Episode 535: A Cybercab…With a Steering Wheel? It Could Happen

On this week's episode of Ride the Lightning, the Tesla and EV podcast, in a surprising turn of events,

Tesla says that it would be willing to build the cyber cab with a steering wheel and pedals, if regulators require it.

Plus, we get our first real indication that Tesla is finally gearing up to build the next-gen Roadster,

Rivian, ready as an autonomy day and more.

What's happening, friends? Welcome to Ride the Lightning. It's your weekly Tesla and EV podcast.

This one is releasing on November 2nd, 2025, but I'm recording it on Halloween.

In fact, Halloween evening, so we'll see if you hear any knocking on the door and get picked up on the mic in the background as people come to trick-or-treat.

It's also a palindrome this week, episode 535. I always like pointing that out for really no reason, except I find it amusing.

Speaking of random thoughts, here's an actual random Tesla thought that I had this week while I was out walking Daisy the Boxer.

And this is how I wanted to start the podcast, and I promise this will tie in to actual news.

So, I was thinking about this this week. I think that I've zeroed in on the exact re-reveal date for the Roadster.

So the Roadster re-reveal event, I think I've got a pretty good idea of when it is.

And let me preface this by saying I don't have any insider information. I'm not tipped off in any way.

I don't even know if Tesla's decided exactly when it's gonna be, but I think I've narrowed it in.

So, let me walk you through this real quick, and then I'll get to the rest of the actual news rather than just me speculating.

So, it's already November, so time is running short to do this before the end of the year, as Franz was talking about on this podcast a couple weeks ago.

We can eliminate the Thanksgiving week, and then we can eliminate the last week and a half of the year for Christmas,

when you also factor in that they're going to need to announce it,

announce the event, and send out event invites at least a week ahead of time.

I really think we can narrow in on two dates, and I feel a lot better about one of them.

But why, you ask, can I narrow in so much? Because, and this is strange but true,

I went back and looked this up in recent Tesla history, like the last several years.

Tesla events are historically held on Thursdays, for whatever reason, it's always Thursday.

The shareholder meeting coming up this week is on a Thursday.

The WeRobot event for the Robotaxi for the CyberCab, that was on a Thursday, 10-10, 2024.

The Cybertruck launch event November 30th, 2023, and even as far back as the Cybertruck unveiling back on November 21st, 2019,

all Thursdays.

So, we can rule out this Thursday, A, it's too short a notice, and it's also the aforementioned shareholder meeting.

It probably won't be the week after that, because they'll have just come off the shareholder meeting.

It won't be the 27th, that's actually the Thanksgiving holiday.

The only plausible day in November is the 20th.

Meanwhile, we look at December, it's probably not going to be on December 4th,

because they'd have to send out the invites, the week of Thanksgiving, when a lot of people will be traveling.

It's just probably not going to happen.

It's not going to be Christmas Day, also a Thursday this year,

and then the week before that, the 18th, well, that's pretty darn close to Christmas in the holidays.

And so, I think really the only plausible day in December is Thursday, December 11th.

So again, all of this weird random speculation on my part,

is based on the idea that Tesla will stick to doing events on Thursdays.

But if they do, I think it narrows down to either November 20th or December 11th.

And of those two, I just think that December 11th is more likely

just to give Tesla more time to prepare the event.

Particularly since, again, they have that big shareholder meeting

that they've been pulling out all the stops for in recent weeks with regard to the board proposals and all that.

So mark me down for December 11th.

And as always, feel free to come back and just laugh at me

if and when in the highly likely event that I get this wrong.

That said, I wrote this prediction in my notes early in the week

and then on Friday, today, as I'm recording this,

a new episode of Joe Rogan's podcast went up with Elon as the guest

and Joe asked about the Roadster. Take a listen to what Elon had to say.

Are you still doing the Roadster?

Yes.

Eventually?

We're getting close to demonstrating the prototype.

And I think this will be...

One thing I can guarantee is that this product demo will be unforgettable.

Unforgettable.

How so?

Whether it's good or bad.

It will be unforgettable.

Can you say more? What do you mean?

Well, you know, my friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars,

but we don't have flying cars.

So you're going to be able to fly?

What? I mean, I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should be able to buy one.

So are you actively considering making an electric flying car? Is this like a real thing?

Well, they have to see in the demo.

So when you do this, are you going to have a retractable wing?

What is the idea behind this?

Don't be sly. Come on.

I can't do the unveil before the unveil, but...

Tell me off air then.

Look, I think it has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever.

It has a shot.

And when you plan on doing this, what's the goal?

Hopefully before the end of the year.

Really? Before the end of this year?

This is, I mean, we're almost never ever first.

Hopefully in a couple months.

You know, we need to make sure that it works.

Like this is some crazy, crazy technology we got in this car.

Crazy technology. Crazy, crazy.

So different than what was previously announced and...

Yes.

And is that why you haven't released it yet? Because you keep from with it?

It has crazy technology.

Okay.

Like, is it even a car?

I'm not sure. It looks like a car.

Let's just put this way. It's crazier than anything James Bond.

If you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it's crazier than that.

So there you go. December sure seems like the month, so again, pin me down for December 11th.

Speaking of the new Roadster, we've got our first tangible sign that it's actually moving towards production.

Now, I say that not to discount what Lars Moravy and Franz von Holshausen have said on this very podcast,

but thanks to the eagle eye of our Tesla tipster friend, Sawyer Merritt,

we have a job listing that's gone up on the Tesla careers website that is specifically about building specifically the Roadster.

The job posting is titled Manufacturing Engineer Roadster.

It's based out of Fremont, California, which does make sense since that's where the Cato Road advanced battery facility is.

And it reads as follows.

Tesla is looking to hire a manufacturing engineer to contribute to the concept development and launch of battery manufacturing equipment for our cutting edge Roadster vehicle.

In this role, you will take large scale manufacturing systems for new battery products and architectures from the early concept development stage

through equipment launch, optimization, and handover to local operations teams.

Battery development is at the heart of our company and this is an exciting opportunity to work directly on the central challenges

for the all new Roadster product architecture while still in its early development stages.

So even though this job is based in Fremont, I have to say I think it doesn't necessarily mean that the car is going to be built at the Fremont factory

because as I mentioned, the Cato Road facility, that's where all the next gen battery stuff happens.

But I do think it makes a lot of sense to build the Roadster in Fremont because a lot of the engineers are here,

the advanced battery team, all of it's here.

So it's not a guarantee, but I think it's more likely than not.

But anyway, based on this job description, it seems pretty clear that we will not see this car go into production next year,

though we'd already figured as much on that.

But 2027, like the back half of 2027, I think it is very much in play.

Could it go to 2028? Absolutely.

Many people still think this car will never get made and I at this point understand they have decent reason to think that after eight years in counting.

But we have again a very real thing here, a job listing specifically for the manufacturing of part of this car.

So I'm looking forward to more tangible signs coming up as we move forward.

I'm not quite ready to turn the two-year hourglass over to start the countdown to actual deliveries.

I will do that once we have the re-reveal.

But this is a great sign and it is literally our first real sign that they're going to build it.

Well, speaking of the Tesla Fremont factory, that facility celebrated its 15th anniversary under Tesla ownership this week.

It was originally opened as GM's Fremont assembly plant in 1962 before it closed in 1982.

Then Toyota came in and the partnership between Toyota and GM, which was called the Numie plant.

So they've retooled it, reopened it as the Numie plant in 1984.

That closed in 2010 after GM had backed out of it and then Toyota sold the building to Tesla who of course retooled it again for EVs.

And originally started production as all of you know in 2012 on the Model S in a tiny little corner of that giant place.

I had the extreme great privilege to be in there for the open house event back in 2011.

In fact, it was October so it was basically exactly 14 years ago and got to walk the production line.

They were just in a tiny little corner of it at the start of Model S production.

And now of course Tesla has filled every inch of that place and expanded as much as they physically and legally can.

With GA4, the tent as it is known, which is a Model Y line now.

It used to be, it was originally the Model 3 performance line back in 2018 when Tesla first erected that sprung structure.

But yes, the facility is bigger and better than ever these days and 15 years under Tesla ownership.

There was a little announcement on the official Tesla Gigafactories account at Gigafactories plural on X.

So the company posted saying, 15 years ago we opened the Fremont factory.

Today the Fremont team is producing all four sexy models, of course S3 XY, totaling 3.6 million vehicles made so far.

20,000 plus California jobs created with billions of dollars invested.

And then is one more little fun historical note on this.

I want to say thank you to X user, Jan, whose handle on X is the EV universe.

And courtesy of Jan, here is Elon Musk's very brief little speech in front of the Fremont factory on the day Tesla officially opened it 15 years ago.

You know, I really am a big believer in manufacturing and I like it personally.

I think it's sometimes people think of it as kind of just making copies.

But actually there's an enormous amount of innovation and engineering that goes into making a large quantity of something perfectly every time.

And so having that close interaction of engineering and production is also extremely important because we want to really stay at the forefront of innovation as far as electric vehicles are concerned and continue to serve as a catalyst for the transition to a sustainable energy future.

Yeah, well, we have a very big sign and we're going to raise the curtain on the sign.

This may take a while.

Oh, that's great. Now I get to chill. That's great.

And then the commotion at the end of that clip was they raised the curtains covering the giant TESLA sign on the front of the Fremont factory that remains prominently visible to this day.

And I for one am very proud to have two of the 3.6 million vehicles that were built there.

As we continue to get this week's episode going, a super quick bit of good news and forward progress on the RoboTaxi program.

The San Francisco Bay Area's San Jose International Airport has granted Tesla and Waymo as well approval to operate autonomous vehicles at the airport.

As announced on the official Tesla account on X, the company said, quote, our Bay Area ride hailing service now goes to San Jose Airport, end quote.

And that's just, I mean, it may seem simple and I guess on some levels it is, but it's an awesome regulatory hurdle to clear.

At least at one airport so far, many, many more airports to go. In fact, there are two more just in the Bay Area here for them to try and get permission to operate in.

But it's going to give Tesla no doubt a ton of data about passenger drop-offs and pickups at airports.

I mean, after all, airport runs are clearly a huge part of Uber and Lyft's businesses. That's most of the time that I personally use a ride sharing service is to or from an airport.

I mean, not to mention it's a huge part of traditional taxi cab business too.

So it sure would be sweet to be able to get an autonomous ride to and from the airport.

I would use it every single time and as soon as San Francisco International Airport allows it, I will absolutely do that.

And then on this same note, more Robo Taxi Good News this week.

Tesla increased the service area of the Robo Taxi Service in Austin again and it is now significantly larger of a coverage area than what Waymo has.

Of course, Waymo's in fairness are completely driverless. The Robo Taxi Service with Tesla isn't quite there yet, as you heard all about on the earnings call last week.

That should happen by the end of the year or so.

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the other place where the ride share service for Tesla currently operates, they almost can't expand service here because they launched encompassing pretty much the whole immediate Bay Area.

So good to see Austin go up in service area, square mileage once again.

Hopefully it makes it more appealing for those of you in Austin to take advantage of and use.

For those of you who are kindly supporting my efforts with this podcast over on Patreon, I hope you enjoyed this week's Lightning Round mini-episode that I do exclusively for Patreon every week.

In the spirit of Halloween, I came up with a list of the scariest Teslas to me.

It's basically configurations that I think don't really work, but don't really look good together.

So take a listen to that if you're with me on Patreon and if you're not with me on Patreon, I would be humbled and grateful if you would consider doing so.

You can support this podcast starting at just $5 a month and for that, you'll get ad-free every week and early access to that ad-free episode as well.

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You can find out all the information on my Patreon page which is found at patreon.com slash Tesla podcast or just click the link in the episode description.

We arrive now at our headline story for this week.

Tesla's chairperson said that the company will sell the cyber cab with a steering wheel and pedals as a backup plan if that's what regulators require.

This originally came via Bloomberg, but their paywall brought me to Teslarati instead who wrote,

Robin Denholm, the company's chair for the board of directors, revealed that Tesla would potentially switch up its plans for the cyber cab based on potential regulatory requirements.

Currently, even autonomous vehicles that operate for companies like Tesla and Waymo are required to have steering wheels and pedals.

From a regulatory perspective, this could halt the plans Tesla has for cyber cab.

Denholm said in an interview with Bloomberg, quote,

If we have to have a steering wheel, it can have a steering wheel and pedals, end quote.

Well, this certainly comes as a shock to me because I did not even realize that this was a regulatory hurdle.

Now, that being said, I acknowledge my own ignorance.

I can understand why that that might be a regulatory hurdle because historically,

we haven't had any vehicles capable of driving without a steering wheel or pedals,

and it will be incumbent upon Tesla to prove to regulators that the cyber cab without inputs is safe.

I'm not quite sure how they're going to do that specifically.

I mean, maybe that's what the RoboTaxi service has been about this whole time,

or maybe I should say maybe what that's what it's also been about because it's certainly been about field testing the cyber cab software.

There's no question about that,

but perhaps it's also been about gathering enough real world data that they can present to NHTSA to get them to sign off on a cyber cab that doesn't have inputs.

Now, if we think this through, where does it take us?

Well, for starters, adding a steering wheel and pedals would kind of ruin the interior as Tesla has designed it,

because Tesla would probably have to shrink the size of the massive 24-inch display that's in the center of the dashboard in order to accommodate a steering wheel.

They'd probably also have to put more bucket-y seats in, although I guess maybe not necessarily on that last one now that I think about it a little more,

because after all, cars in the 1970s had like lounge-style seats already, which is kind of what the cyber cab has.

It's like a lounge-style deal in there, although then again, I mean, 70s cars weren't exactly known for their safety,

although that reputation wasn't necessarily because of their seats, but if I may play devil's advocate here for a moment,

what if putting in a steering wheel and pedals draws more interest in the car,

at least at first, as people kind of get used to the idea of transitioning over,

because if a cyber cab with inputs can still operate completely autonomously,

but you have the option to drive it yourself, I could see that maybe appealing to people like, say, my wife,

who want a small electric car that's actually good, because the options on the market now for small cars are either wildly overpriced,

I'm talking about the Mini Cooper E specifically on that one, or they're extremely lacking in features or range,

things like the Fiat 500 E. I mean, I'm honestly not sure if she would be on board with buying an input-free car.

We haven't really talked about it, I think, you know, because we're good on, we're very lucky that we've got two great Tesla's right now,

we're not in the market for a new one, but I just wonder, again, I'm not rooting for this, I want to clarify,

I'm not rooting for regulators to force Tesla to ship the cyber cab with the steering wheel and pedals.

I think if Tesla's committing to this thing, I'd love to see the vision through to see what happens,

to see its effect on the auto market, to see its effect on Tesla's production, to see its effect on transportation,

not to get too hyperbolic about it, but if it did have to ship with inputs due to regulators,

I think there's maybe a silver lining there, potentially.

In terms of building it, you know, thanks to steer by wire, which the cyber cab is absolutely using,

it would be relatively easy not only to throw a wheel in there,

but also for those of you in certain European territories and other territories around the world,

it would make it relatively easy to make a right-hand drive configuration of it as well,

because there are a lot of right-hand drive markets that prefer smaller cars,

and even the left-hand drive ones, like a cyber cab with inputs could be appealing in Europe,

as maybe not a hot hatch, because this would not be a performance-driven car, it would be the opposite of that, actually.

It would be an efficiency-driven car above all else.

It would be like the Prius is to Toyota as the cyber cab is to Tesla,

where they're pushing all the sliders over to maximum efficiency at the expense of other things like handling and performance.

But, yeah, steer by wire would make it easier, again, easier than not steer by wire,

to put in a steering wheel on either side of the passenger compartment.

So, we'll see. I mean, I just think this might not turn out badly for Tesla if regulators force it,

and maybe, just maybe, it could actually be a good thing, even if only temporarily,

and then eventually Tesla gets the sign off and can take the inputs out of it and sell it as it was originally intended.

I mean, I'm sure Elon, in fact, I know Elon would tell me I'm totally wrong on that.

He would completely disagree, because he was on the All-In podcast this week with Jason Callicanus,

who actually, I know he was a guest on this podcast many years ago,

and Elon Flatout said, we're not putting a wheel and pedals in it,

but I think we can't discount what the chairperson of the board, Robin Denholm, said on this topic,

that they would be willing to put inputs in it, if that's what regulators require.

So, we'll see. Now, I have to imagine that if regulators did require that, it would tick Elon off to no end.

He would be not thrilled at all, because he's made a huge bet on this thing.

It is, as I was kind of saying earlier, it's completely designed around autonomy,

not just with the seats and the huge center display, like I mentioned,

but also, like, the lack of a rear window.

I mean, you don't need one in the cyber cab, because the car is doing 100% of the driving all the time.

You know, you don't need to look over your shoulder and see cars behind you.

So, this is going to be interesting to watch.

Hopefully, regulators do approve the cyber cab as a fully autonomous input-free vehicle, pardon me,

but this is now, you know, this is something to keep an eye on.

I decided to make this the subject of this week's Patreon poll, by the way.

Thank you to the nearly 300 people that took the time to stop by my Patreon page

and cast your votes this week.

A reminder, the Patreon poll is totally free.

It's open to everybody.

I just want you to stop by and cast your vote in each week's poll.

The new poll question typically goes up on Tuesday evenings,

and this week's question was, would cyber cab having a steering wheel and pedals change your interest in it?

And while 43% of you said a cyber cab with user inputs wouldn't change my current interest level in it,

41% of you voted yes.

A cyber cab with user inputs would make me more interested in it.

13% of you said no a cyber cab with user inputs would make me less interested in it.

So what that tells me is, again, it's a small sample size, but it's an enthusiast group here, all of you.

It suggests that there would be a spike in interest relative to the car as it is now,

if a wheel and pedals were put into it when it's put up for sale.

So we'll see, we'll see.

And again, if you want to stop by and vote in each week's Patreon poll, the website again is patreon.com.

And we're not done hearing from Ms. Denholm this week.

This week she was on something of a media tour, probably just again, out there getting out there,

trying to drum up the support for those imminent board proposals coming up that shareholders are voting on right now.

She showed up on CNBC and was asked about what Elon spends his time on at Tesla,

and courtesy of ex-user The Son of Walkley, here is a very brief, straight-to-the-point clip of what she said.

We do have a few other vehicles coming out, so he spends time on that.

He's spending time on everything across the board.

Well, before we get too excited about the few more vehicles,

we do have to acknowledge the very real possibility that she's talking about the CyberCab,

which we know Tesla is neck deep in development on.

In fact, it was spotted driving around near the Tesla engineering headquarters this week,

here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and they've been running around near Giga, Texas as well,

which of course is where they'll be built.

Anyway, she might have been talking about the CyberCab,

and then the Tesla Semi, I mean the factory for the volume production of which is very much in progress right now,

up at Giga, Nevada, so I'm sure Elon's checking in on that,

because the final production version of the Semi will go into production when that factory comes online,

and then the Roadster, which thanks to what I told you at the top of the show,

we know that Tesla is finally gearing up for as well.

So with that tempering of expectations out of the way,

let's let our imaginations run wild for a moment, shall we?

If you interpreted Franz von Holsheusen on this podcast two weeks ago the same way that I did,

it sure sounded like that Tesla isn't planning on putting steering wheels on anything other than the Roadster,

which for the record is probably going to be a yoke, definitely going to be steer by wire.

That's how the prototype, at least the prototype had a yoke,

and since then steer by wire has come along.

So what autonomous vehicles might Ms. Denholm be talking about there

if we're letting our imaginations go for a minute,

and that she's actually talking about a few new vehicles beyond what we already know about on the product roadmap.

Actually, I guess let me back up for a second.

I have to throw in the model YL here as a possibility as well.

Yes, I know it's already out in China, and maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part,

but she could be referring to Elon checking in maybe on preparations of a U.S. launch of that.

Just wishful thinking on my part, maybe, I don't know, but back to the autonomous vehicle Daydream for a second.

Maybe a smaller Robovan, Robovan.

I mean, you know, that basically a minivan that's fully autonomous.

I could see that being super appealing to families.

Anybody else out there have any ideas on this one?

No need to call in necessarily, unless you want to.

You can always email me, TeslaPodcast at gmail.com,

or hit me up on one of my socials on X or on Instagram.

My gut here says that it's not three brand new cars,

but as I often say about this stuff, I hope I'm wrong.

And in other EV news this week, Rivian is hosting an AI and Autonomy Day in December.

I saw this on the X account of Ride the Lightning Listener Hamid,

who had screenshots of folks who had received the invitation from Rivian and posted it online.

The event's going to be right here in my neck of the woods down in Silicon Valley, specifically Palo Alto,

on December 11th, coincidentally enough, that's the day that I predict that the Roadster event's going to happen.

I am certainly very eager to hear this event, if any Rivian folks happen to be listening.

I hope you all are planning to livestream this, like Tesla livestreamed their Autonomy Day back in 2019,

and then the AI days that followed.

And I'm just really curious to see what will come out of it.

I'd love to know how far along Rivian is in their Autonomous Driving program.

I'd love to know how they're approaching it today.

I mean, I do know that every Rivian's got cameras and radar, but not LiDAR in its vehicles now.

They obviously don't have anywhere even remotely close to the fleet size that Tesla does in order to train its network,

but the Rivian R2 that's due out next year should help them catch up a bit in that regard in terms of just getting a larger fleet to pull training data from.

And anyway, I guess I'll wrap this up by just saying I'm thrilled that Rivian's doing this event, and I can't wait to hear all about it.

And then finally this week in other EV news, Lucid and NVIDIA are partnering with the goal to be the first to deliver Level 4, quote unquote,

mind-off Autonomous Driving.

I saw this story on Drive Tesla Canada this week, and they wrote,

the California-based automaker announced that its upcoming mid-size model will feature Level 4 Autonomous Capability powered by NVIDIA's Drive AGX Thor computing platform and Drive OS software.

Level 4 Autonomy, described by Lucid in its press release as, quote, eyes off, hands off, mind off, driving, would allow the car to operate itself under most conditions without the driver needing to monitor the road.

Lucid's interim CEO, Mark Winterhoff, said the partnership combines the company's quote engineering excellence with NVIDIA's artificial intelligence and computing power to create, quote,

the smartest and safest autonomous vehicles on the road. NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Huang, called it a glimpse into a future where vehicles evolve into, quote,

super computers on wheels. Before introducing Level 4, Lucid plans to roll out an enhanced Level 2 Plus Plus version of its DreamDrive Pro driver assist system in the Lucid Gravity SUV.

The system will allow hands-free and point-to-point driving before the company transitions to full autonomy in its mid-size lineup.

Well, I gotta say, partnering with NVIDIA's probably the smartest thing that Lucid can do, since really no one else out there, really genuinely no one,

not Lucid, and not any other legacy automaker, has the resources to completely develop and produce, like develop, design, produce its own chip, vertical integration style the way that Tesla does.

NVIDIA, though, can pump out very, very powerful chips, and they can do so in volume, which hopefully Lucid will eventually be producing cars in high volume with this mid-size vehicle that they're talking about this NVIDIA chip going into.

I mean, really your only other choice if you're gonna buy off-the-shelf GPUs, it's pretty much NVIDIA or AMD, and really that's kinda what we see in my day job in the video game space.

Sony and Microsoft use AMD chips in the PlayStation and Xbox, respectively, so we'll see if AMD jumps into the car GPU space, but NVIDIA is doing so here with Lucid.

And before we get to your phone calls in the Ride the Lightning hotline, there are plenty of good ones in there, a quick word from my friends at X-Care.

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Check your vehicle's eligibility today at X-Care.com or talk to a real person right now at 844-755-4186.

That's X-Care.com or call 844-755-4186 and drive with confidence.

It's time for the ride the lighting hotline. Your questions, comments, discussion topics about Tesla and all things EV.

If you've got a question, comment, or discussion topic that you'd like to call in with, I welcome and invite you to do so. There are two easy ways to do that.

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The recordings can be podcasted or put onto a keepsake. Visit lifeonrecord.com to learn more. First up this week is Keith from Missouri.

Hello, Ryan. This is Keith, the Tesla hillbilly from Missouri. And I was calling up as a follow-up to the update in the Tesla app in which you're now able to go in under service and look at the maintenance schedule for your particular vehicle and such and see what could and should be done as far as maintenance and or service to the vehicle.

My thought was a little bit in more in addition to that, that it would be nice if Tesla to go to the next step and do a push notification either through their app and or on the screen in the vehicle itself there to let you know when you hit these particular points there.

For example, when for your particular vehicle, it's time for to change up. For example, a cabin air filter or windshield replacement tire rotation, whatever it is, you actually would get some type of push notification again through the app or on the actual screen itself there to make you aware of this.

That way you could make sure that your service was up to date. And it also would potentially be better for Tesla to as they would get service done to vehicles that might not otherwise be done as people might forget and such there and that.

Thank you, Ryan, as always for all that you do and give patch to both Daisy and Lily there. Bye bye.

Keith, that is a fantastic idea. I would love to co-sign this for whatever that might be worth. I mean, we know Tesla could implement that fairly easily. So thank you so much for calling in with a great suggestion there. Hopefully this gets heard and acted upon.

Next up is Brian from Colorado calling in from his Tesla Model 3.

Hello, Ryan. Brian from Arvada, Colorado here. I'm calling you from my Model 3, which I got last December as I am charging my car at the Broomfield, Colorado dealership where very nice people work.

So, Ryan, Tesla made a very smart move in coming forward with the semi-trucks, which I believe will completely dominate the market when it is operational.

And the other smart play, which I really hope they would do, the other long-distance driving is an RV.

Hi, Brian. Well, I apologize that I did not listen to your call until after my most recent Franz interview, but he seemed to make it pretty clear to me, like I was saying earlier, that autonomous vehicles are the future of the company.

That said, you're certainly not the first person to daydream about a Tesla RV, and for good reason, it'd be awesome. I mean, imagine an RV with FSD to keep you safer as you're racking up miles across the country.

Here's what I honestly think will happen. Some intrepid company, for all I know there might already be one or more outfits already planning this, will do RV conversions off of the Tesla semi-platform.

Think about it. A 900 kilowatt hour battery pack could take you pretty darn far between charges. The only trick there would be infrastructure, because assuming you'd need to plug in at a megacharger versus a regular supercharger, you would need Tesla to build out more of those megachargers, of which there are currently very few, in order to make this RV life viable.

But you know Tesla is going to do that part. They're going to take care of the infrastructure part for the semi-truck fleet. So Brian, I do think it'll happen, even if it's not made by Tesla themselves. Thanks so much for calling in.

Next up here is Steve from Australia commenting on Hardware 3 getting some support down in Australia.

G'day Ryan. This is Steve Brian calling from Steve's Tesla, a struggling little YouTube channel in Wollongong, Australia. I'm calling to follow up on your comment last week about how Hardware 3 vehicles are going to get version 12.6 of FSD.

And I'd like your comments about a theory of mine. I'm of the opinion that Hardware 3 upgraded cars to Hardware 4 are never going to be as good as native Hardware 4 cars, that is Highland or Juniper vehicles.

And my reasons for this is that we lack 4K cameras, the ultrasonic sensors are not as sensitive, and we lack a front fender camera. So I think that a upgraded Hardware 3 to Hardware 4 car may never actually get to full unsupervised FSD.

Then, just three days later, I get an email from Tesla thanking me for my loyalty for buying FSD years ago and offering $5,000 off a new car with FSD transfer. So I suspect they are going to try and get as many of us Hardware 3 owners into a new vehicle as soon as possible rather than providers with an upgrade to Hardware 4.

Hey there my thoughts, I'd really appreciate your feedback. Cheers mate.

Steve, thank you for calling in. I most definitely agree with you on your latter point about Tesla trying to get as many Hardware 3 owners converted to Hardware 4 as possible.

You are right that it lessens the financial burden for them when it finally comes time for Tesla to pay the piper and upgrade our Hardware 3 cars.

You heard Elon make reference to this two or three earnings calls ago when he first said that they would upgrade those of us with Hardware 3 who've paid for FSD when he half joked saying something along the lines of this is one time I'm glad the take rate on FSD is so low.

To your first point about an upgraded Hardware 3 car never being as good as a Hardware 4 car, I just think it's still too early to have any real sense of that. You could end up being right, certainly.

But if Tesla upgrades the Hardware 3 cars and they're still not capable of unsupervised FSD, not only will they have basically spent a bunch of money for effectively nothing, but they would probably have a class action lawsuit on their hands at that point as well.

So I have to imagine that if they end up needing to do the cameras, they'll do the cameras too. Personally, I'm a little more worried about the timeline than the actual upgrade itself.

Like, will Tesla try to kick the can down the road on this promised upgrade long enough that most of the Hardware 3 owners will have moved on to another car, whether it's another Tesla or not? I mean, we can't rule out that possibility.

It's a big problem that Tesla itself has created, now not maliciously mind you in my opinion, but it is their problem nonetheless, so I hope that they'll do the right thing in a timely fashion once unsupervised has been achieved and a clear upgrade path has been revealed.

Cheers Steve, thank you so much for your great call.

Next up, an old regular caller, old friend of the podcast, Gil from San Diego. Go ahead, Gil.

The car chooses to go, particularly if the lane in front of you is kind of free and open. It sets up as a top speed of 85 the way I think I've got it set up. Rarely does it go over 80, but it'll do anywhere between 70 and 7980.

And then it'll lane change way more, even in standard mode that I probably would, just to eke out a couple miles an hour of speed. I think chill is too slow and I think hurry is even more aggressive.

So I'm just curious what people think. It'd be nice to just be able to have a mode that just sort of, you know, keeps you in the lane for the most part unless it slows down dramatically. But it goes back and forth the lanes a lot.

Well, Gil, I wonder if version 14 will change your opinion on this or anyone else's. And I have to acknowledge Gil sent this call before version 14 had gone out to anybody beyond the influencers.

I got it this week and I'll tell you about my experience with it after we get through with the Ride the Lightning Hotline segment here. So anyway, Gil, I hope it does change your opinion because for the record, I agree with you.

It's just odd that with nobody in front of you, it just, again, on version 13 won't go near the max speed that you've set. And I agree that if Tesla is adding driver profile preferences to FSD, like how they just added Mad Max back in for version 14,

there should be a minimal lane change mode as a throwback to the button that many people like to select back when that was an option in the FSD UI. So fingers crossed that your wish gets granted as version 14 continues to evolve.

Thank you for your call. It is always great to hear from you.

And I've got time for just one more call this week. It comes from James in California.

That's why Elon said anyone who can buy this car will buy this car. Even someone not fully comfortable with going electric will make the switch to an EV to get a Model Y that has non-supervised FSD.

Now obviously we're not quite there yet. We don't have non-supervised today. But Elon's point was that now that he sees a clear path to getting to non-supervised, that's why he's planning to increase production capacity of the whole lineup and the cyber cab.

But there are still so many people skeptical of autonomy, and Tesla's autonomy in particular, on account of the never ending years and years long FUD campaign constantly being waged against them, that I'm just not quite as confident that demand is going to be nutty.

I hope so. Don't get me wrong. As a Tesla fan, Tesla shareholder, I'd love to be wrong. Hopefully I will be proven wrong in another year or so when unsupervised drops for the public.

But we'll see. Thank you so much for your call. I very much appreciate it.

And if anybody else out there has a Tesla comment, question, or discussion topic, please do call in. I gave you the call in instructions at the top of this segment.

Now, as I promised a couple of minutes ago, I wanted to give you my first impressions of FSD version 14. It was pushed out to me this week.

And on the very first drive, so overall, I would say, and I would caveat this by saying, Elon and Tesla said that version 14.2 would be the one that were things would really be pretty smoothed out.

And that 14.1 is still a little rough around the edges. My experience thus far has been exactly that, where I would say there are noticeable steps forward, but also some very minor fixable steps back in 14.1.

So, on my very first drive, I experienced a hard-breaking moment for a plastic bag that was blowing across the road on the freeway on ramp.

Now, thankfully, there was nobody behind me, but yeah, it slammed on the brakes. So that was not ideal. I get why it did that. Oh, object, I better avoid it. But that's not a situation that you want the car to jam on the brakes.

It also slammed on the brakes and came to a stop on a like 25, 30 mile an hour street for a crosswalk that no one was in. Again, thankfully, nobody behind me in that situation.

But I'm looking around going, all right, I again understand why it stopped like crosswalk, but there's nothing here. There's nobody here to stop for. So I'm not quite sure what that was.

But on the other side of the coin, as far as those steps forward, I took my wife out to dinner the first night that I had FSD version 14, and it took us all the way to the restaurant, which just had street parking.

And there were no turns out there were no spots right outside. It was parallel parking on the street. So it turned right to head around the block and I did look on the map and that's exactly like it.

It said it was going to go around the block on the NATO. It had the blue line drawn in a square. It was going to go around the block. So it turned right heading around the block looking for a spot.

The first one that it found, it's signaled, stopped and parallel parked itself and boom, we were done. That was pretty darn cool. That felt pretty awesome for it to have self driven us there and then parked itself and all we had to do was unbuckle our seatbelts and get out of the car.

But I'll say my other complaint is not a new one. It continues to make decisions that aren't wrong per se, but they create unnecessary extra steps.

For instance, if there are two left turn lanes at a light and I need to turn left again, not long after making the first left turn, it should choose the left most left turn lane at that first light so that it doesn't have to quickly do a lane change and try and squeeze in before the next left turn.

But so far, it is consistently, as it's always done, chooses that right most left turn lane and then tries to get over creating unnecessary extra steps. I've seen this a lot.

So again, it's not wrong, it's not making a wrong decision, just kind of, for lack of a better word, a dumb one. It just needs to be able to think a little more clearly about its next couple steps.

It's gotten better about thinking one or two moves ahead overall, but it's still got room to grow there.

So yeah, still some rough edges, just as Tesla said, on 14.1 and 14.2 whenever it arrives is probably when at least some of those rough edges will start to be smoothed out.

But I'm very optimistic about it so far. It's definitely pretty cool in a lot of macro ways just working on the micro stuff.

Before I get to your pro tip of the week, I wanted to give you an entertainment recommendation real quick as I often do at this part of the podcast.

And that recommendation this week is a new video game. It's called The Outer Worlds 2. It's available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox as well, including on Xbox Game Pass and on PC Game Pass.

First-person role-playing game, a lot of shooter elements too. It's from a developer called Obsidian Entertainment who has just a great track record of making excellent role-playing games over the years.

Their most famous game and probably most beloved game is Fallout New Vegas, so they're not Bethesda, but they did that sort of spin-off Fallout game that a lot of people to this day love.

And The Outer Worlds 2 is reminiscent of Fallout New Vegas in a lot of ways. So if that sounds good to you, check that out on, again, PC, PlayStation 5, or Xbox.

Now for your Tesla pro tip of the week, it comes from Joe in California adding on to Jonathan from Atlanta's recent tip about the e-break. Go ahead, Joe.

Hey, Ryan. This is Joe from California calling in as a slight response or an add-on to the pro tip from episode 522 from Jonathan from Atlanta.

I did listen to that episode, and after doing so, I went and moved my car in to work to park. And I used auto park as I typically do.

And my car was a 2018 with FSD, so Hardware 3, running the latest Hardware 3 version. And I went into auto park, and after auto park, it actually engaged the e-break.

And I did find that interesting since it was just called out in this last episode. So then I did some more testing after work.

And yes, if you just park manually, after manual driving, you park, just press the button once, it doesn't turn on the e-break. If you press and hold, it turns on the e-break.

But if you auto park, it turns on the e-break every time. Now, I haven't tried with parallel parking, but I would assume it's the same with that.

And that would be where I imagine most people would be parking on a slope is in parallel parking situations, at least in San Fran when I've been there.

So yeah, hopefully that adds a little bit of context to that as well. Another little tidbit to that. And enjoy your day.

Joe, thank you for this. I admit I didn't realize this one myself. So you've taught me something new, which I do genuinely always appreciate.

I'm happy to put this one out there to add that extra bit of useful knowledge to Jonathan from Atlanta's already useful pro tip that I played not too long ago.

Cheers, Joe. Thanks so much again. If anybody else out there has a good Tesla or EV pro tip of the week, I'd love for you to call in with it so that I can expand my knowledge base.

And I can share that with all of you so you can do the same if you want to send in a Tesla or EV pro tip of the week.

You can do so by just calling in, like you would with the regular ride the lightning hotline calls, and I give you the two easy call in methods for that a little while ago.

Before I scoot on out of here for this week, I want to mention a few friends of ride the lightning that I hope can be useful to you at some point in time.

Maybe that time is now. Maybe that time is just you file it away for later, but keep them in mind. I would just check check them out.

Check these guys out. Just hit every one of these websites. Just see check out these products, see if they might be useful to you.

Or you might think, yeah, you know, maybe for my next car, maybe down the road, I'll grab something from here.

But the first ones abstract ocean.com, they continue to very generously offer a 15% off coupon code for first time orders.

That code is RTL podcast, by the way, that's all one word, no spaces RTL podcast abstract ocean.com has so many great aftermarket accessories for all the Teslas as well as Rivians as well.

And they have everything from mudflaps cheaper than what Tesla sells. They've got the super hydrophobic camera cover for your rear camera for three and why that's on sale for $22 as I'm looking at the website right now.

So if you're in a climate where you get a lot of dirt mud water kicking up onto that rear view camera, that backup camera, grab that super hydrophobic camera cover, the ultra bright lights for the new Model Y for the puddle lights, the interior lights,

the tempered glass screen protector is just all kinds of great stuff. A lot of, you know, just red logos if you want to switch out to those for your badges, all kinds of neat stuff.

Check them out again, abstract ocean.com.

The snap plate and the newer stronger snap plate plus are available at everyamp.com slash RTL. Don't forget the coupon code on that as well for a discount and that coupon code is RTL.

This is the front license plate bracket that'll snap on and off in seconds. It's paint safe, grill safe, radiator safe, autopilot safe. It's not going to get in the way of anything.

It's a nice clean minimalist design which I'm a big fan of that'll blend really nicely with the front end of your car when it's installed.

And if you want to take it off for any reason, it will leave no unsightly hardware behind when you do want to remove it.

So make those fix it tickets go away. For those of you who, like me, hate having to use a front plate, the snap plate is safety optimized with breakaway features to sacrifice itself in a worst case scenario, like a parking accident, something like that.

While the snap plate plus is strength optimized with hardened features for maximum strength, both are made from recycled made in the USA plastics with stainless steel reinforcements.

Immaculate reflections, an incredibly awesome Bay Area Detailer here in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

If you're here or going to be here with your Tesla or another car that you love, I do encourage you to book an appointment ahead of time at Immaculate Reflections.

Treat your car, treat yourself, whether it's ceramic coating, whether it's paint protection film on the front of the car where the bulk of the road debris rock chips are going to happen, or other key areas, the rear bumper, the rocker panels, whatever you want to do.

Maybe you want to do paint correction service from a professional detailer like Immaculate Reflections to get your paint finish looking as perfect as it possibly can.

I've had all of those done on my car and I'm so thrilled with the result. The car just looks incredible. I could not be happier with it.

And that is all thanks to Immaculate Reflections. Money well spent in my humble opinion. I'll put it that way. At least it was for me.

So head on over to the website which is irdetailing.com. You can also look them up on Instagram where the username there is immaculate underscore reflections.

So again, irdetailing.com. Hit the contact form there and when you reach out to schedule your appointment and talk through what services you want, make sure to mention that you're a Ride the Lightning Listener so that you get the Ride the Lightning Listener discount applied to any services that you have performed on your car.

My Patreon, I want to mention that one more time if you'd be so kind as to give me a couple more minutes there.

Patreon.com slash Tesla podcast or click the link in the episode description. This episode and just this podcast overall is free. It's always free. It always has been, always will be.

But I do put so much time and effort and love and research and enthusiasm and care into this thing that if you see it in your heart to join me on Patreon and show me a little support there, that's the way to do it is through Patreon.

If you don't, that's okay. The podcast is going to keep coming as it has for the last 10 years plus every single Sunday. But man, if you can throw five bucks my way per month over on Patreon, you'd really be helping me out, my family as well.

And for that five bucks a month, you will get an ad-free version of the podcast and you'll get early access to that ad-free version every single week so that when the super cool stuff like a Franz interview rolls around like it has twice this year, you get to hear that first.

Which is hopefully a pretty nice fun little thing. If you step up to that $10 per month tier, you get, in addition to the early access ad-free, you get those lightning round bonus mini episodes that I do every single week on Patreon as well.

And the tiers go up from there and the perks all stack so the higher you go, the more rewards and perks and ways to say thank you that I have waiting for you there.

So again, the website is patreon.com slash Tesla podcast. I'll note as well, there is a 10% discount if you're kind enough to do the annual pledge where you pledge once for an entire year of support, you'll get a 10% discount if you choose to do that.

You can email me anytime, Tesla podcast at gmail.com. You can also follow me on X and or on Instagram. My username on both of those is DMC underscore Ryan. So say hi to me on social if you're on either of those platforms.

My final order of business but one of my most important ones before I go this week is to say hello and thank you to the Plaid, Maximum Plaid and Roadster in space tier backers.

The Maximum Plaid and Hire crew, so Max Plaid and Roadster in space, will be joining me hopefully. Many of them will join me for as, what's going on?

Oh, that's mine of the future service dog just scratching behind me and you can hear her tags rattling there. Sorry about that.

But anyway, this weekend in fact on Sunday as it turns out because I have some midday plans that I'd already set on Saturday. So Sunday this weekend as you're maybe hearing this right away will be our November Patreon Zoom Hangout.

We always have great conversations there about everything that's going on in the world of Tesla, the world of EVs. I'm looking forward to it. I look forward to it every month. Seriously, it's just, it is a fun hangout with a great group of people.

And I hope that those of you in the Maximum Plaid tier or higher will join me, will join me this week. So I will start by shouting out the Maximum Plaid backers.

They are Jonathan Wales, Cameron Clark, Daniel Grummer, Seth Capello, Nick and Tony, the Galpin family, Ryan from New York City, Darren Nicholl, Cos Barnes, Patrick Wisnesky, Gil Cabrera, Todd Badger, Joe Edgel, Kevin Yank, the Tesla Owners Club of San Joaquin Valley, Will Steadman, Jeremy Harris, Chris Beech, Tom Mills, Kory O'Donnell, Aaron, John Cody, Joel Sapp,

Paul Casarino, Chris Osborn, KB, Adam Lavoie, Jason Chalukis, Travis Krenzel, Bruce Otterstein, Tom Behan, Josh Pennington, John from Cream Ridge, New Jersey, Dustin Hart, Derek Finley, Charles Clement, Damon Kline, Jeff Brown, Jerry Slinger, Kenneth Corbett, Brian Bertoglio, Kim Bae, Troy Sievers, Nick Jacoby, Chip Hooper, Matt Schubert,

Matt Chinander, Robert Moran, Rav and Christopher Mann.

Next up, the Roadster in Space to your backers. Big thanks goes out to all of you. Pete White, Lyle Austin, Steve Radspinner, Fernando Cordero, Lawton from Chicago, Sean Knightig, Neil Weaver, Jackson Wallace, Rolf and Jennifer Evers, Howard Anthony Smith,

Victoria Aya Caveto, Tesla Hitchhiker 42, Kara Weston, Robert from near Philly, American Home Contractors, Doug Carey, Michael Gallo and Tony Figueroa.

And finally the grandfathered in plaid level supporters. Huge thanks for your continued and generous support goes out to George Casiopo, Logan Willis, Peter Chalet, Eric Randolph, Dori and Steve Guberman,

The Tesla Owners Club of Taiwan, Ron Lee, Charlie Gillespie, Jeff Angwin, Chase Cabanillas, The Lydia Family, Aaron Alchool, Jared Brown, Jerome Strack, Jamie Dalton, Mike and Barbara from Louisville, Matt Nixon,

The Tesla Owners Club of Wisconsin, Ish, not Elon Musk in quotes, Peter and the Bear Boys of Colorado.

And that'll wrap it up for this Halloween edition, well, recorded on Halloween edition of Ride the Lightning, the Palindramatic episode 535.

I hope you enjoyed this one. I enjoyed making this one. The topics were fun. Again, you guys know me quite well enough.

Any time I have a good excuse to talk about the new Roadster, I'm happy. And I had a good excuse this week, so I'm happy, but hopefully we'll have many, many more chances in the coming weeks and months to talk Roadster.

But for now, next week, next week, boy, I'm in for quite the sprint to try and get the episode done on time. That's not your problem, that's my problem, because the shareholder meeting is next week.

It's on Thursday afternoon, so it's going to be a sprint to prepare it for you, but I'm looking forward to it because it should be a good event.

I mean, we should, we'll find out the results of the voting on the board proposals. We will get, at least if the past is precedent here, we'll get a presentation from Elon on sort of the state of the company and where things are and where things are going.

And then we should get 30-ish minutes of audience Q&A to Elon from the people that are in the audience that'll line up for the chance to ask a question, and hopefully those folks will ask good questions.

I have no doubt that plenty of them will, so I will have my highlights, analysis, recap of all of that on next week's episode. Stay tuned for that. Until then, my friends, happy electric motoring.

Elon Musk, people don't like Elon Musk. The guy founded PayPal and Tesla and people are like, yeah, but he's a troll and a bad dad. I'm like, so is mine. He did nothing to fight climate change.

Also, have you been in a Tesla? Have you been in a Tesla? My buddy let me drive his Tesla. I laughed out loud at how fast it went. Been clinically depressed my entire life on dozens of medications in a Tesla for 13 seconds cured forever.

I mean, I think a Tesla is the most fun thing you could possibly buy ever. That's what it's meant to be.

Our goal is to make, it's not exactly a car. It's actually a thing to maximize enjoyment. It's maximum fun.

Episode 535: A Cybercab…With a Steering Wheel? It Could Happen

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