FSD Hardware Upgrades and Q4 Earnings Highlights | Tesla Motors Club Podcast #72

Hey there, welcome toanother Tesla Motors Club podcast.

My name is Lewis.

I'm Doug.

And I'm Mike.

In today's episode, we'lltalk about some highlights fromthe Tesla Q4 earnings meeting.

Also, Tesla appears to be facing somemajor sales downturns globally, andEven though it's only been a few weeks,we've already got some movement onour predictions from our last episode.

So we'll touch on those,all that and more.

episode 72 starts nowAlrighty.

How are you gentlemen?

Pretty good.

just dandysince the last episode, Dougand I got to hang out in person,Oh yeah.

Doug visited in Austin.

I came out for the, , Astro Awards,, we briefly mentioned it, , in the last,, episode, Tim Dodd, Everyday Astronaut it'slike the second one he's done in person.

And it's pretty cool, basically abunch of enthusiastic space nerds,but it was a two day event and it had,panel discussions about things we findinteresting, new space versus old space,Apollo 16 Astronaut Charlie Dukewas there and he did a keynote.

That was really cool.

a couple of the people fromthe, , Polaris Dawn mission were there.

, during the awards, our likely nextNASA administrator, , Jared Isaacman.

At least came in with a pre recordedthing, he couldn't be there in person.

Obviously SpaceX and Rocket Lab andthose, , companies got a lot of mention.

The space force was there.

yeah, the SpaceForce was there to recruit.

I, don't know that they had avery useful, , recruiting event.

They were sponsors and I guessthey have to try to recruitif they're going to sponsor.

Yeah.

what did you get out of it, Lewis?

I thought it was cool.

Some of the talks getting to, see, uh,,Apollo astronaut that walked on the moon.

It was really neat.

And hearing him speak in person and,, some of the, other folks that havebeen to space, that was really neat.

, there's definitely someinteresting people that were there.

It was kind of like going to a comiccon or something I felt like where.

I was just surprised that the,gamut , of people that attended, somefolks that have like no background inscience, no knowledge about technologyor space or anything like that.

, but.

, yeah, it was really interesting.

I had fun.

Yeah, it's cool.

I got to meet Scott Manley.

ScottManley.

to him a couple times.

so cool.

that guy's awesome.

I love his videos.

He did a, DJ session, theevening after the first day.

that was pretty cool.

Fly safe.

Um,yeah.

You know what's funny though?

With all the SpaceX stuff, , ElonMusk was only mentioned by name once.

kind of felt like, everybody was tryingto avoid mentioning him because that wasliterally days after the inauguration.

They definitely avoided that.

it was noticeable.

yeah, I was like, let's notmention the elephant in the room.

Probably in response to, , certaingestures he made, just a few days prior.

yeah, That was kind of odd and obvious,but anyway, yeah, probably go next year.

I enjoyed it enough that I'll go back.

I will probably plan togo and I'll get better tickets.

Yeah,yeah,They were sold out of all theVIP things by the time I decided to go.

SoDoug got to do some thingsthat I didn't get to, but nextyear I'll be better prepared.

the tickets were tiered.

The highest level was, anything Iwould pay for this kind of thing.

I think it was like a thousandbucks or something.

Thousand bucksthey called thatthe Apogee level, I think.

I got the orbital.

Yes, you were orbital.

Which was maybe 300 bucks,which was still kind of a lot.

but, , it got me,duringthis, , evening, nightclub thing.

There was a VIP sort of leveland it gave you a chance tochat with some people.

He got to look down upon peasants.

the main benefit of that was I gotto chat with some of the, panelists, likeScott Manley, I got to chat with themup there, but it was a loud environment.

It wasn't really the kind ofenvironment to chat with people.

And then they did do quote unquotemeet and greet that was scheduled.

, but that was not good.

, I think there were somany of us at that level.

I've never been to one of thesefan conventions, but it was like.

You're lined up and you getone minute with each person.

Like speed dating or whatever?

some people you actually want to talk to.

Some people you don'tnecessarily want to talk to.

And then you're just like standing there.

Hi.

And it's just weird.

aI would do that differently.

I mean, really, that kind of thingshould just be Cocktail tables, andyou just, can chat with the person youactually care to chat with, , I supposeyou have the, danger of somebody hoggingsomebody in that case, but still,that would have been more natural thanthis thing, this speed dating set up.

They could have doneseparate lines, but then you'dhave one really long line and alot of short lines or no line.

Right.

That would be even morelike a comic con kind of thing.

I don't know.

It just was weird.

So, anyway, onlycomplaint about the event.

Otherwise, it was very welldone and, uh, it was cool.

Yeah, so I enjoyed it.

Indeed.

So, the other big thing thathappened since last episodeis they Q4 earnings for Tesla.

Yeah, we learned all kinds of stuff.

There was a lot of thingsthat come out of that.

Some good, some bad.

Yeah.

they spun it mostly good,but, , the funniest thing is, , we justhad our predictions episode, right?

We don't do the show that often,but we did it, I think it was the19th of January, , and then theearnings report was, what, maybetwo weeks ago at this point.

so many things we were talkingabout , already had some movementSo, , maybe we should dig into those.

See which things wewere already correct on.

No, I'm sure there werea few that we were not.

Let me just pull one up.

now talked about this all lastepisode will another vehicle, Teslaor otherwise, dethrone the Model Y asthe world's best selling car, right?

And our predictions were, Mike andI both said, no, Model Y is doingpretty well, will continue to do well.

And Louis, you said, yes, someother car, and you thoughtit might be some BYD thing.

Now, the information we had as ofthe 19th of January was that theThe Corolla,The Toyota Corollahad outsold the Model Y.

. Now, I listened to the earnings

call, and during the earnings call,Elon's like, and the Model Y remainsthe best selling car of the year.

Barely,And I'm like, oh, really?

Mike, what's the truth here?

it is the bestselling car in the world.

, Lewis and I were talking about Thispre show and what was it Lewis?

it's 1.

09 million.

units.

Versus 1.

08 million units.

Right.

It's really tight.

if, you look at the Model Y as anEV only, it's got no competition,it's way ahead of everybody else.

But if you look at an aggregate andyou say worldwide, any vehicle beingsold, the model Y is still number one,barely, next year, all bets are off.

It's that closeYeah.

But in our last episode, we hadalready thought that the Model Ywas not the best selling car becausethat's the numbers of the time.

So it seems that new numbers came up,Tesla released additional numbers.

, since then the ModelY barely squeaked it out.

you, should considerhow Tesla handled Q4.

They had all kinds of incentives.

They heavily discounted.

They were pushing inventoryout as hard as they could, totry to get to their numbers.

Now they still miss their sales numbersby 16, 000 of what the street wasexpecting and what they actually sold.

So , they did not hit their numbers onone side of the conversation, but they'restill the best selling car in the world.

Barely.

They managed to make up theground they were down for the year.

Well, it'sstill impressive.

It's very impressive.

Yes.

Thinking ,that, the model Ihad lost position, we then were like,Will it regained the throne in 2025?

With this new framing thatactually remained the kingfor 2024 what's happening in2025 then,I think it's losing it.

think it's going to get dustedthey have a newversion of the Y available,is that not going to drive some sales?

even with the new model.

I think it's going to get dusted.

new Model Y the refreshedModel Y Juniper is out?

And yes, that will definitelyhelp numbers for sure.

Absolutely will help numbers.

However, if we look at it from the bestselling car in the world, Tesla reallybenefits from, global sales, , and.

Global sales are majorly underattack for a number of reasons.

You know, I think Germanyright now is down 60 percent inJanuary, year over year.

Norway's right behind them.

Norway'stanked.

So, Europe salesfor it has gone way down.

the U. S. Is biggest markets for E.

V. S. Like California also way down,

and, And we should addTesla . Ev sales are down,

everybody else's EVs are up.

correct,it's very specific to the brand.

That being said, while the modelsnewer and nicer and has cool features.

There's also things around like taxcredits going away and other kindsof, drama and uncertainty around that.

, it's not like, Ooh, new car.

We're definitely selling a lot more.

So do I think it's going to sell?

Well, I still think it'll beTesla's best selling vehicle.

I think it'll do well.

It may even do comparable to what it didlast year, this year might be comparable.

, but I don't see it growing.

I think it's likely declining a bit.

, and other, , companies are growing, , tofill the market . So I'm thinking

it's going to drop . But I also didn't

think it was gonna have it last year.

And it barely, I was almost right,but this year I think, uh, it'll drop.

the question isthose worldwide numbers.

, in China.

The competition is doing gangbusters.

Yeah.

BYD is doing amazing things.

, I don't know what the culture islike in terms of going domestic.

Certainly Tesla has some brand cachetthere, but in Europe, we need toget Seb as a German and, European,, expat, to get his input on that.

But , there's a lot of.

Negative feelings about the Teslabrand in Europe and it's happening inthe U. S. as well, but of course in

the U. S. it's just more polarized.

It sort of depends onyour feelings , of Elon.

And , given his current role in thegovernment, dude, how involved inTesla is he really at all right now?

, Bonus packageI was at the shareholder meeting back.

I don't remember what year itwas, but it was at the computerhistory museum in mountain view.

And when it was first proposed,if I'm remembering correctly.

The whole point of that thing wasto keep Elon's attention on Tesla.

And, it seems to me his is barelyon Tesla, so make any sense, really?

on that, I believe the officialstatements or something around, itwas three or four months or something.

And then he's going to be back.

, so , he's really supposedly only focusedon the government stuff for a few months.

We'll see what happens, but I think,the plan, at least his public plan isthat he will be back focused on Tesla.

Um,, I think a lot of it though,it's politically polarized.

And from what I've been reading, , thedrop off on one side is not being made upyet by the rate of growth on the other.

So while one side of the politicalspectrum is now distancing themselves,the other side , is increasing, butnot at a rate that equals the drop.

So I think , that's where the, damage is.

And the other thing is.

A lot of people that are against Elonare upset now for whatever politicalreasons that I won't get into.

, the problem there is they don't want togive any money to Elon through any means.

So even if Elon had nothing to do withthe company, as far as day to day running,he still profits from it doing well.

So a lot of that is they just, don'twant to be involved with any ofhis brands, , which is unfortunate.

, for folks that, want thosecompanies to do well, butyeah.

Tesla to do well, Iwant SpaceX to do well.

the others are kind of, whatever.

boringBoring, yeah.

I mean, the boring companyis not impressive to me.

Okay, you can dig out a single lane hole.

Okay, that's great.

me throw something out to youguys and see what you take on it.

So the Y is the best selling EV by far.

Model 3, second bestselling EV that Tesla owns.

The X is way down.

they sold hardly any Xs last year in 2024.

Even less than they did for the Model SX is actually more expensive thanthe Cybertruck right now.

Yeah.

So I'm wondering, you know,is it time for Tesla to prunethe product line a little bit?

No, no, no what, Tesla needsto do is actually spend some time onthe X and the S and make them better.

Makethem the flagship vehicles.

Theyshouldbe,so you think put capital into it tobring it up the spec and freshen it up?

yeah.

I think when they test a new feature,it should be on those cars, , thatshould be where it comes out.

And then it should trickle down to,The three and the why.

It seems kind ofbackwards right now.

yeah.

That was part of the reason, , thesales of the S and the X actuallywent down when the Model 3 came out.

Like, oh, it's the Model 3.

So it's the third car and it'smore advanced and Tesla had to,you know, they don't really domarketing, but they do do messaging.

they do.

they had to try to emphasize that,it's actually a lower tier vehicle, butclearly had newer technology at the time.

So this was actually a realconversation that came up about aweek ago, where a friend was asking,should I even look at the X whenI've got Juniper sitting here?

they were serious.

I would agree to someextent, both are kind of badat being larger people movers.

The third row and either one is,Kind of, a joke, I guess.

And he does have an up andcoming family, so, be able toshuffle people around is crucialWell, Juniper is definitelya more advanced vehicle.

for sure.

without a doubt.

Sure.

yeah, dude, refreshthe X, make it better.

think it should be in thatsegment of sort of a larger SUV,maybe increase the utility of it.

you know, that second row, I wasat , the model X unveiling eventat the Tesla factory in Fremont.

And part of what they showed wasall the seats could lie flat.

So you had this huge amount of space.

And then somehow Elon got in his headthat he wanted these captain seatson the second row.

And then that meant a lot of delaywhich don't lay flat.

and they, theyobviously don't lie flat.

And that meant a lot of delay inshipping the model X. , and , the head

of manufacturing who actually spokeat our event, in 2015, he ended upgetting, fired or scapegoated on that.

, he was some army vet guy whowas, , really interesting.

Dude, gave a great talk.

We have video of it.

We should probably publish it.

, even though it's, a decade old now,it's might still be interesting.

But, um,, they didn't quite deliverWhat they promised with that vehiclenow I think they did come up with amore commissional next row But yeah,dude now the Model Y, you know, youcan press a button and the seats lieflat on the Model X the thing shouldeasily carry seven people They shoulddesign it to do that and you shouldbe able to press a button and all therear seats, lie flat and you can,Put stuffin it andincrease the utility of the thing.

would you say the X shouldgo toe to toe against the RivianR2 upper scale, mid tier SUV esque.

for price point,Yeah, there we are.

Nokidding.

it, should, be a Land Rover.

Right.

should be.

a high endSUV typething.

like the X. It's

a great car to drive.

It's got a really nice fitand finish and it feels solid.

It feelskind of wide.

it is, wide, but I likethat canopy that it has in thefront.

And you can get it in plaid.

sayingyou can get a Performance xThat's true.

it's got the little decal on theback.

Yeah.

It says plaid.

have to Say when theyfirst unveiled the model 3 andI got to ride a model 3 Butthen it was a really long line.

It's gonna take you hours if you'regonna ride it again But they had themodel x there too And I was like, ohi'll ride in model x and the dude tookit Through, , a autocross type course.

And I was blown away.

I've never been in an SUVthat handled like that.

I'm like, what the heck?

Like I'm holding on.

It's, and that was, uh,that was something else.

So yeah, come on, make those cars better.

introduction to the X was Iwas getting my three serviced in mydriveway, you know, mobile Ranger.

And they actually called andsaid, Hey, we're going to bringan X by for you to test drive.

Okay.

So they did.

They brought an X by and Idrove around for 20, 30 minuteswhile they worked on three.

And,hell of a great way to make a sale.

Well, they didn't make a sale,theyNo, they, didn't.

They didn't.

Well, indirectly, I ended up with the Y.

Yeah.

Well, money wise, it'sa better value, but makethe X better.

Come on.

X was a nice car, Ihave to say.

so anyway, there'soverall global sales downturn.

So we're all guessing probably that the Yis not going to stay at the top worldwide.

Is that the, feeling?

unfortunately.

probably not.

Yeah, it's too bad.

, Okay, so another thing, and this oneis particularly interesting to me.

the question was, when willRoboTaxi start delivery?

Now, as we do, we talked for a longtime, and I kind of reframed thisquestion, and one of the things I said,well look, I think what Tesla needsto do, , I think probably, FSD is goodenough right now that they could do ataxi service, geofenced, I suggest thecity of Austin, do it in Austin, and Ipredicted that they would maybe not doit in 2025, but probably do it in 2026.

sounds like June.

what happened, Louis, can youtell me?

Yeah.

they announced that they'replanning on doing it by Junethis year.

So inAustin.

geo fenced robo taxi.

It's unclear if it's going to bethis new cyber cab vehicle or not.

I think it is.

It's heavily implied that it willbe, but I don't know for sure.

, certainly nothing prevents them fromdoing it legally because Texas, assomeone who lives here, they don't care.

We already have, driverlesscars going around Austin.

, I think the law, when I looked it up, it'sliterally just, They have to have the carinsured as you would with a normal car.

So that's to be insured and ithas to have, , sensors and camerasand things that'll collect datain case there's an incident.

And that's pretty much the requirement.

As long as you do thosethings, you're allowed to do it.

Now, that's the state of Texas.

What about, , the city of Austin?

which leans a little moreliberal and, how, are theyfeeling about it, you think?

sure.

liberal compared to who?

Compared to the rest of Texas.

so I would arguethat, all big cities, even inred States tend to be blue.

, and , with how, , the statelegislature is here, Austindoesn't really get to disagree.

Cause whenever they try to passsomething that conflicts with state law,the governor and others crack down and,do things , there's been tons of drama,like You know, stereotypically, you can'tget pulled over by an Austin cop becausethey're not going to pull you over fortraffic infractions, , but then everynow and then, like the state will sendin state troopers and then you got todeal with, oh, well, state troopers willpull you over for all kinds of stuff.

, so anyway, it is what it is,but again, we do have waymo here.

We do have, self driving cars.

running.

, and I think it's very likelythat they're able to do this.

Their headquarters ishere in Austin, right?

Tesla does bring in a lot oftax revenue into the state.

, so they have a lot of sway.

it's very likely they'll be able to dothis as soon as they think they're ready.

, now when they think they're readyversus when we think they'reready is not going to line up.

So I think Tesla is likelyto do this this year.

but as often with Elon's statements,you know, it might get delayed tonext year, , or even the year after,but more than likely I would say2026, it's likely going to happen.

, but yeah, they're aimingfor June this year.

So,So, in that vein.

I just got the latest update, 13.

2. 7, that was installed

a couple days ago,must be nice.

Mr. Hardware 4.

thank you, I've, put something,they've heard of like 400 FSD miles onit already, including coming down themountains yesterday, and I got to say,It's impressive for Mike.

it works pretty well.

He'll be coming down theThat's right.

It actually stayed in the lane.

So, yeah, it's definitely possible.

I think he has a fightingchance if it's Geofence and he'sgot some guardrails set up for it.

Like I said, I think it's alreadygood enough to do that kind of thing.

Now, the question really is,what vehicles will they use?

Especially in an urban environment,I would really like to have a nosecamera.

Surprise, surprise.

that'd be Juniper.

that would be Juniper, that wouldbe the CyberCab if they're ready for it.

That would be the cyber truck,Not a chance.

Cybertruck would be a terriblevehicle to use as a robo taxi . Mainly

because, again, the pedestriansafety is terrible for that vehicle.

So if they run into, if they just bumpinto somebody, or somebody's just crossinga crosswalk and just bumps into theCybertruck, they're gonna get lacerated.

yeah, it'll be allover the evening news.

and yeah, it wouldbe all over the news.

it might be cool to ride in.

, I would certainly.

try it if I had the opportunity, but, , Ithink that would be a terrible choice.

think the Y would be a great choice.

You could put a lot of peoplein the Y plus you got the backstorage for luggage and everything.

I think the problem isthey want to sell those Ys.

But yeah, I think it's likelygoing to be a cyber cab.

I think that's the vehiclethey're aiming for.

They don't need a lot of them.

It's not like they need to be fullmanufacturingOnlyneed to do a couple,,Mike: that's true.

All I got to do is getone out there and theysay, yeah, we got it out.

I wonder if they'll haveany, special livery, yellow wrapor, , a cab look to it or what,That would befunny, but I doubt it.

I, it's probably going tobe like the golden thing that we've seenright in the videos.

if it's the cyber cab, itYes.

I think I had heard in one ofthe interviews, the gold was kindof a nod towards yellow cab , butif it's like, a three or a Y. Yeah.

I wonder if they'll doanything special for that.

And I think they should use those too.

because part of the promise is like, Oh,my own car will be able to do this, right?

And I think that will be agood demonstration of that.

Like they did at the CyberCab event.

They had 3's and Y's aswell as these CyberCabs, so.

You don't agree?

I don't think they're going to letus do that for at least another year.

They won't.

, but part of them selling the cars tous is the promise that it will do that.

And so if they have some demonstrationof it doing it, Even if it's inthis geo fenced, environment,then maybe that helps sell them.

And said they wouldn't have Yscause they're trying to sell them.

I think that helps themsell them like, , herethey are outin the wild, actually working.

on the street doing stuff.

Yeah.

I get the sense, from thatcall, . We've had a global

downturn in sales and it really is.

The future of the company dependson, autonomous and Optimus,right?

I mean,that seemed to be, thatseemed to be what he wassaying.

was very clear that FSDwas going to be the future andwhat drove the value of Tesla.

It's not the car, it's the software.

well, technically he saidOptimus, but we'll get into that,So, another question we had, , forour, predictions was, will Tesla offeran upgrade path or hardware three owners?

And then we went on about this.

And we've talked about it before, too, soI don't want to completely rehash it here.

, but, , the sense I got certainlyfrom Mike, from Louis a bit, isthat,, they're not going to do it.

They'll just, , try to incentivizeyou to buy the next car,which I agree they would do.

But during those conversations, Iconvinced myself, you know what?

I think they can just make anew board, and that's probablywhat they'll have to do.

I, believe what I said wassomething like, I don't think thatthey are, but my copium says that theywill, because I want them to, I didnot think they were going to do itUh huh.

This is the quoteof Elon from the earnings.

He said, He said, I mean, I thinkthe honest answer is that we'regoing to have to upgrade people'shardware three computer for thosethat have bought full self driving.

And that is the honest answer.

And that's going to be painful anddifficult, but we'll get it done.

Now I'm kind of glad that not manypeople bought the FSD package.

Yeah.

no timeframe is said.

A couple things.

. another person from Tesla was saying, well

we're still working on hardware 3, we'restill tryingYeah.

Still trying to make it work.

And then Elon cut andwas like, yeah it ain't gonna work.

And, yeah, we'll have toreplace those computers.

Mike talks about timeframe.

The thing is, , replacing the hardware3 computers with hardware 4 computersstill might not be enough, the promiseis that this is going to be a properrobo taxi that can drive me, acrosscountry or whatever while I sleep.

I don't know that hardware 4 can do that.

if hardware 4 can't do thatand they're going to replace.

hardware three computers, arethey going to have to replacethe hardware 4 computers also?

So if Tesla was smart and theywere actually planning on doing this,they would be designing the hardwarefive computer with this in mind, right?

Because already the problemwas the hardware three tofour changed the form factor.

So you couldn't take the modulefrom hardware four and put itin a hardware three, they haveto redesign the whole thing.

In theory though, they knowboth the hardware three designsand the harbor four designs.

And they are making hardwarefive right now for the cyber cab.

That's literally what is invery early limited production.

It's not ramped up, not going to be inanybody's car anytime soon, but they couldbe designing that harness to actuallywork and be backward compatible as faras the physical, hookup as it were.

Yes.

, you won't be able to get the fullhardware five, you'd need new cameras.

You'd probably need to do wiringand all this other stuff that theymight not be willing to do, causeit'll be difficult, but, they shouldat least be designing that hardwareI've I've read hints at coolingissues trying to go backwards.

interesting.

That the processing powerrequired in four and probably fivewith the A. I. driving everything

is going to be a challenge.

Yeah.

I mean, it's certainly possible.

What the other engineer said at theevent before Elon gave his, well,honestly, we're going to have to do it.

, Realistically was fair.

And what I'll say is, the challenge,why they have the upgraded hardwareand why they're doing that.

Is because they need larger models,as it were more parameters, more,processing power to handle that.

, but what the engineer had said wassomething along the lines of, there'speople out there, not Tesla, but peoplein general in the field, researchers aredoing a lot of work on porting largermodels to smaller models and getting thissimilar performance or better performance.

And that's very true, right?

Like we all saw that with allthe deep seek drama recently.

, there's a lot of push from, , researchout of, , meta and, , other sourceswhere basically they are showing smallermodels that are outperforming the older,larger models due to more efficient waysof training and just, techniques in howthey're, , setting up LLMs and things.

Now, , obviously full selfdriving does not use an LLM.

It's not chat GPT, but it is usingtransformers, the same architecture.

Pattern.

So it's very similar.

So there's a lot of techniques that comeover and, , can be equivalently used.

So I think it is possible that in thefuture they could maybe scale things back.

The problem is it's a very bigunknown and it's a lot easier to justgo to better hardware, especiallyas better hardware becomes cheaperand cheaper and more available.

So,Yeah, it's an unknown.

And the problem is that it's unknown wherepeople's lives are on the line, it'sa, safety critical thing as opposed to,help me do my English homework, right?

so that's something to think about.

Another thing that came up.

Was that it seemed he wasn'tgoing to be replacing the camera,so it'd just be the computer.

and as we both said, wewant the new cameras.

But that becomes an unrealistic, problem.

probably labor wise, that would be rough.

they could replace the side cameras.

Yeah.

Labor wisewould be hard.

That's easy, they pop out,but the connectors are different.

Yeah.

so if they want to fish a new wirethrough, which I guess they could, butthat's two out of, eight or nine, right?

There are eight cameras,nine with the new, Juniper,because it has a nose camera.

right.

and that nose camera,supposedly sees 180 degrees.

to me, that's , a big deal, andthat should be part of what,builds that vector space , ofmapping the objects around you.

And we've described it beforethat, , , maybe with fewer or not as highresolution sensors, you still get a vectorspace that just might not be as good.

, in that same call, just alongthe same lines, , this is a dumbquestion to ask, but , one of theanalysts asked about LIDAR again.

, Elon is always going to have thesame answer, but his question was,If LiDAR were free, would you use it?

And Elon's like, no, humans drive.

And I've said the same, , we werejust using visual and driving, right.

humans don't have lasershooting out of their eyes.

That's literally what he said.

, but really you still want yourcar to be super human, right?

You want your car to be betterYeah, I was gonna say,I'm not sure I trust my eyes.

and technicallywe're not just visual.

We're alsotactile.

We feel what the roadconditions feel, like, and wecan hear and things aroundus.

So technically we have more,the car could do that too.

I don't know that the caris doing anything auditory.

It should listen for sirens , since , asa human driver, you hear a siren andthen you're like, okay, what's going on?

Is this something I need to react to?

, But, Yeah, , it's just funnythat he'll die on that hill.

, I think if LIDAR were free,I'd freaking include it.

Come on, let's have another modality.

maybe it makes thecomputational problem harder.

but the way he put it, like, we had, radarin the car and we decided to ignore it.

, and then made a big point about,demonstrating that he knows what LIDAR is.

I'm like, okay, we knowyou know what LIDAR is.

Come on.

He's like, I led the team that developedthe LIDAR for the Dragon Capsule.

Okay, come on.

Ha ha ha.

led every team,Yeah, exactly.

I'm like, come on.

yeah, so I,Uh, but anyway, sowe'll get some computers.

We don't know when.

preference is it happens whenit actually makes a difference.

Not when it just makes it slightly better.

It needs to actually make it work,just one more thing, you know,, Mike, youwere talking about getting a new update.

So, I came down, in a Model Y, stillhardware 3, but it recently got asoftware update, and it was pretty good.

It'spretty good, but.

They changed a bunch of things.

this is12. 6. 3. I don't know if

you've used yet, Louis.

But, I feel like what they've done, andmaybe this is just because of how it'strained, since it's a neural net now thatis making the decisions instead of havinga separate choice about how many timesit changes lanes, how close are you goingto follow, and how fast you're gonna go.

It seems to be that theyput those all together.

And now you have three modes.

chill, standard, or hurry.

And it constantly displays it.

I actually, I was driving andI'm like, what is the standard?

It's got standard up on thewhy do I need the word standardstaying there the whole time?

Why don't you just tell mewhat my speed set point is?

It didn't make any sense.

Until I saw how differentthe behavior was.

And I could only get it to driveto me sensibly under hurry, itwas tailgating people under hurry.

I'm like, what the heck?

I stay in standard.

chill is dangerous,Hmm, too passive.

yeah, it's way too passive keep itin standard and just kind of deal with it.

I have, 6, 3, and I find myself instandard because of the follow distanceBut then I have to manually tell it tochange lanes, to pass people , because.

It's like, if I wanted to drive ata reasonable speed and if traffic'sgoing slow and we could be goingfaster and lanes are open, go use them.

So I have to manually do that.

But then I agree with you.

It's.

Is then stupid when you're inhurry mode, because it's like,Oh, I don't need distances.

And it's like, no, no, no.

You still should have distances.

I just don't wantyou to go 50 in a 70, right?

Like thatin the process of driving downhere was, you used to be able to get itto warn you when it's about to changelanes, like the steering wheel wouldvibrate or something.

No, it just goes.

and there was nothing.

you hear it going click,click, and starts changinglanes.

So I'm not really sure I like that.

maybe that's a side effectof how it's done now.

Train off an aggressive driver versus,, a not aggressive driver or something.

But I would really liketo decouple those things.

, I was trying to find a setting, likethose constantly changing lanes.

Okay, I want you just tostay in this lane for now.

And I couldn't find the setting of.

Stop changing lanes.

It used to be an option, as it wasn'tthere anymore.

Yeah, it's gone,is unfortunate.

to me, that was a step backwards.

But going back to the topic,have to say,yay.

We might get a hardware upgrade.

dude, don't hold your breath.

when we talked about it a coupleweeks ago, there were inklings thatthey were going to do something.

They didn't say what, butthey're gonna do something.

This time was a bit more specificthat he said they're probably gonnahave to replace the computers.

So, there's some, motion there.

I, am skeptical.

Let's see.

We have"I think oneissue with LiDAR is that there is only acertain amount of systems that can operatein the same space at the same time.

not an issue now, but could be later.

"I mean, I know what you're talking about.

This has come up before.

If it really was an issue,there are things you could do.

you could code your ownlaser in such a way.

, won't go into the details of that sortof thing, but you could code it so youknow it's your own laser as opposedto scatter from somebody else's laser.

That's a solved problem.

It might increase the cost, butthat's something you can do.

, so, I'll just put that out there.

Doug used to be a laser physicist.

I've spent a lot oftime working on lasers.

, one thing that came up in the call, likeone of the engineers said, LiDAR won'twork in the fog or something like that.

Okay, I mean, that has to dowith your choice of wavelength,my FSD front camera in thewindshield doesn't like raindrops.

SoYeah.

My visiondoesn't work well in the fog either.

Likehonestly, my feeling about thatis I would like to have more modalities.

and every sensor is going to have aregime where they're going to fail.

So, anyway, have all the modalities,, you should have x ray vision, Why not?

,Mike: On that, happy note.

yeah, let's move on.

Was there anything else inthe Earnings call that wasworth, chatting about.

the Tesla semi questions.

When asked about , semi and howthat's going, Lars, Moravy, hesaid, " the first builds of the highvolumes and design come late this yearin 2025 and begin ramping early 2026.

But as we've said before,the semi is a TCO no brainer.

I think it's really similar toOptimus." and then Elon jumped

in and said, " it's not nothing.

It's probably, it might displacea 10 billion a year thing.

That's 1 billion a month at some point,probably, but all this is going topale in comparison to Optimus."

Hmm.

Hard to believe that abillion dollars a month will pale.

yes, said something likeit'll be less than 1 percent ofOptimus at a different point.

But, basically what thattells us is, high volume for.

semi is coming later this year,and they're going to ramp in 2026,for those of us that think thiswill be largely impactful in, EVadoption in emissions reductionsand all that other kind of stuff.

, it's a good thing, but,it's way behind schedule,right?

Yeah.

Hey, they're finally getting there.

wonder what's changed.

I wonder what's enabledthem to do this now.

But.

I don't know.

I think part of it's been, battery.

I think, semi probablyneeds a ton of batteries.

And so battery production limitations,I think the semi is probably theirmost important vehicle in termsof impact on the environment.

,just think how much , the, semi and it's usage like,most cars are parked.

Most of the time.

Most semis are probablydriving most of thetime.

24 by 7, yeah.

In addition, if they get FSDworking on it too, that can be a big deal.

, if it ever gets to the point of beingautonomous where, the driver canactually go to sleep or something.

That would be game changing.

wasthinking of a very specificuse case here in San Pedro,not too far from where I live.

identified the biggest diesel , polluting,isn't so much the driving to the truck,it's all the idle time at the port,While they wait to get theair sea cargo containers andwhatnot.

Yeah, so I thinkthe semi is big deal.

To me, that's , a lower hangingfruit and is more likely tobe useful before Optimus is,okay.

On a similar note, this isn'treally so much, , with the earningscall, but another question we askedwas, will a competing company.

Beat Optimus to market and we asked that,again on the 19th of January and, isthere something that we can buy, Louis?

there, sure is, andI said, yes, so I was right.

there's a company called, Unitrythat is, already selling a Unitry G1.

Now I can't say for surethat they're shipping yet.

They'll sell it.

they claim that they are, theysay contact us for delivery time, butyou can buy a humanoid agent robots.

16Kbargain.

able to do a bunch of things.

You can program it to do different tasks.

I don't know that it's, , thatuseful, but it's probably on parof an Optimus at this, point.

And you can buy it.

if you ever see video ofthis thing, it's sort of smaller.

It looks like, a pygmy guy, I thinkit's like four feet, something.

But, , it looks pretty agile.

, and also they sell it.

They said, starting at 16 K, but itseemed like the they're selling itmore to like if you're a researchinstitution or something like that,They have an EDU model.

Yeah, exactly.

Soit didn't seem so much for the consumer,but for, research people.

won't fold my laundry.

probably some universitystudent would buy it and thentry to train it to fold laundry.

Andthat would be like a project or something,.

Louis: probably do that.

Except I don't fold laundry,I just hang mine up, so.

so I don't know if this questionis definitively answered already.

But the thing is, though, there aretons of these, robot companies inChina showing very impressive things.

. at least as impressive as Optimus, and

they seem pretty poised to sell them.

And China does manufacturingexceptionally well.

I mean, to me, that was the main thingabout Tesla was that, okay, they'relikely to actually sell this thing.

Whether or not I can do anythinguseful they're likely to sell it.

Well, I think, probably some companyin China is also likely to sell it.

So, if this thing isn't quite real yetin terms of selling, I think somethingwill be before the end of the year,.

Louis: for sure.

Okay.

Let's see.

Now, , this isn't quiterelated to the earnings call.

,but, the question was, willAnd that was a somewhat esoteric questionfor, people in the know, but I justlistened to the last episode, if you wantto know what that means, what happenedBoeing, , who was the main contractoron SLS, SLS is the space launch system,, for the moon program called Artemis.

, and , they basically said they mayhave to, nothing definitive, but theymay have to lay off a ton of peoplerelated to SLS because it could getcanceled, , when the next budget comesout and they're sort of required by law,there's this thing called the WARN Act,and I don't remember what that acronymstands for, but it's basically that theyneed to give 60 days notice to employeesif they expect significant layoffs.

So basically because ofregulations, they needed to do this.

but it doesn't bode well.

and related when we wereat the Astro awards, right.

This was a topic thatwas brought up a bunch.

You got a bunch of spacenerds, policy people.

There was a former, , deputy director ofNASA that was there that we got to see,Apollo astronauts are all kinds of, butthere was a policy expert and most ofthem seem to imply that they felt thatthe SLS should be canceled, that SpaceX.

Is doing a much better job.

Blue origin is doing a much better jobthat, , we should move away from SLS.

I did like, , Charlie Duke, , theastronaut that actually made somecomments saying, he didn't think weshould cancel it for a few reasons,but primarily because we alreadyhave some objectives and timelinesaround going back to the moon.

And so the question is, if youcancel it, can you still meet that?

Or are you just delaying everything?

so if you could keep it goinga little bit longer, but you'dstill hit your objectives, thenmaybe it's worth keeping around,um, which is a fair argument.

I don't know the specifics there.

I'm sureDoug, you have somethoughts on it,I think a lot of peoplemissed the meat of that argumentbecause he said , well, we'vealready spent all this much money.

We might as well use it.

And instantly you could hearit murmur through the audience.

Oh, that's a sunk cost fallacy.

heard people literally say that.

And of course, it occurred tome to like, wow, that sounds alot like a sunk cost fallacy.

And because of that, I feellike people didn't quitelisten to what he really said.

,my point of view about it is,, and it shouldn't be here.

five years from now, certainlynot 10 years from now.

It's not a sustainable, , rocket really.

And it hasn't factored in any reuseor anything like that, except maybethe Orion and the Orion has, you know,issues with this heat shield right now.

But, , I think it should last through,I don't know that it will, but I thinkit should last through Artemis three.

I think we have a plan for that.

We should do Artemis three.

in that time, we should also havecompeting contracts for private,launch vehicles to, continue.

Like, the problem is cadence.

Okay?

If SLS was launching every 3months, it would be a lot cheaper.

And of course, that'sprobably unrealistic.

Every 6 months, say.

It took how many years todevelop, and it launched on ademo mission , with nobody on it.

To send a Orion around the moon.

In 2022 and nothing's happened sinceand they've already had to push back,, Artemis II, , a couple of years thatalready slipped the 2025 and they'realready saying, oh, no, what happened till2026 because of the heat shield issues.

, and honestly, the heat shieldissues are bad enough that Iwouldn't put anybody on that thing.

It's got a design flawand their solution is.

Okay, we're just going to changethe re entry trajectory so that theheat shield, doesn't suffer so much.

we don't generate as much heatbasically.

Yeah.

well, to do with, The duration,, so that it will kind of go downand then come back up and go down,, that kind of thing, I don't know.

That's a great idea.

,but I think as a program,Artemis three should happen.

it's unclear what.

Like, what does Elon want for it?

Because I think that's probably a biginfluence because I don't think Trumpreally knows anything about this stuffand he'll just do what Elon says.

, Elon may have reasons forwanting Artemis cancelled.

SpaceX is on the hook, , for the humanlanding system for Artemis basically, theyproposed Starship as the landing vehicle.

Now, Starship Makes nextto no sense as a lander.

It's so huge, it's ridiculous.

, but it's something that's already beingdeveloped, and how convenient that,now you're getting, , NASA money orgovernment money, billions of dollarsto help develop this landing system.

If Artemis III was cancelled, then SpaceXwould be off the hook for coming up withthis lunar lander, yet they still wouldhave reaped all this development moneyfor Starship, which is still ongoing.

that's the kind ofnegative way to look at it.

But really, it doesn't make somuch sense as a lander, even , Dr.

Robert Zubrin, he said it made nosense to say huge, instead of starship, they should have star boat.

Starboat.

cause it's this huge giant thingand can you imagine , if you had toleave in a hurry, you gotta get onthis elevator cause the crew entry islike way at the top of this tall thing.

I managed to talk to the guy, thatdoes the commentary on the livestreams from Boca Chica, , for SpaceX.

During the, launch events for Starship.

And he was saying, yeah, maybe, maybethey should do a star skiff, at leastthat's more alliterative than star boat.

But, yeah, dude, Starshiplanding makes no sense.

It's so huge, and that'snot what it's designed for.

You know, it's designed tobe a Mars lander, really.

If you think about it with Apollo,we built something that was landing thatdidn't need you to have infrastructure onthe ground and then take off again, right?

Like, you don't want to have tobuild up a bunch of infrastructureto then be able to use it.

If we had infrastructure, if we had bases,if we had pads on the moon, then sureyou could land it, but it still wouldn'tnecessarily make sense because the amountoffuel and other things you'reusing.

That's a real thing.

it has yet to be seen that,Starship could land on themoon and then launch again.

I mean, we already saw what happenedto Starship launching from concretethat got loose and blew up and wentinto the, nozzles or whatever atleast on the super heavy booster.

I think what they had in part ofthe design were some thrustersthat were further up, , around thetop or the middle of the starship.

And , maybe they would needto fire those to lift it up abit before the main engines.

don't really know what the plan is there,what Apollo did was, , basicallythe lander had two pieces.

So they had the landing part,but then the actual crewmodule of the lander separated.

And so it basically landedwith its own launch pad.

so anyway,Jinx,We had a couple otherthings we could chat about.

, There was that tesla, Iguess a couple weeks ago.

Actually, they showed it at the cybercab event They showed in video butdidn't say anything about it Butthey had this robot that just sucks.

That's how they put it.

This robot sucks is thetitle of the video.

right.

Cleaning robot.

I have to say, I totallywant one of these for my garage.

, I don't need it to, do this all thetime, but , I hate cleaning a car.

it's one of those things.

It's just annoying to me.

I could have a thing thatauto vacuums and auto, itsucks out the water bottlesand all the other nonsense.

Like, that'd begreat.

it would be nice to havesomething on the Roomba levelwhere it just happens every dayRight.

you park.

, so it's not having to do some hugecleaning job every time, it's just,stopping the accumulation, the, buildup.

Clean, the touchscreen for me.

See, I want that.

Clean the touch screen every time.

I don't have to do it.

Well, if it's doingall that, I want it.

to clean the exterior too.

That's fair.

Hey, let's do it.

We have this arm, clean the exterior too.

So what are your thoughts?

Do you think this is just they'resetting up for their depotsin Austin?

I don't know.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

,Mike: And here, I thought they'dIt's an Optimus.

Clearlyhard for optimists to do it.

We've had this discussion.

Typically, if you have a, specificpurpose, you're probably better offdesigning a robot for that specificpurpose.

But this kind of job isa rather nuanced job.

So, it's hard to say, , like what they'reshowing here, , it looks too ideal.

, what if there's bubble gum on the seat?

what if someone barfed and it got in thecracks of the seat?, this doesn't look

Like it's cleaningenough.

kids have been known totrash a car a lot worse than this.

Just going to the grocery market.

Yeah,I mean, vacuuming isgood, and a basic wipe down is good, butThis doesn't look like a deep clean.

Although, honestly,I've been in some cabs thataren't much better.

So,How many would theyneed, and I guess they woulddo it while it's charging,probably.

Yeah,I'm not sure it makes sense.

Do you think this was just a marketinggimmick and they're not actuallyplanning on using these for the RoboCop?

Cab fleet.

by the time you buy the robot, youprogram it, you spend all the capital.

You can hire a couple of guys togo in there and scrub a car out alot faster.

Sure,at this point, it'sthe kind of thing where it'dbe cheaper to hire somebody.

, but , their goal is to eliminatethose kind of workers, right?

, that's seems to be the goal of Optimus.

So, um, I don't know, man.

What I'm looking at right now doesn'tnecessarily look that useful to me.

but maybe it could be.

, it would be nice as a service,like when I just park tosupercharge, could you me a clean?

Actually, you know what I'veseen, not robots, but peopleset up near superchargersdoing these kind of services.

Like,car detailing kind of thing or cleaning.

Rove Chargers hasgotten very close to that.

So they've got superchargers set up.

They're covered, canopied over.

You can pay to get the car washed,touchless if you want, and thenthey've got an area that youcan park the car, wipe it down,free vacuum cleaner, free air.

I mean, it's just, it's not muchof a stretch to have another stallor two where you're willing topay somebody to do a light detail.

And they've got the waitingareas already set there.

They've already got the areas set up.

You've got Wi Fi, you've got foodyou can buy, all that good stuff.

Yeah.

it's interestingYeah, did you wanttalk about that, gamer thing?

Mean we can yeah,we can talk about it.

It's a little old newsIt's little old newsit's been a couple weeksit hit close tohome for you, did it,It didCan you give us the context then?

sure, , basically,Elon, , has claimed in the pastthat he's a bit of a gamer, right?

He started, even when he was a teenager,he supposedly made a video game orwhatever and sold it or made money off ofthat when he, , so he's been into games,video games For years and years, , andone of the, , very popular games, , inthe franchise of known as Diablo.

They had a Diablo 4 that came out.

It's very popular.

, there was the originalDiablo was back in the 90s.

So it would have been when Elon wasprime video gaming age before he was.

Running all his companies.

, so anyway, , he basically,, there's competitive ladders.

There's all these, rankings andstuff of like where you are andhow high up you are in rankings.

And Elon was essentially one of the topplayers in the world or so he claimed.

, he had this character and it was,among all the millions of peopleworldwide, he was in the top 20.

which is very impressiveconsidering majority of thetop 20 are literally people.

That play video games for aliving and stream it all day long.

That is their job.

That's how they make money.

And Elon is the CEO of multiple companies.

Nowhere possible has the time to actually.

Put into thosegames as necessary.

Well, he has the time to run threecompanies and work in the government too,right, exactly.

you go.

So he must have,copies of himself.

So, you know, people kindof like said, it's unlikely,but whatever, we didn't push toomuch, he streamed it a few times.

He streamed him playing this game,whatever it's Diablo four game.

And then another game came out, , calledPath of Exile 2, which is a very similargame, except it is a lot more hardcore,it is a lot more unforgiving, it requiresway more knowledge, way more effort,, I'm a big fan, I've played, , Pathof Exile 1 a lot, and play hardcoreon that, and basically you can't makeany mistakes when you're playing onhardcore, if you do any mistake, yourcharacter dies, and your character's gone.

outro music plays Basically.

So that's why it's like such achallenge as can you get through?

, and so it came out again, likeElon, Oh, he's got this character.

It's one of the top in the world.

He was, I don't remember the exactplace, but he was, , in the top 10on the ladder, , Oh, look at him.

He's, so good, blah,blah, blah, blah, blah.

And at this point Diablo four, okay,maybe it's unlikely, but maybe,but path of exile two, there'sno way all the hardcore gamers.

Like there is no way you wouldhave to devote thousands of hours.

He does not have the time he'sdoing doge in the government.

He's running his company.

It's impossible.

There's no way you could do this.

And so he claimed that he was.

Streamed it live and from his livestream, it was immediately obvious toanybody that plays the game that he hasnot really ever played this game and hehad no idea what he was talking about.

, and there was a lot of amusing thingsthat would come up like, Oh, look,his character is logged in rightnow while he's live on televisionat the inauguration for Trump.

Stuff, Stuff, likethat.

I think they could look at theIP address and, it was in China orand, basically he, he did actuallyeventually come at, so at one pointhe was playing, didn't know what hewas doing, got his character killed.

Right.

didn't get the Chaos Orbs.

And he didn't know how theinventory, he didn't know basic thingsabout the game and how it works.

don't know anythingabout it, But yeah.

it was very funny.

and so he did eventually come outand admit that yes, he was payingpeople to boost his accountsand to play the characters,Like, you have to do.

But, he triedto downplay it as well.

Yeah, but you have to, everybodythat's in the top does that.

And it'slike,Korea does it, he said, I think.

yeah.

, And the answer is,you know, No, nobody atthe top is doing that.

They actually are playing the game.

It's ridiculous that he's, youknow, , I will say there are certaincultures and online video gameswhere they don't view paying to win.

You know, we often say pay to win,spending money to have an advantage.

They don't view that as a negative.

, in the West, we tend toview it as a negative.

We think it's essentially cheating,but , there are cultures and videogames where they don't view it that way,but yeah, anyway, it was very funny.

Elon was trying to appear cool,trying to fit in and say thathe's a gamer and look at me.

I'm doing all this stuff.

It's claimed it was him until we'vedefinitively had proof that it wasn't him.

And then he was like,Oh yeah, you're right.

It wasn't me.

but, everyone does it.

So it's fine.

, anyway, so I just thought that was funny.

I found it amusing , my, , friendsgroup that are all big, gamers, it wasa big deal to them because , they'renot necessarily big into Tesla.

They don't necessarily follow Elonstuff that closely, but suddenly ininternet meme culture, it became a thing.

So it was kind of amusing.

,but yeah, Elon wantingHe is not.

He can't be because he actuallyhas jobs and other stuff to do.

, I don't even consider myself ahardcore gamer anymore because of mycareer and other things, but sure.

20 years ago, 30 years ago,I was.

Butanyway, soIt's a weird thing to do.

let me just put it that way.

to lie about,yeah, and, For a lot ofpeople, it was kind of like, asort of a revelation to them.

To me, having, , followed,, Elon and Tesla for, , nearly 20 yearsnow, it is actually not surprising.

And it kind of playsinto his personality.

Something I just don't really get.

But, , Elon does , massage the truthquite a bit, , particularly about thingsto do about himself, like his personalaccomplishments, , and the thing aboutit is like, dude, it's impressiveenough, like, the things you're doingare impressive enough, you're already,, the best at whatever , you know,he never quite struck me as ascience or engineering genius becauseI've, met people that are legitscience and engineering geniuses.

But he certainly wants to be perceivedas one as part of his persona.

, and that's fine, whatever, butdude, he's probably the single most,, important person in the history.

of Tesla as a company, buthe didn't found it, right?

But he made a big deal about eventuallybeing and rewriting history to makehimself founder of the company , when hewasn't, that was, , Mark and Martin, but,, okay, fine, but it just doesn't make,it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Like , the kind of things hewill do, like, you know, he wasaccepted at Stanford, right?

Accepted at Stanford,that's interesting enough,It's impressive.

Yeah.

impressive enough, yeah.

But to be like, oh, I droppedout of Stanford the firstday of school or whatever.

That's part of the narrative he spins.

I did grad at Stanford.

might make sense as an undergrad.

That doesn't make anysense as a grad student.

It just doesn't make senseas a grad student to say, oh,I dropped out the first day.

You know, you have an advisor.

You take a leave of absence orsomething, That's more how it is...

I mean, even, the whole, physicsthing, which there's pretty much proofhe'd never was a physics major at UPenngoing to UPenn is impressive.

He had some physics classes,but he went to UPenn.

I think his degree was in economics, whichis fine.

He went to Wharton, which is already one.

Of the top business, if not thebest business schools in the world.

You're already impressive.

You don't need to embellish.

And whenever he does this, what's funnyis it causes people to start diggingin and question like, well, wait, whatare these other things he talks about?

Cause you know, for example, whenthe whole Twitter thing happenedin the X purchase, he startedsaying a lot of things publicly.

That came out that made a whole generationof software engineers go, wait a minute.

I don't think he really, he, he clearlydoesn't know what he's talking about whenit comes to computer software, becausehe's saying a lot of things that we knowabout that, like, that makes no sense.

And then you go, well, wait,does he do this for thingsthat I don't know about that?

I just take for granted and like, assumethat he knows that he's talking about.

And that's what happens.

The whole gaming thing made a wholepeople that I know that went, wait aminute, he clearly doesn't know whathe's talking about and he's lying.

Does hedo that with other things?

And it's like, yeah,hedoes.

back to Stanford sincethat's something I know about, hewas going to Stanford to study,high energy storage systems.

I think it was basically like, supercapacitors or something like that.

I saw him at interviews wherehe basically lets the personthink he's going to Stanford.

to study high energy physics, whichis something different completely.

That's like, , particle physicsand, , working with a linearaccelerator or whatever.

which Stanford wouldn'teven be where you'd wantto go to do that,Nah, Nah, you cando that at Stanford.

Come on.

We got the Stanford linear accelerator.

It doesn't matter.

Anyway, if you were to do thatstuff at Stanford, it wouldbe in the physics department.

And he let people think he was doingphysics, but what he was talking aboutwas really material science, whichis a fine discipline, but if you're,among those things, among nerds,there's kind of a hierarchy, right,you'llhave physics at the top, andthen electrical engineering,and then, like, material scienceis somewhere down the line,right,people wouldargue that mathematics isat the top,okay, that goesseparate.

for a purity standpoint.

Yeah, for a puritything, mathematics is at the top, but,we were talking scienceengineering, we actually setmathematics, lateral.

we don't considerthat.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just a,different thing, but typically,to put it more succinctly, whatdefines the hierarchy is howmuch math you need to know.

so the physics is at the top,and, , material science is,somewhere down, like, biology iseven lower or whatever, even thoughit's very complicated systems, right?

I hate to say this because people aregoing to send me hate mail, the pointis that he was more likely acceptedfor material science, but guess what?

Physics sounds better.

Yeah.

It's cooler.

Soundscooler.

Silence.

dude, You are a amazinglysuccessful businessman, okay?

You don't need to make us thinkyou're some physics genius.

It's just not necessary.

but somehow that's part of his personalityis he needs to be perceived as that.

And it's not just him, , ofmy favorite YouTubers, , Dr. Angela

Collier, , she's a PhD physicist, right?

And basically has a whole videocomplaining about billionairestrying to pretend to be physicistsbecause a lot of them do it.

, and basically , the notion is thatin society, physics is viewed asone of the most difficult, mostchallenging fields, probably becauseof the amount of mathematics youneed to know for science, right?

I don't think that it is.

Just, that's how it's viewed.

And people, because of famous,brilliant minds, people say,Oh, this is super genius.

It's always a physicist in thepast for the most part, Einsteinand Newton and all this stuff.

So there's this connotation of like, Oh,these really great and brilliant men.

And so there's a whole slew ofbillionaires, , that basically want tocome off as being, they were physicists.

, and the funny thing is, it's like, allof you could be physicists, just goand be a physicist, just go to school.

And get your degree.

You have the means you have the money.

Just go do it.

If you want to do it, noneof them actually do that.

None of them go to school.

None of them have a degree in it or doany of the work, but they want people tothink that they are.

yeah,the, well, I couldhave been a physicist,but I had to become a billionaire instead.

And it's just like,cool, good for you.

I don't know that it'sthe society in general, but it'scertainly the nerd tech subsetsociety.

Sure.

because, probably all of us in thatregime had to take some physics classes, and we're among the people to know that,oh, here are the people that are goodat physics and here are the people thataren't, and that was some differentiator.

I would say, I think Bezos thoughwas like the guy who basically said,Uh, yeah, I'm not as good as thisother guy at this, I'm not going totry to be a theoretical physicist.

Bezos is the only billionaire I'veseen that actually came out and said,he was a physics major and he said, I'mnot good enough to be a great physicist.

So I'm going to go into this otherthing that I feel I could be greatin because he recognized there areother people smarter and betterat it that he just wasn't there.

So he is the one exception,which I agree with.

that like actually fairly said that,but yeah, I mean, it's definitely true.

was originally a computerscience major and I was bored.

I didn't find it challenging.

So I literally switched to physics as mymajor because I was like, well, that'sthe hardest darn thing I can pick.

So I'm just going to do that, right?

Like I get it.

It's definitely in nerd andscience culture, how it works.

But yeah, anyway, so yes, , it'sa common thing though.

He's not the onlybillionaire.

A lot of them have done this.

A lot of tech billionaires, come outI don't know to this extent thoughabout so many, not just physics, butso many other aspects of his life.

He's had to tailor the things that he'sthe best at whatever it is he does.

And there are some weird things that kindof happen for a short period of time.

Like at some point it was like,Oh, I'm going to play the violin.

And I think he gave that up reallyquickly because I guess what smart peopleplay the violin or something, right?

It's like, come on, come on.

What are you doing?

I don't know, whatever, he'sgot these personality quirks,but you gotta worry a bit now thathe's in such a high power position.

And I've said it before,I'll say it again, we havethe Elon alignment problem.

Like the AI alignment problem,here's the Elon alignment problem.

Hopefully, things he does are for thebenefit of mankind, but I'm, a littlebit concerned it's mostly for the benefitof one man, as opposed to mankind.

and all we can do is hope thatour interests align, somewhat,and that we benefit, , morethan we, suffer.

So.

There youIndeed.

on that, happy note.

on that happy note.

I guess that wraps it.

, . Oh, look, we have a

comment from Grey Snow Fox.

, yeah, we appreciate that.

He said, finally, some normal people wholove Tesla as the company being realisticand honest about Elon all justifiedand reasonable criticism and discussionsubscribed, liked with notifications on.

Thank you.

ThankThank you, Grey.

We appreciate that.

yeah, we always try to besomewhat, realistic and wewant Tesla to be successful.

We love the products.

We want them to produce goodproducts for the consumers.

And yeah.

Appreciate that.

, .

This has been episode 72.

So as always, thank you allfor listening and watching.

Thanks for hanging out.

We appreciate it.

Thanks for the questions and comments.

Keep it coming.

, like, and subscribe.

You can always check out teslamotorsclub.

com our website.

, there's a lot of interesting forumsand posts on there for good Tesla info.

can become a supporting memberon the website as always.

That helps.

, the website and the podcast, , andwe'll see you next time.

It's supposed to say Laters.

now.

Yeah.

Laters.

Yeah, laters.

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