think that they have something

and they actually don't,

but at the same time, the whole claim was based,

like this isn't production right now,

it's been testing for months, if not years,

so they shouldn't know what they have really.

So the big thing we've been waiting for

is independent testing of the cells,

and now the lab and the Finnish lab, VTT,

you know, a very serious laboratory in Finland,

was given an opportunity to test the cell,

but they are, they're doing the drops,

the trickle drops at the time,

so what they released this week

was only the charging of the cell that they released,

and the charging was somewhat quite impressive,

it does what the lab said it does,

which it's charged at 11 C.

So for people that don't know normally,

one C is the standard charge rate

and discharge rate for a battery cell in an electric vehicle,

11 C is quite nuts,

it enabled the battery to charge in just less than five minutes,

so that's crazy,

and it did it too with just EATSyncs,

so not active cooling other than EATSyncs,

now that's a single cell,

so there's a few caveats to do the whole thing,

so when you have a bunch of cells together

and the charge or discharge rapidly,

termally it's the heat that it creates,

it's a lot bigger and it needs to be managed,

if you have a single cell,

that's not compromised by any other cell,

so in this case literally on an EATSync,

they tested it with just on an EATSync

and then between two EATSyncs,

so you will never find,

we're talking about tick EATSyncs here,

do I have a picture in there?

No, I didn't put a picture, there was a video,

you see it in the video.

Hi there.

But here you see it.

Here, so it's a pretty big EATSync here,

you will never find this inside of a battery pack,

obviously you can have like a giant EATSyncs

and then a cell in a giant EATSync,

it just doesn't work like that,

but you can still discharge at 11C

and charge within 4.5 minutes.

There was one, they did this,

there was one test that it did fail,

so at 90 degrees Celsius,

there's a cutoff and it hit that right away,

so they were like, all right, let's restart the test.

They think that it was not properly set on the EATSync,

so they redid it and it actually works,

so we're gonna give them credit on that.

And with the second test,

it went up to 63 Celsius,

which is pretty hot, but not too bad.

And then when you charge them at 5C,

which is still super fast, by the way,

but a lot more reasonable,

it was between 27 and 61.5 Celsius,

so extremely reasonable.

And if they used two EATSyncs at 5C,

it went 47, which is really nothing for a battery.

So you could see here,

something interesting is that

if you use these batteries and you don't go crazy

on the charging, because, let's be honest,

you don't need, not every application

need five-minute charging, it's pretty nuts.

You could actually build this

in a very cheap battery pack

without any thermal management,

and it would do very well,

or maybe some cold management, but not EAT management.

So you limit it at, so again,

this is just one cell, so let's say you limit it

at 3C, you could still charge this thing pretty damn fast,

and you won't need to manage the EAT whatsoever,

it won't eat that much,

maybe some very limited EAT management.

So this is a claim that they did make originally,

that you could build this in a cheap battery pack,

and it's somewhat through from what we see right now,

but again, this is one of the claims,

we still need to verify

the 400-watt-hour kilopartogram energy density,

the 100,000 lifecycle,

which is obviously a lot harder to test,

but do it at 11C and that stuff,

you can get through some cycle pretty quickly.

I mean, that five-minute cycle,

you can, well, 10 minutes, if you just charge charge,

you can do six cycles an hour.

Yeah, you can't discharge quick enough, right?

Yeah, that's a thing.

You're discharging it.

It's, yeah, you need to put that power somewhere.

You need like a BUID or a Yang-Wang Unine

to send out the power.

Yep, and now we are in February,

and by the end of the quarter,

they're supposed to ship bikes.

So we're, within a month of their deadline,

so what we expect right now is,

I mean, if everything goes well,

is that they keep releasing these

with energy density next, and then lifecycle,

and within the next few weeks,

and after that they deliver the bikes,

and you got to give it to them.

So far, the releases are really impressive,

very consistent, and it's going well.

It can still be a lot to go wrong by then,

but so far, so good.

Speaking of crazy charging,

BYD this week, they unveiled a 1.5 megawatt,

1,500 kilowatt AV charging,

two kilometers per second.

They do the math, so that's 120 kilometer per minute,

so that's like 80 miles per minute of charging.

So you do two-minute charging,

and you are halfway full in a regular battery pack.

It's absolutely nuts.

We're so far behind in North America here,

that we barely have any megawatt charging station,

they already have a ton of them there,

and now they're already moving

to 1.5 megawatt charging, it's absolutely nuts.

So I don't know if they actually announced,

okay, so in March 5th,

there should be more details on this,

on how they're gonna release that to the lineup,

but they already demonstrated it

to some media in China.

So next week, by the end of next week,

we should know more about what the UID is gonna do

with this 1.5 megawatt stuff.

And the 1.5 megawatt, we think about like test SMI,

which charge at 1.2 megawatts,

it doesn't even charge at 1.5,

but these could really well end up in consumer vehicles,

because we see it already in China,

they have these crazy like dual charger ones,

like 500 on each side, it's nuts.

All right, a few more news,

and then we jump into the comments section with you guys,

if you have a question, that was your time,

in about five minutes, we're gonna get into it.

Lucid at the earnings this week,

and there was some good, there was some bad.

The big thing that people focused on

is the expect a significant increase

in production this year.

Lucid that guided between 25 and 27,000 EVs produced

in 2026, which is a 40 to 50% increase year over year.

It will be quite significant for the automaker,

but it would be consistent with what's been happening.

So last year, first half of the year went from like Q1, 2000,

well, let's production, okay, 3.8 in Q2,

then it kind of became stagnant with 3.6 in Q3,

but then gravity started picking up,

and now you add 7.8,000 in Q4.

So if they keep that going into 2026, sorry,

it will do quite well.

But then you also have 20, 20,

you have the mid-range, mid-term of pricing vehicles.

Why is this, keep, I keep getting these alerts,

it's annoying, even though I'm on do not disturb.

I do not disturb, it's just fading.

All right, but the mid-size one,

even though production is expected to start

in 2026 and late 2026, it won't contribute.

And meaningfully, the gravity is still gonna be

most of the volume this year,

and the air is still in production also.

But they needed badly because in Q4,

the gross margin was minus 81%.

So not great, but Rivian was there not too long ago

and they managed to reverse that quite a bit

once they achieve higher volume production.

And the gravity is what this is gonna approach.

So the Q4 was the first quarter

of significant gravity production.

So I think this is gonna improve quite a bit

in the first half of this year.

So we'll see it, we see Lucid coming closer

to a neutral gross margin.

And then the mid-size one, just like Rivian with the R2

is gonna be the one to actually have

a positive impact there.

So they still have a $4.6 billion in liquidity.

If you go at the current rate,

that's good enough for them until the first half of 2027.

So either they become positive by then,

which is not impossible,

even though extremely difficult, I think,

they would need to raise more capital by then.

And now the question with Lucid is like,

obviously their daddy has been the Saudis.

The Saudis, they've been the one paying the bills

for a while and there's been rumors over the last year

that they might not be interested in keep doing that,

even though Lucid has tempered those rumors a little bit.

So we'll see, I think Lucid can still go to market

and raise some money right now,

even though a lot of it is just going

to everything AI these days,

like $110 billion around from our open AI today.

It's so hard to raise money when you have someone

like just gobbling everything like that on the market.

Now it's not even the IPO yet.

Like this year, you're going to have the SpaceX IPO

at like 1.5 trillion,

you're going to have the Entropic,

all these things that's just going to gobble up

all the money for everyone that's trying

to raise capital to actually produce,

move some metal, produce some real things.

Not that AI is useless,

but I have my love-hate relationship with AI.

You're muted by the way, Seth, if you know what I'm doing.

I'm in the same boat.

Yeah.

All right, last quick one

before we jump into the comment section,

Waymo announced four more cities this week

that they're actually going in service right now.

So this is now 10 total cities in the US

where you have a commercial level

for verbal taxi service from Waymo.

So this is really happening.

We're seeing a really impact from that.

So there's new cities this week

is Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando.

So three of them are in Texas

because Texas regulations are pretty easy

when it comes to that stuff and then Orlando.

And I think this is going to have a big impact

because we had 10 cities right now

and every time they enter a new city

a lot of more people experience, you know,

full self-driving or real for self-driving

for the first time fully unsupervised

and it's kind of mind-blowing for other people.

It's not without issue.

Waymo is not perfect and they are having some problems at times

but for the most part, their approach is very safe

and gradual, especially focusing on lower speed.

Now they're in few markets.

They are on the highway also

but they've trained for that quite a bit first.

So it's happening folks.

So the full self-driving unsupervised

is going mainstream.

It's just not Tesla doing it.

It's actually Waymo.

Yeah, on Waymo, it would be nice

if they could reduce their hardware stack a little bit.

You know, like if they just had like one thing on top

I think the Zeekr is like their next hardware thing

and that's a bigger, it's like a minivan.

So it'll be interesting to see what that looks like.

Yeah, it's more integrated.

So that's the Waymo Driver 6, 6th generation

and it's going on the Zeekr

but also on the Ioniq 5 also.

So they're going to use that too.

And yeah, that's coming this year

and it's going to reduce the cost to go $50,000

including the car.

So.

And that's a big car too.

Yeah.

So that's, you know, the cost is not going to be that.

The cost is going to go down.

Like people look at the cost right now

of the actual ride, of like booking the ride

and yeah, it's a little bit higher than the Uber X or something

but it's not that much.

Like I think it's similar to like Uber Convert

than some cities.

And the cost is going to go down as they expand

and as they reduce the actual hardware cost

stack, like you said.

All right, comments.

David Canada, 1254 says

what would boost the Cybertruck sales more

another 10K price drop?

I was thinking about,

you remember when Elon,

I think it was right before they introduced the Cybertruck

was saying, hey, this one's going to be crazy.

But we have in case this one flops,

which frankly, that's where we're at right now.

We've got a backup plan,

a more traditional looking design.

Yeah.

That was 2018, 2019, Elon.

So I think that it was still

somewhat reasonable back then.

Now he's just not.

So I don't think that's happening.

But yeah, this whole price change

with the Cybertruck is such a weird one

because I'm really curious to see what's going to happen.

So we're at the 27 right now.

So I guess on Sunday or Sunday or Monday,

we should have an idea of like,

what's the new price on this?

But if you follow his logic,

which is hard to follow,

is that they released this truck at $60,000,

which is, you know, if you're like the Cybertruck,

it's a good price for the feature that they offer.

And then he says it's just gonna last 10 days.

After 10 days, something's gonna change.

And then the price is gonna change

based on the demand we see during the 10 days.

But that demand is completely screwed

by the urgency that you just created.

So if you see a ton of demand at $60,000

and you say, oh, I can sell it at $70,000.

No, probably not.

Would the hell is gonna,

as soon as you increase the price to $70,000,

would the hell is gonna buy it now?

Because they know that their neighbor just got it for 60,

the same exact truck.

It makes no sense.

I don't know why he's saying that.

After a while, if they still let it at $70,000,

I'm sure it's gonna go from like selling $5,000 a month

to selling maybe, I don't know, $7,000, $8,000 a month.

Maybe that's, you know, it helps.

But it's still so far below the production capacity

of 250,000 units per year.

And it's gonna create a big glut.

It's not gonna be that much demand for months

after they reduce the increased price.

Maybe they get enough back order for a few months.

I know that the timeline has increased now

from June to April, 2027,

which is a super long timeline,

but it doesn't mean anything

if they plan to like shut down production.

We don't know what's gonna happen.

So yeah, I'm completely baffled that he thinks

he's gonna get an idea of the demand

at another price from this price

after creating so much agency to buy it.

Makes no sense.

Yeah, David in Canada continues

or adding 150 to 200 miles of range.

I don't know that that really moves the needle

maybe for some folks who wanna do some towing.

Yeah.

But that would be like putting on the extended battery,

which was kind of a arrival.

Yeah.

More battery lies, donut.

Well, we'll see about that.

I think they're heading in the right direction.

Yeah, I mean, no lies that they get.

We work that we can prove.

Can you prove it dying back?

Because I cannot prove anything.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're talking about temperatures.

It's pretty warm all over now.

I won't buy another Tesla until there's a separate

Tesla automotive that has nothing to do with Musk.

I think that's probably quite a few people.

That would be interesting.

Maybe we should do a poll about that.

If Elon is separated from Tesla,

are you gonna buy a Tesla?

Yeah.

I think we're already at some point, I think.

All right.

It was a while ago, a lot have changed since.

How many kids can a parent put with them

in a cyber taxi if only one per adult families

with three plus kids can't use the service?

Yeah, this is just a lot of,

I mean, I would imagine that they're gonna have

like a model Y taxi for people that need five.

No, that's what's happening right now.

All right.

And Elon said that the RoboVan thing,

whatever the unveil with the cyber cab is still happening.

So that's gonna be what's for more people,

for big people, yeah.

That thing look made no sense to me either, but.

Dan overseas says,

I don't think I would put a child under 14 in a car alone.

A Zooks fits four people.

That's the, what is it, Amazon?

Yeah.

Is it Bezos or something?

Yeah, yeah.

How much, then they're running around in Vegas right now.

How much more does it cost to manufacture that

compared to a cyber cap?

I mean, the Zooks is like a city thing.

It's not aerodynamic at all.

Whereas the cyber cab is very aerodynamic.

So maybe for longer trips and stuff, it makes more sense.

Correct, yeah.

All right, Spikes43 question.

Have you heard of Tesla allowing FSD transfer

to a new S or X?

Would they essentially discount the Luxe package?

I don't know if they would be able to do that.

Yeah, that's right.

But I thought the Luxe package was not a thing

since they killed the subscription.

Everything you want is a subscription.

Yeah, there's no, I don't think it's a Luxe.

Oh, there's still a lot.

Oh, okay.

Well, wait a minute.

So Luxe package included it.

So you don't have to subscribe to FSD.

Oh, okay, so FSD is not completely FSD package.

It's not completely dead then.

I thought for sure it was dead since the February 14th

because of that.

I guess since they also killed the Melissa next,

they feel like it's not that big of a difference.

Yeah, I've not heard that.

I've not heard it, but I've heard that FSD transfer

is still going on right now, though.

You can still get a transfer on other cars.

I don't know about that in particular, though.

All right, let's see.

Thoughts on why the cheap cyber truck delivery dates

are so far in the future.

I'm seeing April 2027 now.

Is there really demand or is this tamping down demand?

Yeah, that's what I just said.

Yeah, we don't know if there was limited supply,

of course it pushes that.

I don't have kids.

Four teams seems like the age of my parents

will let me ride on the bus alone.

Anyone who disagrees with my current age limit

proposed the age you feel appropriate.

So we're talking about kids in a, I mean,

kids in a cab or with a driver or kids,

I mean, around New York City, kids are getting...

I guess it depends on the situation every time.

All right, let's see.

They wanted to see how many people were struggling

with the idea of buying a cyber truck

that would group that bot.

So we're still talking about the price drop.

Yeah, well, for sure the price

is the biggest thing with a cyber truck.

As much as you want to hate Enon and everything on that,

it's like there's things to like about it.

And the fact that it starts at $80,000,

it's a big deal, $20,000 difference,

a huge deal from most people.

So yeah, you're gonna open up the market quite a bit.

But it's fairly clear that they cannot sell it

for $60,000.

Like they made that clear.

They made that, it's a deal that they're doing.

Just a few months ago,

they were trying to sell a rear-wheel drive version

for $70,000 that had a bunch of these features taken away.

So there's more going on than just,

this hasn't figured out magically

how to sell the cyber truck cheaper right now.

They're making a deal right now.

So we have to understand why.

And Enon's idea of like finding the pricing

is obviously a lie.

He's dumb, but he's not dumb enough to not realize

that when you create urgency,

it's gonna affect the data in this case.

So there's something else going on for sure.

Whether that's where the cyber truck production stops,

whether they decide to do a refresh or something

and stop production a while.

I don't know what it is,

but it's definitely not just that.

The stop test, so we're talking about the battery,

the donut battery, the stop test was not a failure.

The 90C was a BTT testing limitation set by the lab

because that high of a temperature could be dangerous

with conventional lithium-ion battery chemistries.

No, I mean, I read the paper.

The paper clearly stated that they ran the test,

they stopped it when they saw the 90C

and they reset the battery on the cell on the e-sync

and they figured that it was not properly set on the e-sync.

So I mean, we wanna call it, it's not a big deal.

I mean, I think it's worth mentioning,

but it's, it happened.

I don't know, not calling it a failure, but.

All right, what would the charge time be at 1C?

That I don't know on the top of my head,

but it wouldn't be awful.

All right, donut lab is raising capital now.

I hope if you have information on that,

I think Brian sent it to fredatelectric.co.

I'd be curious,

because that would be a big red flag to me.

Well, I mean, to be fair,

the suit did tell me that we won't raise capital

until we have confirmed with third-party labs.

So I guess it means only the charging rate confirmed, but.

Right.

All right, donut lab claims that their battery

can operate with 99% charge retention at negative 30

and also at 100 degrees Celsius.

It said in the video that 90C was well

within the battery safe range.

Well, I mean, we're talking another 10 degrees.

Anyway, I mean, and it's just one cell,

like how do you manage all these cells?

Like you're, you cannot just stack them up

and like run them at 11C at 90C, 90 Celsius is just,

that's not reasonable.

All right, time back, Darren,

wait till we get to the news app chargers,

one-tenth of a second full charge,

but you have to get out of the vehicle

and stand in the provided shielded room

where you're watching film, but working.

Yeah, good fair day to each.

Yeah.

I should heed my advice about kids

because my opinions have been biased

by actually having kids of my own.

Yes.

I'm obsessed with kids, too.

It's like we're not,

we're not all just childless people

commenting on parent thing here.

All right, we got a lot of chit chat here going.

Let's see.

Javon's paradox says increase in efficiency

of resource use leads to the rise in total consumption.

Advances in charge speed or automated driving,

for example, inevitably lead to folks using EV

for longer distance travel and more climate change.

I'm not familiar with Javon's paradox.

I don't know about that.

All right, Gandalf asks,

how is the EQS range?

What model year you bought, sharp looking unit?

I bought the Green 2023 EQS SUV

with a third row and a lot of features.

The range, it's been quite cold in the East.

I get 180 miles going as fast as I can possibly go

up to Vermont, up a mountain

and arrive with 10 or 15% left.

I would say on a normal highway

driving reasonable speeds in the cold,

I'm probably getting around 250 miles

and then closer to 300 miles if the weather's good.

It doesn't have a heat pump

and it's not super efficient,

but it's got 108 kilowatt hour battery,

so it doesn't have to be that efficient.

It is quite aerodynamic, so it does pretty well.

Does that have active suspension?

Yeah.

Yeah, so it does lower quite a bit on the highway.

It's really nice, yeah.

All right, Dimebag Darrell,

I don't know if the quality of the comments is great there.

Yeah, it's kind of all over the place.

I know why he's saying that's special, okay?

All right, so I'm gonna just weed through some of these.

Yeah.

But seriously, how many people are out there thinking

I'd love to buy a Cybertruck if it was only 10K cheaper

and had 200 miles more range?

There's the lumber.

Yeah, I was gonna say.

It's $10,000, it's plenty of products like that.

Because you don't like the Cybertruck,

doesn't mean like it's not a good vehicle,

like a good friend of mine asked one

and he's like very much into cars and to trucks

and it fits what he wants to do with it.

He's not a fan of Elon or anything like that,

just of Tesla even these days.

But he's like this, he only drives electric vehicles

and he likes the Rivian quite a bit

but it's more of a luxury product,

especially here in Canada, pricing-wise

and also not as much space in the bed,

a little bit shorter bed.

So yeah, the Cybertruck makes more sense for him

and that's it.

All right, we got some more battery and urinary.

188G core and a 315G shell,

that 127G buffer is what makes the 11C charging possible.

The math adds up, he continues 137 or 237G core,

equals 78G thermal buffer, that isn't dead weight,

it's the 11C safety margin.

Thoughts on that, I don't know.

Yeah, I'm not sure I'm following,

I don't know if he's talking

about the breedability of the systems,

the cell is done as a,

because I'm not familiar with the actual figures he's using here

but I know that the cell is kind of breedable basically.

So it expands and there's room to expand within the cell

and that's one of the reasons the claim

that they figured out the solid state of it

where it just, it doesn't break

because there's breedability of the material.

So, yeah, we haven't seen that obviously

but it's one of the explanation for the capacity at 11C.

All right, we're gonna move on from the battery stuff

and it, cyber with 600 miles plus range

at $100,000 or less,

otherwise the GMC Sierra EV Max beats it.

Yeah, I mean, that's one of the thing

that definitely affected the cyber trucks market

is it was supposed to come with a lot more range

and it didn't and there are options out there

just like this, the Verado and the Sierra,

if you're fancy that offer more.

And yeah, I mean, if I had $100,000 to spend

on a truck right now,

it would be the Sierra EV for sure.

All right, Carl and San Diego,

I do think that we stopped using market demand

for the design and government mandated small battery EVs

that fast charging would help make them useful

for occasional travel,

but only if you make it inconvenient.

Carl, I fully agree with you,

but at the same time, we're both living

in a fantasy world that, you know,

the small cars are in demand right now.

I don't, I just.

I would agree with him though that the government,

if you're gonna subsidize EVs,

I would overly subsidize smaller, more efficient vehicles

that that would make sense.

Cause if you're really doing it to account

for the impact on the environment, yes, that makes sense.

Unfortunately, humans are set in their ways

and you can give them more,

you can never take anything away.

It is just not how human nature works.

All right, and then we have two more questions,

but they're both about quantum escape.

What's going on with quantum escape?

And if donor lab does what they say it does,

will that make quantum escape irrelevant?

Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna make a lot of things

that are relevant if it's true,

but I mean, I can't,

I cannot prove that it's not true anything,

but at some point they might run into a need,

like you don't know what you don't know.

And that applies to me,

that applies to you, that applies to donor lab.

And they say that the batteries in production,

they say that it's going into a production EV this quarter,

which is a month away at this point.

So if that is true, yes, it could be revolutionary.

However, we have not seen proof of that

other than them saying true

and the extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.

So we have not seen the extraordinary proof

just yet of that.

So it makes sense to be skeptical still.

And if they don't have everything

that they claim to have in production already,

even though they saw it work in the lab,

a lot of it can go wrong in the production process.

Plenty, plenty of battery company when Ben grew up

thinking that they had the magic battery

and then they put it in production,

put it in volume production and it didn't work.

It happens all the time.

Now, if Donut claims to already be there,

already being passed at Hump, congrats.

You just became some of the richest people in the world.

But yeah, you're gonna change the whole world.

You're gonna make electric planes happen.

You're gonna make energy so, so much cheaper

because of all their energy storage

is gonna go through your 100,000 cycles lifetime.

So yeah, but we have not seen the proof yet.

No, there's been no proof beyond the relevancy charging

which impressive, congrats.

But it's just, it's not it, it's just much more.

And finally, we have a revelation from AJ in 1964.

FL, Donut is not a scam.

You will see when core weights between 188 and 237G,

VTT on Monday.

Cheers from Finland.

He claims to be an insider.

Yeah, AJ, if it's true, if it's all true,

like again, this would be great by itself too,

but there's still a lot more to prove.

It's awesome.

Congrats.

Yeah, all right.

All right, that's it for us this week.

If you do, if you enjoyed the electric podcast,

please give us a like and subscribe.

It's easy to do, takes a seconds

and it helps the show a lot more than you think.

And yeah, I hope you guys have a safe weekend

and we're gonna see you same time, same place next week.

Bye-bye.

0:00

56:53

Cybercab dead on arrival, Donut Lab's miracle battery, Waymo expands, and more

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