Elon's All Hands Meeting, Cybertruck Recall, & Tesla Protests | Tesla Motors Club Podcast #73

Welcome to the Tesla Motors Podcast,the show where everything's computer.

My name is Seb.

I'm Doug.

And I'm Mike.

On today's episode, we'llcover the current Tesla protests.

We'll give you a reaction to Elon'sall hands meeting . There's been

a cyber Truck recall and Teslasales in Europe are way down, butwe're still holding onto our cars.

Episode 73 starts now.

Good Lord, guys, I've been gone for acouple of months and the world's on fire.

Whathappened?

minute, hasn't it?

You know,are,strange.

things areheating up.

are showrooms, burning, cyberOh yeah.

It's uh, it's looking alittle dystopian out there.

More so thanI'd like.

isn't that whatthe truck was built for?

Yeah.

let me sneak in alittle production note.

I mentioned, uh, coupleepisodes before that.

It takes me a little bit to get the audioversions out and, , I've been tryingto fill in previous audio versions.

So if you're listening to the audioversion, , , you might notice thatthis is episode 73, but I managed toget episode 70 up last week though, 71and 72 went out there, but episode 70,was the last episode that we had Sebon, the most recent episode that wehadyou,Yeah, but he is back.

I know.

I'm back.

So given the speed, you edit theseDoug, if you're listening to theaudio version, happy Thanksgiving.

Oh,that's what wasfunny about that one.

That was the Thanksgiving episodeI'll be back for that onejust after the cybercab, so, yeah, yeah, yeah,I'mtrying.

That's funny.

Well, it's good to see you guys,but seriously I am a little concerned,seeing what's going out there.

You know, I had my car for along time, I've bought it 'causeI believed in the company.

, what's going on out there?

it's a wild circus to put it mildly.

, we've got people spraypainting cars and trucks.

There's, reports of cyber trucks on thelot, being set on fire by Motov cocktails.

Wow.

large nationwide protestyesterday, and I, from what I've readin the news, it's carried over intotoday.

supposedly nonviolent.

the leader of it is expressly nonviolent,but nevertheless, it, seems to begetting under the skin of a few people.

, Elon notwithstanding.

peaceful protest is kind ofwhat this country is about, so Ithink that's, reasonable But yeah,destroying stuff, destroying property.

That's not cool.

I prefer the two things don't getconflated, even though people with certainpolitical agendas will conflate the two.

, I think the peacefulprotest is more effective.

Certainly.

and it's not a crime, right?

SoWell, there, there aresome , with a podium right now thatsay it is, and they want to makeeverybody protesting a, domesticterrorist is the word they're using.

I hope, that's notthe route we're going down.

people burning, , cars andstuff, that on itself is a crime.

Is that terrorism?

I don't know.

, I guess by some definitions it mightbe, but there are probably enoughlaws existing to, prosecute thosesorts of people, , if you catch them.

But, , we can't make protest illegal.

, the sad thing about it though isthat, , yeah, I like my car, and, youknow, Teslas have been getting keyedand things like that for yearsnow.

Tesla hate has been around for a while.

Maybe just the, someone has something niceand I want to destroy it, kind of thing.

Since our cars basically havecameras all over them, we'veseen plenty of people keying carsand, doing other kind of vandalism,Perhapsfrom one side of the political spectrum.

I have to say Tesla hate's beena real thing for quite some time.

I mean, I've been driving Teslasfor almost five years now.

, But this is the first time that I've hada family member come up and ask me tode-badge the car because they don't feelcomfortable with the logo on the car.

And I did it.

I took off the logos.

Anybody that has a clue isgonna know what the car is.

But I, I know what they ask is theask is, this big Chrome logo kind ofstands out and they don't want theattention drawn to it that readily.

Yeah,Sowell I think with every protestyou have a couple of nuts that take itOh, without a doubt,I guess taking thebadges off would prevent thosepeople that have really extreme.

it's a trigger.

You don't see the trigger,which is the logo.

At least that's what I'mWell, I don't know.

if we're talking about the actualprotests, like these organized protests,I think those have been fairly peacefuland the only violence has been, I.

when a opposing side shows up lookingfor a fight, , which has happened.

I think some guy drove his car on thesidewalkto,days ago.

yeah.

That's scary.

You know?

I don't want that sort of stuff.

I don't want us to be France.

Yeah.

France will protest aboutanything and cars will be a burningThat's, justatrue.

That's, like a time honoredtradition overIt's like what you, want to addfive minutes to our, daily work schedule?

Let's Burn some cars?

Torture.

Torch it all,Any, car.

burn it all down.

Well, you know, a couple people in thechat are saying, , there's , an all handsmeeting that took place and we mentionedit in the intro and I think it's maybea good segue to talk about that for aminute because some of the motivation.

For the all hands.

I'm sure it was not just theplummeting stock price, but alsojust seeing all the damage andvandalism to Teslas, to showrooms.

So Doug, I think you were theone that watched it first.

What was your mainreaction?

watchedit first.

Well, it was interesting.

It was about an hour long.

I tell you what it really was, was asurprise, , It wasn't really announcedahead of time as far as I knew.

And then next thing I know it's happening,it was on March 20th,which was a Thursday.

there wasn't anythingparticularly new about it.

Elon was just giving, these updatesthat we were, , already awareof, , like, Tesla sales total.

It was 7 million or somethingthat we talked aboutbefore.

He expects it to be 10million relatively soon.

Yeah, good luckwith that.

so, it was, I think a reactionto, , all the negative press.

I mean, certainly.

Elon has a lot of talents, and sadly,one of them is destroying brand value,he had Twitter, which was awell established brand,Cratered that.

let's just call it a generic Xregardless of what you think of what'shappened to the site, certainly thebrand of Twitter is just evaporatedYeah.

But Tesla brand, which was, youknow, what do you think about Tesla?

You think high tech, you think, goodfor the environment sort of thing.

You think future, youthink high tech environment.

Yeah.

Now it's really just, thething is it's not really Tesla.

Like all these protests thatwe're talking about, they'renot really protesting Tesla.

They're protesting Elon,Yeah.

but the brand isso intertwined with Elonthat it's hard toseparate the two.

sure.

But it's, not really Tesla.

It's Elon.

And, the car, that's the main focusof that, of course is the cyber truck.

, We'll have more to say about thecyber truck later, . But, primarily

the purpose of the meeting wasto, shore up the stock price.

that'sit, right?

try to reassure people's,faith in the brand.

Elon in terms of like what he makes,it's not really about the car sales,it's about the stock price, right?

that to me was the main goal.

and it, felt a little rich giventhat, high stockholders, boardmembers, likeElon'sbrother orwhatever, had recently sold like a,hundred million dollars worth of, stock.

and others have sold.

And he's, telling the employeesand everybody else, hold ontothat stock, , HODL as they saynow, the stock has fallenby , half or something.

But if you really look at itthough, it's still up from a yearago,That's right.

it is.

really what's happened is it'sgiven up what it gained from the election.

I'm not really a, stock guy orwhatever, and I definitely, , don'tlet it affect my opinion.

Once people have money in something,their brain will do all weirdthings to justify whatever.

Whatever opinions they'll form andthey'll contort facts, So I try tojust stay away from that and havean objective sense of reality.

let's see.

someone had a comment that saysElon can do some cringey things,but mass revolts against him,like this is just completelypathetic and frankly disgusting.

Okay.

Well, an opinion.

And then another person says, Ilove my Tesla, but Elon is toxicA.F. and needs to hand the reins to

someonemorecapable.

and I think Chrismakes a point right there.

It's not Tesla being toxic, it'sElon is toxic at this point.

Elon's brand, his own personalbrand of Elon Musk is now toxicand itkinda spills over on everythingelseback a little bit onthat previous comment too.

We have freedom of choice and speechand, it's reasonable for someoneto not want to buy something youcan't be burning stuff, okay?

You can't be destroyingpeople's property, all right?

But you're, entitled to youropinion.

And you can alwaysvote with your wallet.

Right?

And I have to say, a lot of peopleI know have sold their Tesla.

There's still a couple that are holdingonto them, but I think if someone,especially in the last, let's say three tofive years, maybe bought the vehicle, notbecause they were massive Tesla fan boys.

They just wanted an ev.

Yep.

I don't know if they want all thatattraction.

They don't want the drama.

And even in the chat, I'm looking ata couple of the comments coming in.

I think there's people withdifferent opinions here, right?

Like someone saying cancelculture at its best.

Um, so it's hard to talk about thesethings and not make them political.

But what I have to say, what's a littlebit amusing to me is that he's managedto piss off the major group of peoplethat have been buying these cars for solong, which is typically left-leaning,liberal, progressive thinking folks.

Not everyone is in that camp,certainly, but , that was abig part of the customer base.

And for some reason he's just managedto go after these people and alienatethem.

it's, too bad that that sortof thing has become political, , asa scientist , and a scienceguy, right?

things like climate change andjust basic environmental protectionthat didn't used to be so partisan.

I mean, , Richard Nixon startedthe EPA, it's only been actuallyrelatively recent, let's say the last.

35 years or so.

, Okay, sure.

Reagan took , the solar panels offthe roof of the White House thatJimmy Carter had put up there.

Right.

but still both parties were, kind of proenvironment, particularly coming outta theseventies where we had tons of pollutionand,Well, when you had rivers catchingfire, I mean,catching fireand people dying from smog in NewYork andLA.

Through that.

I'm old enough toremember that.

but I think , what happened wasthat, you had people like Al Gore thatwere very pro-environment and you mighthave a Republican candidate that is alsopro-environment, but they're not gonnaout pro-environment, the Democrat andso instead they just go the other way.

I. deny climate change,

, and be pro-business,Mm-hmm.

Exxon, had evidence of,anthropogenic global warningfrom, the seventies or so.

But, they suppressed that informationand, drill, baby drill or whatever.

Okay.

So now that it, sadly has become asort of political thing, you're right.

, the majority of people buying Teslas, from this environmental part, came withthis left-leaning, political, , bias.

And yeah, Elon has, has managedto piss those folks off.

And so, yeah, those folks don'twanna buy the cars anymore.

So that's, kind of a problem.

Now.

Ilove my car.

Yeah, I doby the same token, the right side.

doesn't wanna buy the cars either.

the people that you lose onthe left, you're not gonna gainanywhere near equivalent number on theright.

That'sjust Notgonna happen.

Not significantly for sure.

Yeah.

couple other things about that allhandsmeeting?

so, sure.

The point was to, Ithink, boost the stock.

, But the way Elon does thatis by selling the future.

. It's not really about the cars.

I mean, it doesn't make any sense 'causethe price of earning ratio of Tesla, IsOh,it'scompany.

two 50?

It's like, It'sIt's something ridiculous whenit's normally Five or something.

I don't know.

For, for anormalcarcompany.

but yeah.

on that ordermagnitude.

I did like his demeanorin the video though.

That's the Elon I liked,calm, morewasn't crying.

come on.

No cowboy hat.

Bigbuckle.

but he's selling the future.

So you can, hear him here.

What does that, thatamazing future look like?

How about a future where you can haveany good or service you want at will?

Um, a future of abundance for all,where really anyone can have anything.

It, it sounds impossible.

It sounds like it's surely sucha thing cannot be the case.

But I'm, what I'm here.

to tell you is that that will indeedbe the case, that the future we'reheaded for is one where you canliterally just have anything you want.

Like if there's a good or serviceyou want, you'll be able to have it.

And, and ultimately everyone inthe world will be able to haveanything they want.

Now.

Okay.

You hearthat?

And, , that sounds like a bit much.

Right.

And what's driving this?

is itOptimus?

Like where's this abundancecoming from?

you know, if you listento the rest of it, he saysmainly from AI and from, yeah.

Robots.

Robots and ai.

and he said, similar in the past,at,, other, fan rally type, , things.

It just feels, rather naive,, because what he's talking aboutcan't happen without a completerestructuring of our social system.

Of our economy.

And I would argue, so he is talkingabout infinite Sustainable abundanceis how he puts it, Where everybodycan have anything they want, ifyou really look at it, I mean, wehave incredible abundance right now,Wedo.

Mm-hmm.

William Gibson often gets,, attributed for this, , I'm not sure ifhe actually said it, but he gets, thecredit often is that the future is hereright now is just not evenly distributed.

Hmm.

the top 0.1% own 25% of the world's

wealth,I think it's morethan that actually, butPoint taken.

Yeah.

0.1% of the people

own a quarter of everything.

the top 1%, own I think 40or 30% of everything, So, , Idon't see that changing.

If you look historically, toabout, say like 1979 from there onproductivity of workers has goneway up.

But, , wageshaven'tkept pace.

And then the cost of things like housingand education have gone through theroof, and now, you know, I'm not aneconomist, But I would think part of thereason for that increased, , productivityis technology, in the eighties,computers start coming into the workplace.

More people start havingcomputers at home.

, And so probably computers, othertechnologies too, but, , certainlydriven by the computer.

Productivity hasgone up, But the worker isn't, getting thebenefit of all that extra productivity,the profit of that goes to the ownersof the businesses, the people thatare already rich, So you get thisincreasing , disparity between thesuper rich and then just normal peopleWith technologies like AI and robots.

I mean, , in the meeting, someoneasked , is the robot gonna take my job?

That was the one question thatwasn't like, Elon, you're so great.

It was just like anormal sort of question.

, and he put it like, well, instead ofyou doing your job directly, maybeyou control, , a bunch of robots.

you tell a bunch of robots togo do something or whatever.

And that would be the job you have.

, Instead of being an Uber driver, maybeyou're in charge of 30 cars or something.

that just doesn't make sense to me.

Like, it's not gonna be theUber driver that then tells, , abunch of cars to go do stuff.

It's gonna be probably some other AIat a higher level telling to do things.

Or maybe there's aperson, , in the loop there.

But certainly, hundreds of people . Or

thousands or millions, who knows of peoplearen't needed anymore for those jobs.

, And , yeah, if we haverobots, take those jobs.

with ai, of course, , even intellectualtype jobs are made redundant, so he'stalking about this, sustainable abundance.

I think unless you completely change thesystem, that sustainable abundance meanspeople like him end up owning even more.

And many of the rest of us are unemployedwith no means of generating income to,, partake in this abundance unless it'ssocialism or whatever, , or there's some,UBI universal basic income or something.

, I see a very few, maybe 0.1 or

maybe 0.01% of people owning

the majority of, the resources.

And it's, , the rest of usto scrimp and fight for it.

without making any change,that's , the trajectory we're on.

And here's this future, this greatbright future he is talking about.

It's gonna be great and bright forhim he owns a company that, makesall that AI stuff, but I don't knowthat it's, better for the rest of us.

And I'll reiterate, right now,we're in a, time of great abundance,probably more abundance than hasever been in the history of man,And yet there is so much,disparity between how we all live.

And the people that have, aren'tthat interested in actually makingit better for the rest of us.

So, , what's gonna happen there,Yes.

And I would also argue beingcontent with what you have, whilethat's something I strive for isdiametrically opposed to buying stuff.

, And selling more cars , and commerce.

, I don't know.

I think you're, right, Doug.

,One of the other things heemployees to hold onto their stock.

? you'd have to wonder if

he's getting margin called.

When the stock goes down 50%,there's probably a couplebanks that come and knocking.

Probably.

related to that, where he wouldget margin called a lot of his, , Teslastock was leveraged to purchase, Twitter.

I.

Now XLewis was sick today, but Iwanted him to go into it more,but he basically used x AIhis AI company to buy X,Yeah.

That's alot of Xs.

that, was probablyoutta necessity right now.

Oh,but that's just shiftingdebt from one entity to another.

Thoughsure.

it's a shell game,But,what is, X worth?

Right?

not what they paid for it.

he's, decreased its value,like most people are estimatingafter he paid, what, 44, billion forit, it was worth maybe 7 billion orso.

but now by doing what hedid, he's given a valuationof.

35, something like that.

well, it was 45with, , 12 billion of debt.

So it's, , 33 billion and it's just aswap of two companies he owns already.

So it's,it's basically an accounting thing, butcertainly X AI has, much larger, value,value is all based on people'sperception of itsfuture value.

Sure.

but doesn't it come into play?

The fact that Elon personally bought X,he financed X and put the deal together.

Now it's under the corporate headingof his AI company, so that's no longerElon's debt directly.

I don't know how all that works.

I don't know.

, It just occurred to me , Seb wassaying he might get margin called,I think he probably saved himselffrom gettingmargin called , by doing this.

So.

Just listening to, an episode we didnot that long ago, I said, , buyingTwitter actually worked out prettywell for him because basically hespent 44 billion to make 200 billion.

but I guess , that's now evaporated andhe's got his fans still, but certainlya lot of people are more aware of himand don't like him, , particularly forhis, Doge activities and, causing peopleto lose theirjobs.

So,when, you, fire 62 million people,you're bound not to get a lot of, uh,,loving letters.

yeah.

well not the, the most brightepisode that we've done in a while.

uh,out there.

yeah, not too much good newsfind something positiveto end the episode on.

And like wesaid, we're keeping our cars,mine's actually 10 years oldin July, which is unbelievable.

The thing looks like new drives.

Great.

, Stefan was saying in the chatthat he's , in Europe and thesales are way down there too.

And I guess we wanted tocover the sales decline.

I can tell you what on the groundlooks like here in Southern California.

I mean, I've spent the last threeweeks reaching out to dealers for avariety of things, every dealer I'vetalked to, and it's been probably30 different dealers between Rivian,Audi Chevrolet, lucid down the list.

Everybody has got some deal conquest.

Bonusincentive.

Yeah.

If you have a Tesla, bring it in, man.

We'll make you a deal.

And they're not shy.

I mean, they're rang anywhere from twoto $5,000, depending who you're talkingto, that they'll shave off the priceof either a lease or the car directly.

And you can usually stack it withthe manufacturer's own bonuses.

GM's got some killer dealsthat they're trying very,very hard, to bring people in.

Polestar is on Reddit,pushing a $4,000 credit.

If you have a Tesla,So what's thesecondary market like then?

yeah.

So maybe now is a great time to buyused Tesla,I've seen plaidsfor as low as 47 grand.

those things are such missiles.

I'm, worried once they're gonna be 20K and people can just buy a thousandhorsepower,You got the teenager with athousand horsepower and no brains.

mean, heck, thatsounds kind of cool to me.

but, I'll say this, I'vevacillated is keeping my Y, but I'vedecided recently I'm gonna sit on it.

I like the car well enough.

I mean, I just did 2000 mile fivestate road trip with it and it's,arguably the best car I've everowned for a road trip like that.

And that included some15 hour days behind thewheel.

you know what I've seen?

talking about the Teslabrand , it's kind of depressing.

It really is.

'cause I do like Tesla.

I had a, Tesla, dry fit, long sleeveshirt, and I was wearing it meetingup with some friends and, someonewas like, oh, you're wearing a Teslashirt as if it's a bad thing now.

I waslike, no.

Yeah, I'm not sure I'drecommend a Tesla shirt right now.

And, also what I've seenis that, Someone gets a new Teslaand the people around them arelike, you just bought a Tesla.

Why'd you buy a Tesla?

it's like there's a difference betweenhaving the older car versus the refresh.

The newer three versus the olderthree, or the newer Y versus theolderY.

it's like the stickerspeople are buying, you know,Yeah.

bought beforeElon went crazy.

I mean, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, that's notgood.

Yeah.

I have not put those on my car.

Yeah.

I'm not, I'm not putting,I, I don't need to make,Astatement.

my car never was a politicalstatement.

Yeah, exactly.

It was about being a cool car,Yeah.

and, me enjoying it,me personally,Mm-hmm.

I love the techand I like driving it.

It's a lot of fun todrive.

And I wanted the performance.

right.

yeah,I, uh, okay, let's just sort of goover.

What's going on with salesand, in different countries?

So here in the USa lot of it is because of Elon's work , inDoge and how some people aren't likingthat and it's very politically tainted.

That's accurate.

what about elsewhere?

in Canada, it's sort ofsimilarly politically tainted,given the threats conquering.

it's, going downhill quickly.

we haven't exactly been allthat nice to theneighbors in the north, soWell, I personally havebeen quite nice to the neighborsupnorth, but,mywife's Canadian, so, hey, I, youknow, I'm, I've been, I've beennice.

might get deported.

I may.

it's interesting up there.

I mean, Canada has announced thatthey're basically put a hold onthe, , ev refunds that Tesla decidedto crank through at the last second.

Could you describethat?

, What, happened there?

It was a rebate similar to what wehave here in California, that if you buya Tesla, you get X amount of dollars back.

If you buy an EVyeah, it was any EVUhhuhand Tesla cranked outthousands of sales in like a weekthat you couldn't humanly do.

You know, Mike, Doug and I, I think,talked about this via instant message,and I don't think Tesla was cookingthe books onthat one.

I think that they're disorganized andthey're like, oh crap, wegotta get, thisI'm not passing judgment.

I'm telling you what was doneso they're probablysitting on the paperwork.

And thenProcrastinating.

what it did is itsucked up all the money that wasavailable for everybody else.

'cause it wasa pool of money.

I think what was suspiciousabout it was that internally, they weregoing to pause it by a certain date,and that date wasn't announced yet.

Somehow Tesla.

Managed to,out.

Yeah.

So somehow they found out ahead oftime and cranked out the paperwork,just before that deadline.

and that pulled money from othermanufacturers that expected toget arebate.

used up the pool of moneythat was set aside for that.

So Canada's reactions, basically,uh, no, we're not giving you that.

, It's still kind of up in the airwhether they're actually gonnagive them the money or not, butdoesn't look promising right now.

, Of course, you've got the batterymanufacturing plant in Ontario, Ibelieve, it's a factory making batteriesin Canada, so it's gonna be hit withthe tariffs and whatever else goes nuts.

, So , there's someinteresting things going onover the border with Tesla.

and inEurope, what's happening there?

We have our resident European.

Well, Europe is looking extra bleak.

So numbers are preliminary, but ifyou look at January and February,in some markets like Germany andSpain, sales are down as much as 75%.

And it's interesting to see the differencejust between what's happening inEurope and what's happening in the us.

I think, Mike, you were sayingin California it looks like,registrations are down up to 30%.

down significantly.

Definitely concerning trendshappening across the world andin China also, was it you, Doug?

I don't know who said it, but in China Idon't think they really care about what'shappening in politics here,I think we talkedabout an earlier show, like they don'treally care about that politics andTesla is seen as more of, a luxurybrand there.

, It's just that they havemajor competition from.

, All these other EV manufacturers , inChina, and in fact, there's kindof an overproduction there now,they have so many manufacturers.

So probably the governmentwill make some ofthem,Merged But, BYD is doing great.

, I wonder how much thisis the Chinese model.

You know, China has previously theyhad forced manufacturers to have apartner to work in China, and thenChina would learn all the secretssure.

spin off their ownother companies to do stuff.

I'm not sure if that happened here.

Tesla didn't quite have apartner, but they employed tons ofChinese and BYD is doing great stuffand yet there's so much cheaper.

Somuch cheaper.

So I think Tesla's still,, seen as a quality brand in China.

, But, there's tons ofChinese domestic competitionthere.

Yeah, strongcompetition and nice cars.

Honestly, they're sold in Europe.

, And , people have a choice now, right?

I don't see the numbersrecovering in Europe anytime soon.

I think the tolerance for BS is muchlower by default anyway in those markets.

And then, I mean, his antics and thesalute and all that stuff, especiallyin a German market, that's just notsomething that's tolerated, you know?

The other thing to me alsois I feel like it took a longtime to build up the market.

'cause by default, Germans tendto be very skeptical and criticalAnd they like their own cars.

They have theirown car industry, right?

Lots of pride in the technologythat they've developed.

And 10 years ago, and I guess itwas similar in the US but therewas just so much misinformationaround, oh, the range is ridiculous.

Why are you driving an electric drill?

Right?

Like all this nonsense thatwe probably also heard at somepoint, but once you've convinced aGerman, they tend to be very loyal.

And so with these anticsnow and a hundred thousandpeople having been surveyedI'm sorry, I justthought something reallyfunny.

So,what's that?

once you convince a German?

They get very loyal.

Is there, is there a,Oh, that's rough.

oh, I, I see where you're goingwith this, but honestly though, Ithink the culture is just such thatonce someone purchased the vehicle,purchased the vehicle, you getthese silly questions from peopleone of my really goodfriends bought a Tesla.

He's got his own IT company.

And it's interesting sometimes how successis seen different in Europe than the US.

So if you drive an expensive car, , peopleask about it and sometimes it's justseen as showing off to a much higherextent that it would happen here.

With Tesla, though, it just was seendifferent 'cause it was technology, right?

So the price didn't matter as much.

It was more about You're drivingsomething that's kind of cool.

Exactly.

And you know, now that's all gone.

You just can't be seen with thosethings anymore, and I don't seethat trend reversing anytime soon.

I just don't.

let me ask you this Seb, ifTesla were to lose Elon as a CEOtomorrow, not that's gonna happen,but let's stretch things extremely.

you think people would still equateTesla in the same negative light?

I don't think so.

I think that would probably save thebrand, but I don't see Elon leavingand I want the company to do well.

also overall, if you look atthe delivery numbers they'restill cranking out so many cars.

It's still impressive, So from atrends perspective, we're trendingdown now, and I think we coveredthis on a recent episode too.

Tesla, for the longest time oftheir history, they've , notbeen, demand constraint, right?

, They just couldn't make as many carsas people wanted them, in the volume.

So now that's changing, right?

Because the demand is going down.

They have way more capacityto make these cars.

And also that's probably a good seguenow to talk about the cyber truck 'cause.

They weren't really disclosingnumbers, but because of the recallthat happened with the panelistsflying off because of the wrong glue.

We now know how many carshave been salt Mike in total,it, it was, um,46 K . 46,000 and change.

Is that what it was?

Yeah.

basically every cybertruck made, that's still onthe road, , has been recalled.

And it's been recalledfor a very precise reason.

, It's been recalled for what theycall the can't CANT rail assemblybetween the windscreen and theroof on both sides of the truck.

, The glue apparently breaks downin the environment and stops beingglue, and these panels fly offat random times at random speeds.

With that said, I've seen picturesof the entire rear quarterpanel falling off the truck too.

And the front.

and the front too.

Yes.

So I have a feeling it's not justthose two panels coming down, it'sany panel attached to thetruck using this adhesive.

Good Lord.

I have to say that's,it's so disappointing.

you, have this car, the originalpromise of the cyber truck wasthat it's got an exoskeleton,the stainless steelexoskeleton, and that's what theyshowed, I think form should followfunction and instead, they decide thisis what this thing is gonna look like.

And Okay, the exoskeletonafter delay of some years,can't make it.

happen.

Sokeep the look, but figureout another way to do it.

And the way they did it isjust gluing , sheet metal on.

I remember we were wondering , howit was done and we guessed, oh, it'ssome kind of automotive adhesive.

then, Sandy Monroe was through there,, at the manufacturing place and theybasically said, oh, it's actually, welded.

And then we have torepolish it where the weldis.

that,And I think that,that is probably only true at the doors.

pretty much everywhere else.

It's being gluedtoThe frame.

Doug, which doesn't make senseto me as somebody that's worked in bodyand fender, , before, is automotive, structural adhesive is not new.

They've been using this stufffor 30 years, maybe longer.

Mm-hmm.

Now, granted 30 years ago, theglue wasn't nearly as good as whatwe have today, but the stuff in thelast five years is incredible stuff.

It'sstrongerthan the metal.

I mean, they said they used thewrong glue,But how do you do that?

I mean,I don'tknow, man.

I mean that's, that'sjust be because theychose to use stainless steel,which , most, manufacturersdon'tdo.

could be,I'm wondering if it's how they prep thesurface of the stainless onthe backside for adhesive.

Not so muchthe glue.

it could be, butwhat a, what a farce.

Embarrassing.

this was supposed to be this greatnew method of manufacturing and then maybeall the cars down the line will do this.

And it seems like, no, this is actuallythe only vehicle that's gonna be made thisway.

And they've kind of learned a lessonas Elon said earlier, we dug ourown grave with the cyber truck,That's gonna be an expensive lesson.

yeah, that's, that's rough.

. Now in that meeting, he said

it was the bestselling ev truck.

Okay,sure.

, For last year probably, , because peoplewere excited about it, but, you know,46,000 when I think they wanted tosell, , like a couple hundred thousand.

I think they were saying the goalwas 250,000 at some point annually.

I just, I, the car is too divisiveand Doug, you and I both testdrove it, so we can talk about thattoo for a minute.

But I do want to say what's kind offunny to me too about these panelsflying off is that when the car cameout, I remember this whole debatearound you couldn't bend the steelbecause it was so tough and like soyeah.

It can only bebent a certain way.

right,And so they had this innovativeway of building the caryou'd bend it.

It won spring back andYeah.

But it, to me it sounded like it'sbasically this really simply puttogether vehicle's very strong.

And now at the end of the day, itseems like they just glued this thingon like a matchbox car, you know?

So it doesn't, it's kindof funny to me lookingWell, we're talking 46,000total sales for the cyber truck.

Just to put that in perspective,I quickly looked up the FordLightning, which sold 35,000 in 2024.

Did it really?

Yeah, it's not that far behind.

true.

I don't see those around though.

I seelike one every now and then.

here, in Southern California.

Um,And I feel like I see the samecyber trucks in my area all the time.

Like all of a sudden Ijust started seeing them.

But it's plateaued.

it'syeah.

notgetting more, it seems to be the same 10trucks.

Uh, Stefan says, I wish Teslahad gone to a Rivian type look.

Amen.

They could have,I agree.

with that a hundredpercent.

they should have done , something,based off of , the X or even the Y, justmake a slightly bigger y and if they couldreuse parts and make it cheaper, thereis certainly a market for a small truck.

let me talk a little bit about mytest drive though, , and Seb, youtoo , drove it sometime earlier.

, It was pretty amazing to drive, likeyou could really feel the technology.

As someone who's only had hardware three,Oh, that had to have been a step up.

FSD on the thing waspretty nice.

It did a really nice u-turn, soconfident , and turned on a dime.

So I was, pretty impressed with it.

All that technology, Tesla needsto update the X and the S andthat stuff should go in there.

what stuffJust overall tech,, Drive by wire.

not the dopey look,not the stainless steel panels.

All that'sbeen a bust that has been, , a mistake.

But,,the steer by wire, the allobviously,you'd probablywant the 48 volt systemSure,pick up the improvements there.

sure.

But that, , as I said before,that's the kind of thing the driverdoesn't need to know about that.

That doesn't really mean anything tothedriver.

sorry, I'm a driver.

I doneed to know about this.

it doesn't make any differenceto you, as a driver, but , yeah, that'sa better architecture , as it becomescheaper and becomes more standardizedthan the rest of , the industry.

So I did the test drive.

I just went there, signed up,got a test drive, no problem.

They let me drive thecar around for an hourWow.

Nice.

This is in Sunnyvale.

Well, the guy said 40 minutes,but yeah, I hit littletraffic on the wayback.

It wasn't like there werepeople beaten down theplaceto get test drives.

It wasn't a line with tickets, youNah, there, were several carsavailable to test drive and , likeI said, this was in Sunnyvale theyactually have a couple locations.

I guess there's another locationthat's maybe just for service.

And then there's basically thisparking lot, where I saw sea,asea of, of cyber trucks.

I don't know if you can see past this gatehere,justtons and tonsof cyber trucks back there.

and what's funny is I walked aroundand just, I wanted to get a picture.

there's a gate there was openSome dude drove up and he said,what you doing.

he said, you can't be, here.

I was like, okay.

Uh, all right.

And then Hesaid it again.

He probably thoughtyou're gonna burn it down.

Nah.

Well, again.

This was maybe a couple buildings downfrom where I did the test drive and Iwas wearing my, Tesla shirt, looks morelike an employee shirt than anything else.

But the guy was like, you can't be here.

And I was like, okay.

And, but somehow he, seemed to actlike, you know, when people arein authority, they want you to actlike you're scared or something.

I just said, okay.

And I'm walking by , oh,you can't be here.

It's like, yeah, okay.

I'm, I'malreadyleaving.

What do you want?

Got the point.

Yep,But, anyway, there are a ton I,who's buying these, who's gonna get these?

And they're dusty too.

They've been there for a while.

So, that's not a good sign.

yep.

guess is that'sprobably other places too.

Yeah, probably nottoo far off the truth.

Yeah, But it was a nice drive.

,I tell you what though, I'm driving thearea, and just sort of driving around,you know, no one flicked me off oranything, but, there's a woman who waswalking her dog, and I saw her look atthe car, put her head down and shake herhead.

Oh,she shook her headat me in disapprovaloh,and a car as an emotionalpurchase, in some levels, right?

you want to take pridein your car, you wantitto becool orwhatever.

it's what's a visiblesymbol of who and what you are.

Yeah.

that's,maybe not.

I,the lady walking her dog, , lookedlike a nice lady, wasn't like an in yourface kind of person, and she wasn't even.

to shame me, but to herself,she was like,Mm, thisguy,thisthis schmuck.

oh no man.

Honestly, though, it's easy toalways call the cyber truck divisiveand controversial, but don't knowif the reaction would be that differentif you pulled up in a Hummer, EVWell, that's what it is.

No, no.

that's what it is.

, That's why I feel like thecyber truck it was really in thewrong direction for the brand.

it was Elon's hubris hubris or whateverto go on about, you know, you have anargument with another car, you're gonnawin.

And thisI see what you're saying.

is the apocalypse car, but, , thebrand should be efficiency and cooltech and not, , mad Max, run overthe other guy.

the thunderdome.

Yeah.

Thunderdome.

Yeah.

Well, that doesn't necessarilyalign naturally though, withwhat a, truck is, right?

I mean, it's not, the mostaerodynamic vehicle on the road.

Have you guys seen the scoutmotors ev truck, by theYeah, it looks pretty cool.

Way?

I like the way thatlooksIt's got a greatlook.

given the association betweenand the collaboration betweenVolkswagen and Rivian, it feelslike a bit of a rip off the R twothough.

A little bit.

Yeah.

And also there's some,like Bronco vibes too.

know, I've seen the Bronco in reallife and it, reminds me of a toy.

I'm sorry it's,saw the Bronco years ago,like in thenineties.

talking the new one.

the newone.

Oh.

I haven't seen what the new onelooks like.

selling nostalgiaand I get it.

I mean, there's a good market for that.

I would say like lookingat the R2 and the R3 from Rivian,that feels like nostalgia.

Have you driven the Rs?

That's The suburban.

Like Rivian.

You mean theR1S?

Yes.

I haven't driven it, but Iwentallaround it.

It looks pretty cool.

it's like driving this suburban.

IOkay.

they're bringing out thissmaller version because the soccermoms, I'm sorry, it's kinda large.

Unless you've gota real good reason for it.

fun to drive.

It's a, lot of fun todrive.

That made sense for Rivian.

they were going in aspace that was availableeverybody learned at least at that timethat, if you're gonna try to head to headcompete with Tesla, you're gonna fail.

yeah.

you find the opening that they're not in.

and they'd beat,the cyber truck to market,,soYou know, this is somewhatoff topic, but still related.

It always blew my mind that Lucid decidedto go to market with a sedan afterTesla basically has proven that thatwas the wrong decision, really, right?

Because they needed to getto volume, , production forthree and y and not even three.

The Y specifically, I never understood, Why lucid copied thatplaybook and made theyeah, lucid attempt was todo, , what they considered real luxury.

yeah.

High end.

Ithink they, succeeded in that you getinside the lucid and I'm like, thisactually feels like a luxury vehicle.

You get inside a Tesla,you get the sense of.

Tech and minimalism, not luxury.

You get into Lucid the waythey've done their displays andthe materials that they used.

in some options they have a glass roofit feels very nice and very high end.

It doesn't have Netflix andall that sort of, kind ofentertainment, that sort of thing.

Still though it's reallyexpensive , and I see plenty of'em in the richer areas aroundhere.

Los Altos, Atherton.

yeah.

And the richerareas in the BayArea,only seen a few here.

I see, , a good number.

But in total they'veonly sold something like10,000.

vehicles.

I knowit's,almost nothing,yeah, it's smallThat's rough.

, I did go visit their showroom whenI was in SoCal a while back, and.

I think what they're calling the LucidGravity.

Yeah,Yeah,that one looks good!

Their SUV.

I think it looks nice.

asked the guy, is this thingreal, does this thing actually exist?

there were like a few of them outthere driven by, basically boardmembers orsomething.

the blessed few.

one has been sightedin Northern California here.

So, will they get to ship that?

Will they survive longenough to be able to do that?

, Their CEO was PeterRawlinson, who used to be , atTesla.

I'm sure Tesla has purged themnow, but there are videos.

He has this erudite, Britishaccent and he is explaining thesuspension system on the Model S.

, and as tends to happen with Tesla.

He left right before.

Model s deliveries, , for some reason.

, But anyway, he recentlystepped down as CEO at Lucid.

I don't know why, but, changes like thathappening are a little bit worrisome.

Mm-hmm.

Well, lucid is offeringa conquest bonus of your Tesla.

yeah.

Okay.

I'm sureyou could probably get four.

Nice used Teslas for the price of one.

Lucid.

you can pick up anew Lucid for about 70They depreciate prettybadly as well, though.

imagine they do.

even TaycansAll EVs,Exactly.

They all do.

Oof 'em.

TheyI think Mercedes hasgot the worst of everybodyrightnow, butis, Yeah.

And that looks crappy too.

huge hit when you drive the lot.

To do another,sidestep, what's his name?

Mueller?

He was one of the, early guy at SpaceX.

And he now has his own company,, doing something rocket related.

And, there was something happening onTwitter because he has a Porsche Taycan.

And it's had problems like , thebattery had to be replaced orSome other thing had to replaced.

and their service ain't cheap.

Ohmight still be on the warranty,but it was in the shop for like, fourmonths and Steve Jefferson is like, wegotta get this guy in a model S plaid.

And he is like, yeah, you know, I got, mywife the model S , but , I like my Taycan.

He still likes it.

Why does he like it?

Because it handles better and itfeels like a, sportThey're fun.

I've always wanted to talk aboutthat actually on the show is, I'llgive you , my very , quick thoughtson when I rented it for a couple ofdays and I took it on , the Audubon,a Porsche Taycan.

It was a Taycan Sport TurismoGTS, so it's the station wagonit's really fun.

The brakes are insane.

It's a Porsche.

honestly,even whenyou, when you're driving in a parking lot,it handles like, I mean, it doesn't handlelike a 911, but it, it feels like thesteering in a 911 when you're going slow.

Definitely reminded me of that.

'cause I've been to , theracetrack a couple of times inmy city.

I think there's a lot of misconceptionactually , on both sides.

And I remember when the Taycan , cameout, , they kept getting criticizedfor the range being so bad.

And granted with , the newergeneration, I think with the 2024model, it's improved significantly.

But when I had it on thehighway, it actually was waymore accurate than my car.

'cause when I charge to 85%, I get like200 miles of range and that is gone inl ike no time, like in 30 minutes ofdriving, I lose like a hundred miles.

With the Porsche I was likenonstop pedaled to the metal.

I was going 1 55, I think it was limitedat that 1 55 miles and it was doingbeautifully and I got to where I wasgoing the battery wasn't depleted.

So I took note of that 'cause a lot ofpeople hated on their battery technologyand I thought it was good.

it's funny you say that.

, I'm gonna really stirthe pot in the same vein.

like my Y well enough, but likeyou just said, Seb, , I'll have 280miles of range, range air quoteshere and puts it around town.

You just watch thisthing fall like a stone.

My bolt, which is a 2021, when itsays I have 224 miles of range.

This thing runs forever in town.

It gets what it says, and my Y doesn't,plain and simple is the bottom line.

Even on my road trip, Ididn't get what it said.

I mean, Ihad to be rather cautiouswith my charging.

that was a point of controversyrecently since efficiency of the new modelY to be less than the older y watt hoursper mile, or however you want to measurethat.

And what Stefan is saying rightthere, this is typical Porsche, right?

They under promise, over delivereven on the zero to 60 times.

Most of the cars are wayfaster than what they claim.

But there's one thing I have togive, Tesla is, , pulling out win.

And that is , the build quality debate.

I think the Porsche is onlynicer for the first owner.

It's not better after a couple of years.

if you are someone who buys used.

And I like buying pre-owned.

My Tesla looks brand new on the inside.

I got that Alcantara dashboard.

It doesn't creak, it drives great.

I've been in a couple Porschesthat were not all that great.

, The door cards,delaminating, it's only nicerfor the first owner.

They don't alwayslook the sameI feel like that's a thingabout German cars, there's some extracomplexity that German engineering,which somehow yeah.

Maybeover-engineered.

probably.

And so things are complicated andthen they start to fail and then it's verydifficult to get fixed whereasTesla has made things as simpleas possible just to make,savings.

Yeah.

Like the interior say is so simplethat, whateveryeah.

to be fixed ortightened upseems prettyIt's all snapped together.

there's, tons of little thingsand small parts that couldjust fail in a German car thatmightbe harderto trackdown and fix.

i took my model three interiorapart a couple times to upgradethings and change wiring and whatnot.

It was just like playing with Legos.

I mean, you un snap it, fix it, snapit back together and off and go.

Niceguys.

We said we were gonnaend on a positive note.

What do you think?

We close out on the Mark Rober video andthen we bring, we redeem, redeem Tesla.

'cause there's been some otherUh,Uh, yeah,it's partially redeemed'cause apparently hardware fourseems to be the magic.

you're spilling thebeans already.

so, Mark Rober, andthis is controversy too.

honestly, I feel like he isgetting attacked more than heshould.

Yeah, for sure.

You gotta admit thatthe hook for the video was great with the,whole Wiley Coyoteframing.

The question is, , without lidar,can the car deal with, basically a pictureof the road in front of you, becauselook, if you're just using cameras, andElon is always saying, well, we don'thave laser shooting out of our eyes.

And yet we're able to do pretty well.

, Then why do you need lidar?

Well, the thing is youreyes can be deceived.

And so cameras can be deceived as well.

And so what, Mark did was essentially makea styrofoam wall with a big vinyl printoutof what the road looks like up ahead.

And it was very much like, , roadRunner and Wiley Coyote, where heTries to paint.

a tunnel on theside of a, on the side of amountain so that the,Roadrunner will smash into it.

So, it, went as I expected it would,which was that, the car could not see it.

Now there was some controversyabout, was he using FSD or not,or was he just using autopilot?

I don't think it would've mattered,and that was his argument.

, And then also they showed that it seemedto disengage right when it got right up onthe thing, which to me is, something thatwe sort of known about for a while that,Tesla , to be able to blame a crash onthe person as opposed to on FSD basically,autopilot or FSD will disengage the momentbefore the collision is about to happen.

This is supervised driving.

Yeah.

You're supposed to supervise it.

, So anyway, he did his test.

The thing about it though, it seemsto me his video was really supposedto be about,, using lidar to mapSpace Mountain.

Space Mountain at Disney.

Yeah.

Which to me is great.

And then he just added thisTesla thing on top of it.

Also, I have to say, I likeMark Robers videos, and I don't thinkhis perspective was to go in and,on Tesla here.

I think that lidar, to me, the way thatWaymo uses it makes perfect sense ina consumer grade product like a Tesla.

I don't want all thosehickadeedoos on my cars.

I don't want those gadgets.

ItYousilly, right?

hickadeedoos.

on, hickadeedoos are great.

I don't want all that on my car.

I don't mind if I'm calling an Uberand it looks like it's coming fromouter space, but you know what I mean?

Yeah.

. , , We don't really need to

belabor this whole thing.

So there have been a couple other,videos that did the same thing.

There was a guy that, , did asomewhat more extensive testwhere he used his model three.

, That, , was hardware threeand , had the latest softwareupdates and it still failed.

, But he was actually using FSDwhere part of the argument withMark Rober was he wasn't usingthe latest software or whatever.

, Okay.

, But then he did a cyber truck,which, , was hardware 4, and thecyber truck was able to see the wall.

But I had questions about thattest because he did it in one day,and by the time it was startingto become dusk, that wall didn'treally look like the road anymore.

Like there was a very clearcontrast between the sky ofthe picture and the real sky.

You know that mycar would've stopped for thatwall, by the way, right?

AP one?

Really,Yeah, of course.

I haveradar,Has radar.

Oh, yes, yes.

Also very realistic setting,I have to say, when I drive in myneighborhood, there's always oneprankster that puts up these fake walls.

SoHey, you know it's a thingto do.

Yeah,Nice sarcasm.

dummy going across the street.

Yeah.

But so now another guy, let's see,YouTube name is Kyle Paul.

Well that looks very realistic.

So he had, , both a hardware threeand hardware , , four car , and it lookedpretty much still the same time of day.

So I think his test was a bettertest and hardware four was ableto see it, , was able to stop.

Now, I'm not sure why.

, did hardware four , getthe radar back or no?

Isn't it?

The cameras?

So you think it'sthat the cameras are better?

I mean, there's certainly clues.

be the cameras.

contrast much better, , color.

I would imagine object recognitionwould probably be improved on that.

Motion parallax as you're coming in,maybe we can see that stationary object.

like, we have ways of telling, right.

That,things don't quite line up.

being humans,youYeah.

Yeah.

So it's an interesting test, but look,Elon has said even if Lidar was free,he wouldn't include it, which I think isjust a, a really dumb hill to die on.

You want different modalities.

While I was here, I wentin Waymo for the firstOh, that's cool.

a Waymo.

it was great.

I had complete confidence in it, now.

It does look dopey, like, theyhave some kind of Jaguar and theyjust have this whole sensor suiteon it.

You mean the hickadeedoos?

they got all the hickadeedooson there, which includes,lidar, tons of lidar on it.

They have, the chicken bucket onthe top, and then also in the rearand then in the front corners.

high tech names, you know,I love it.

that's the colloquial term for it.

that, velodyne thing, that is doing,the 360 as opposed to the smallerones that are stuck in the corners.

it also had cameras everywhere.

It also had, these things thatdefinitely look like radar to me.

, I'm pretty sure it'sMillimeter wave type radar.

So that means, microwave I'm not sureexactly what the frequency is, but fromthree to say 300, , megahertz, , in termsof the, , energy , or frequency andso with that you can see through fogyou should be able to see through raindepending on the size of the dropletsand the wavelength of the light.

So I think that's critical,especially as Tesla's getting readyto do this, , robot taxi thing.

You want these other modalities so thatyou can confirm, , what's going on.

Waymo, Google Alphabet,they're not a car manufacturer.

Tesla could include these sensorsin a way that looks sleek.

They don't look like a bunchof hickadeedoos, as you said.

What was that company?

Fairday Future, which,, failed.

, But they had embedded lidarand all these other sensors.

yeah,yeah.

Faraday future, you guys can look it up.

They never really got to manufacturingand they would show off a carevery year at, CES in Vegas.

But yeah, Tesla couldincorporate these sensors.

The thing is they do cost money.

They're not freeyet.

but the previous head of Waymo waskind of crapping on the cyber cab,saying that, , it makes no sense asa robo taxi, , 'cause it's too low.

people that have trouble gettingin and out of it, it onlyseats two people, you know,and, , if it's actually going to be aproper, , taxi, then the cost of thesensors don't even matter because thatgets amortized over, , all the tripsthat you get paid for, so, yeah, radar,lidar and cameras, I would prefer wehad all those things going on, if it'sactually gonna be a driverless taxi.

,Anyway, these,, demonstrations show that,, Cameras alone , are gonnahave some limitations andreally you need to train for.

The corner cases,those are the hardest things youneed to be the most prepared for ifno one's gonna be behind the wheel.

Totally.

Wow, guys, I know, , this wasnot , the sunniest episode, but Ifeel like we're ending on a, somewhatpositive note, so Yeah, I think so.

Let's just, let's just call it that,you know, let's just roll with it.

Well anyway, I hope that, , Teslaas a brand will survive.

, I think there's , some tough times ahead,but, , let's see how things shake out.

As always, thanks for joining.

You can follow us on the Tesla MotorsClub, , website or on Twitter and allof the social media that's out there.

So guys, good to see you andI'll talk to you on the next one.

Tesla Cybercab

Tesla Cybertruck

Ford Bronco

Rivian R2

Tesla Model S

Porsche Taycan

Tesla My Model

Plymouth Roadrunner

About this episode

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