Our 2026 Predictions | Tesla Motors Club Podcast #77

Hey there.

Welcome to another Tesla Motors Club podcast.

My name is Lewis.

I'm Doug.

And I'm Mike.

In today's episode, we're going to go over Doug's 24-hour test drive of the new Model S.

We'll review our 2025 predictions to see how we did.

And we'll make some updated predictions for 2026.

All that and more, episode 77 starts now.

Gentlemen, we're back.

How's everyone doing?

Survive the holidays.

Excellent.

Survive the holidays.

Yeah, Mike.

Sounds like you have a story there.

I don't know if we want to share.

I was in Italy.

Mine was pretty great.

So yeah, yeah.

Oh.

I was here for Christmas, but then I went to London on New Year's Eve.

And actually, I had Christmas in London pretty much because Christmas kind of extends until the 12th day of Christmas.

So sure.

I did this London Christmasy thing.

So it was kind of fun.

Nice.

And saw lots of curbside charging.

That was cool.

People residential curbside charging.

And uh nice, right on.

It can work, people.

It can work.

I'll buy HOA that.

Yeah.

I think I saw two Teslas in two weeks.

I was in Napoli mostly in Italy.

And yeah, very few Teslas.

I saw a number of Jeeps and you know, obviously fiats and other Italian cars.

Anyway, welcome back.

I'll just throw out there as part of my vacation.

I did my first road trip with my Tesla since getting it.

Round trip about 1500 miles.

My first time actually supercharging for real and FSD'd the whole way.

And I have to say it was amazing.

Oh man, I can't recommend it enough to people.

I've talked about it with people at work, I've talked about it with family members.

It was so good.

Supercharging was super easy.

I never felt like I was waiting for it because we had dogs with us, so we'd go out with the dogs to go potty.

Like the car was always ready to go.

The car drove the whole damn way.

I had no interventions on the hardware three.

Hardware three.

No interventions.

It was 13 hours.

To be fair, on the way back, I did have one intervention, but it was not that the car necessarily did anything wrong.

It was the traffic was super backed up on an exit and it didn't know to merge in early enough.

So I was trying not to be a jerk.

Yeah, sometimes it likes to pass everybody.

It likes to pass everybody and then cut in.

And I was like, I don't want to be a jerk, so I'm gonna take over on that part.

But otherwise, literally, that was it the whole time.

Yeah, on my last road trip through Vegas, I had to intervene because we had severe wind and the car was getting buffeted, and the reaction time of FSD versus getting a lane change by the wind was a little late.

So just uh pure safety and not liking being next to the big trucks.

I had to kind of give up.

I didn't experience that.

We did have a lot of wind, like I drove through Oklahoma, so there was a lot of winds, a lot of wind, as the musical claims.

So I definitely experienced some high winds, but nope, didn't have any INA issues like that.

Nice, very smooth.

So again, highly recommend, even on Hardware Three.

Road trip was great.

I did get to witness somebody, I did not use auto park at all, but I watched somebody use auto park, so they claim at a supercharger, and their car backed into the supercharger and like took it out, like straight up fluid leaking everywhere, and the person was freaking out.

I went and spoke to them and like calmed it down.

And wait, so the cooling fluid from the coolant in the supercharger, yeah, came out.

Their car was fine, but like the supercharger was gone.

They used to have bollards at all these superchargers, but now that they've sort of future charging network, they had to remove the bollard so that cars that have to charge on the other side or even cyber trucks have to get a little bit closer.

They're all gone.

Yeah.

So anyway, it was a cool experience.

I got to witness somebody take out a supercharger, which thankfully did not cause any damage.

And I ended up parking two superchargers over from it, and it worked fine.

And it even did warn me that that spot was out of commission immediately, all automated, which is cool.

So, yeah, yeah.

So it straight up was like, Don't use the stall, it's out of order.

I was like, You're right.

I just watched it happen, but yeah, so highly recommend.

Great experience.

I mean, I don't think we've had any real update for hardware three in a while.

We've been on 12.6.4

or something for yeah, I've had a few updates, but not to FSD.

It's just not to FSD, yeah.

For other users, minor updates for someone just going on a trip, it really reduces the cognitive load.

You know, I've done plenty of trips now to Texas and Florida, and sometimes I'll get kicked out because I'm trying to change my route and I'm looking at the screen too much.

And as soon as that happens, you're like, oh my gosh, this is terrible.

Oh no.

Yeah, I haven't actually drive.

I did get my first strike, but not during that road trip.

I got it locally a couple days ago.

I got my first strike.

I I got mine screwing out with Spotify.

I was trying to figure out what to listen to and got kept angry with it.

Exactly.

So I'll end up pulling off.

I'll take the next exit so I can put the thing in park.

So you should be able to like say, I'm sorry, and then let it, you know, restart instead of forcing you to pull over.

Yeah, you know, it told me if I do it four more times, they're gonna remove me from FSD access completely.

Yeah, it's what I wonder how often they reset that.

That used to be kind of permanent until they did some sort of update, but now it's just for a week or something.

Yeah, it's pretty low.

If you get the strike, though, you have to park before you can re-engage FSD.

That's right.

So that's why I'm pulling off.

Although, although, even with a strike, you can still get cruise control.

I mean, if you get basic throttle like TAC traffic workers control, yeah, but you can't get lane keeping.

It won't do lanes, it won't navigate, but at least they'll keep your speed constant.

You still have to maintain control of the wheel.

And it's a little bit annoying to me.

Sometimes I would like to down select it, just stay in the lane, just be lane keeping, but you know, I have an option to do that.

There's a setting in the software, at least on my car, where I could set one press or two presses to go into the FSD mode.

And if I change it to two presses, a single press does tack, and then two presses does full FSD.

But if you change it to it's a single press, you're there's no way to do the other one anymore, which is kind of silly.

Right.

I think that single press that's a little safer though, because I've been caught and I know a lot of people just reading on the forum, they think they're in FSD and they're just in cruise control, and then you know the road curves, and you know, you go so anyway.

I should say my car is hardware three, but I did borrow a Model S for 24 hours, uh, sort of a newer Model S from Tesla.

Did FSD most of the time.

I don't really notice much of a difference on the road, but the main difference is really the endpoints, what it does when you start your drive and what it does when you end your drives.

I feel like hardware four now is almost a complete package, like from the parking lot.

You can just you have your destination, you just press exactly whatever it does, let it go.

Yeah, and it will back out of the parking spot and just go.

And then when it gets to the destination, it will try to park.

I feel like hardware three tries to do that a bit, but it's not very successful.

Hardware four will actually look for a parking spot and park.

Now it wasn't perfect.

Almost the whole drive, I was on FSD for the whole day I had it, but twice it missed a turn and then I had to intervene because of that.

I don't know why it missed these turns, but it did.

And it tried to do things that were kind of crazy.

Like I had to turn right onto a road and an immediate left, and there's a bunch of traffic, and there's no way it was going to be able to make that immediate left, but it was still trying to do it, and I was just it was ridiculous.

And it was that bad because it had missed the first opportunity to get onto that road.

I had an issue where it missed the turn and it wanted to make a U-turn to correct itself, except it was trying to make the U-turn at the intersection where it's posted no U-turn.

So I had to intervene and say, no, no, not today.

That's just a suggestion.

I'm just a guideline.

Yeah, so those kind of things were a little odd.

And then also I needed to supercharge.

Okay, let me just tell you first, they gave me this car, and it's a new car that supposedly they're gonna sell to somebody, but it wasn't really perfect condition, like there was some serious real rash when the guy brought it around.

The front right tire, the whole room was you know scraped all the way around.

And I'm like, yeah, I hope they don't blame me for that.

I quickly took a photo in case in case it came back on me, and it wasn't very charged either.

They gave it to me at like 30%.

I'm like, I've got to draw this driving.

So on our way to my brother's house, which was kind of a ways away, I had to stop at a supercharger.

So when we got to the supercharger, it went to go park itself, but it screwed up parking because the only supercharger left was an accessibility one, you know, or the mounted sideways.

It was normal, it's just you had a little wider spot, and the handle itself had an extra stability ring to help you hold it if you're weak or something.

So often those kind of spots have some slashed out space to the side of it, so you have extra space to open the door.

Basically, when it tried to park, it parked in that space, which wasn't a full car width.

And I'm just like, What are you doing?

Yeah, so it screwed up.

So I had to stop and repark it so I could charge.

But other than that, it was pretty cool.

And then when I had to return it, I was like, Oh, you know what?

I should try actually driving this thing for a little bit.

Yeah, because I I only had three interventions that were minor like that.

So I just tested out the acceleration bit and gave myself a headache.

It was so strong.

It's like you feel your gut.

I feel my jowls, you know, my face is going and it yeah, I gave myself a bit of a headache.

I was like, wow, that's impressive.

And so I was looking at the pricing.

I guess you call it the baseline Model S or whatever, is $90 something thousand dollars, but then the plaid was only another $15k more.

Like, why wouldn't you not much more money?

Yeah, yeah.

If you're already having to spend 90 plus K, why won't you just get the plaid?

But they weren't gonna lend me a plaid when I asked the guys like, Oh, could I get a plaid?

I said, uh no, we don't lend out the plaid because people crash them.

I mean, I wasn't gonna crash it.

I was gonna say it's probably an insurance viability issue there.

Yeah, people want to actually test it out.

This car itself did have launch control, and I was playing with the settings.

You know, you could make selections about how it drove, like when you're an FSD, it defaulted into comfort, which gave it a softer suspension and the acceleration was lower.

And you could make choices like one was insane where you could have uh higher acceleration, and then also something about how the steering would respond.

And I keep it in insane mode.

Yeah, of course you do.

It's really nice having a screen in front of you, like actually being able to see things like your speed.

And I like the way it showed you when you're changing lanes, what's to your left or to your right that was new last year.

It was a really nice feature.

It's where you're already looking and it's kind of vignetted in the binnacle.

If it's on the left, it's on the left-hand side.

If it's a right turn, it's on the right side.

And it's so logical having that extra real estate so that you can have your playlist and your map while you have your FSD sort of stuff in the binnacle.

But yeah, it was a good experience.

The interior camera is much better.

The things I complain about in my car, like how that camera was such an afterthought, it's not positioned right, and there's no infrared illumination.

There is infrared illumination in that Model S.

It's got two LEDs.

You can't see them in the daytime, but if you hold up your phone camera, you can see your phone can see it, and you see two dots on either sides of the interior camera.

It's like, okay, they're actually thinking about this stuff, and getting that front nose camera that I'd asked for.

You know, these are the things that that I'd been wanting.

So I'm I'm glad that there was that progress there.

I don't need to buy one, but you know, I left my car there at the Tesla store and I pull in with the Model S that had the white interior, had the black headliner, and I got in my car.

I was like, ah, this feels a little bit like a downgrade.

Normally I'm like, yeah, my car's fine.

I was like, uh, not as nice.

Just the extra space.

On this Model S, for example, the center screen, the bottom of that large screen is flush with the dash, you know, whereas with the model three and on the Y, that screen is proud as if it's a monitor, it was just sort of stuck there with my height.

With my height, I actually whack my knee every couple months, and man, is that painful.

You know, because even though it's a rounded edge, it's an edge and it gets right above the plateau.

And it was so nice having the bottom of the screen tucked away so that it wasn't there for me to whack my knee on.

Anyway.

Well, that's sounds exciting.

I'm definitely jealous on the hardware four.

I really like my car.

I love driving it, I love the having the model S plaid, but the hardware three not getting the latest FSD kind of sucks.

Yeah, that would say I'm still optimistic that they'll give us an upgrade eventually or they'll port something.

It'll come up in our it'll come up in our scorecards.

You can get an upgrade right now, just buy a new car.

Definitely want.

Definitely not doing that.

Maybe I'll consider it if they give me a sub 1% interest large ass loan again, like they did a couple years ago, or under 2% interest.

Well, they had zero, but not for the plaid.

Yeah.

Well, I have to say the main thing for me is that my car still is really good, right?

Yes.

And it's more what could I sell my car for?

I couldn't sell it for more than 30k.

If I'm looking at cars about the age of my car and his features, they're somewhere in the 20,000s, let's say 25 or whatever.

I would buy my car for that price.

I definitely would buy my car for that price compared to what a new car would cost, two or three times that.

Why would I do that?

I have this valuable thing that has more value to me than I could sell it for.

So there's no reason for me to sell it.

No, I'm in the same boat.

I will probably drive mine until and your plat is worth what 40k now?

Probably not, yeah.

Probably not even 50, which is ridiculous.

What year is it?

2022.

2022, it's probably still worth 60.

Yeah.

Realistically, probably 60.

Yeah.

But all in was like 150.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, anyway.

Well, we should get to the task at hand.

It'd be a new year and all.

New year.

2026.

All right.

So 2025 predictions.

How did we do?

Let's go through it.

So the first one will another vehicle, Tesla or otherwise, dethrone the model Y as the world's best-selling car.

So we first asked this question in 2023 for 2024.

Sure.

I said no, because Model Y seemed to be going gangbusters.

You said it would happen.

Mike said no.

The funny thing is for 2024, there is some ambiguity because when we did the show last year, it looked like the Toyota Corolla had outsold the Model Y.

But then by the time we did our next show, a month or two later, Tesla had put out some new numbers such that the Model Yes.

It's out slightly.

Yeah.

So the question for 2025, then, will Model Y keep the top spot?

Mike said no, Louis said no.

And I said yes, maybe the model Y will keep it.

But understanding the context, the perception of the brand in that year or two has really changed with Elon's political stuff.

Drastically changed.

Of course, the situation with the subsidies and all that sort of stuff.

So what's the answer?

So the answer from what I've read is the Model Y is still the top-selling EV SUV.

How V?

Yeah, it's considered SUV.

If you look at the brand BYD sells the most volume.

Well, certainly, it used to be that Tesla was the best selling EV brand in the world.

That's not true anymore.

And that's no longer true.

BYD has surpassed them, even though BYD doesn't even sell in the US against Tesla, who's able to sell pretty much everywhere.

That's kind of a big deal.

So yeah, Tesla's as a brand has definitely fallen and a lot in the U.S.

a lot in Europe.

If you look at just a slice and say the Model Y, then it's still number one.

But I'm trying to understand these qualifications though, because before it was the best-selling vehicle or the best-selling car.

To say SEV is a much smaller thing than the vehicle.

It was the best-selling vehicle, was my understanding for previous years, but it's not now.

Really?

So Tesla has said that the Model Y is still the best-selling vehicle in the world in 2025.

At least that's what I think I saw them say on Twitter.

But I didn't see anything to back that up.

I'm not sure I'm really convinced.

Maybe we'll have a better answer in a couple.

Yeah.

What I saw from looking things up was it was the RAV 4.

Toyota Rav 4 was the third best and now is the first best.

So the RAV 4 sold more than a Corolla.

Again, this is worldwide.

I wasn't looking at the US.

So well, that's even more surprising.

The rest of the world isn't so SUV heavy.

If you're talking US, even in the times when the Model Y was the best selling, it was still an F-150 for a vehicle.

So even two years ago it was the F-150.

Like it's not even a good idea.

I think the way they put it was car.

Car means things that aren't a truck, I guess.

So huh.

We'll know better in the next few months as the numbers get finalized.

I don't think it's a point.

Okay, so what do we say for 2026?

Will the model Y keep or regain the top spot?

And we'll say the top vehicle that's not a truck.

We'll put it that way.

I say no.

I think it's gonna still say no.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with no, also, mainly because the Chinese are doing so well.

And if BYD is able to sell so well without even selling here, we all say no.

But we're all in agreement.

But I do want Tesla to succeed, so I hope they can do something to turn that around.

Already so, next question how many cyber trucks will be on the road?

So originally it was 2024, right?

And we had a kind of a convoluted way of answering the question because we put it in ranges, but basically we were all right for 2024.

By the first quarter, they'd have a couple thousand and they did.

By the end of 2024, they had around 40k cyber trucks sold.

Um just the way the conversation went, we didn't actually make predictions for 2025, but let's just ask the question though how many cyber trucks sold in 2025?

Now, Tesla was gearing up to sell a quarter of a million a year.

How did they do in 2025?

There's no way they did that many.

They missed it.

A factor of 10.

The numbers I found was between 16,000 and 20,000 in total for the year of 2025.

I think the most optimist number was about 25,000.

The last reported number was around 16,000, but that was in October.

So it was a projection that's not.

Well, keep in mind, I mean, they're selling them to SpaceX and everybody else now, too.

So yeah, the fleet vehicle, it seems like they took at least a thousand.

I mean, there's so many.

I've seen pictures of like the parking lot's completely full there.

And I don't know if those are sold or just stored, since, of course, we've seen them stored all over the country in various parking lots.

So it's hard to say.

It's not a great place to store them either, close to the Gulf.

It's kind of salty there, but man, not so great.

So look at it this way.

Even if you were super optimistic and said they sold 25,000, they wanted 10 times that at least, and also it's less than they sold the first year when they came out where they couldn't even make them very fast.

Yeah, so that's one of the worst things you can have with a brand new car release a model and have it go down year over year by that much by this.

Do they even obfuscate the numbers?

They do, they don't print it out separately.

We toss it in with the X, the X, the S, and the Cybertruck are all bundled together.

I don't know what you say about it except to say that that's a failure.

Okay, so here's the real question then for 2026.

Will Tesla cancel the Cybertruck?

That's what rational actors do.

Ford, they canceled that F-150 Lightning.

Yep, they did.

Now they could bring it back, and Tesla could bring back the Cybertruck too.

I just don't I don't think they're gonna cancel it.

I feel like a sensible company would consider canceling it, but Elon Musk you think there's too much ego there.

I don't think he can admit that he was wrong.

The other thing is what does canceling give them?

They could write off the loss.

They certainly make model S and X, and they don't sell very many, right?

It's like tens of thousands, low tens of thousands.

Yeah, do they sell more cyber trucks than they did S and X last year?

From what I can tell on the numbers, the answer is yes.

Okay, and they still sell those for now, but the Cybertruck is so unique.

So here's the thing that they should do they should take the S and X and actually update them so that they share some parts, so that they get the nearby wire and the 48 volt stuff, all the tech that's actually cool in the Cybertruck, because otherwise the Cybertruck has all those unique parts and it becomes a very expensive vehicle to make, more so than an S and X.

Yeah, so again, I don't think they'll cancel it.

I think they're gonna have to figure out how to make it more economical to maintain and support, maybe with the Robo Taxi or the Cyber Cab vehicle or something like that.

I almost disagree.

I in fact, I will disagree.

I will officially disagree with you.

I think they will cancel it.

I think they need the capital for the robotaxi project.

I mean, there's a finite amount of capital in any company.

And if you're trying to launch something like the robo taxi and you've got the cyber truck, which is an abysmal failure, you make the choice.

And I think right now the RoboTaxi's got Elon's full attention.

The Cybertruck is a has been.

I would say cars in general are kind of a has.

Moves on to other things, so optimists, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, but that's soft topic.

So I mean, yeah, okay.

Well, I'm gonna agree with Lewis and say that they're not gonna cancel it because there's too much ego there.

And Elon doesn't admit defeat, he'll just double down until it's actually what he wants to be true, is true.

So, like every year, it's effectively a lie, but eventually it might be true.

So he'll just keep saying it until it is true.

But at some point, reality is going to intrude because there's a limited amount of space you can store cyber trucks that nobody wants to buy.

Well, no, they don't have to keep making them.

Exactly.

They're gonna scale down production.

I don't think they're gonna lose any more money on them.

I doubt it'll be officially.

Canceled, but they probably got enough inventory sitting around that if you want one, you can get one.

But you have to keep the line open to do that.

Do you?

If you have them, they're already made.

If they're sitting around, if they can get thousands of them in space one, yeah.

So Doug and I say no, Mike says yes.

Let's go for it.

Yes.

Let's see.

Next question: Will Tesla deliver the next gen roaster?

So we all said no in 2025.

We were right.

We all said no in 2024, we were right.

2026, absolutely not.

I'm still standing by that.

What do you think?

I'm with you.

Just by their own admission, they will not deliver it in 2026.

The last time we got any update on this was that the shareholder meeting, which was very late last year in November, they said we're gonna have an unveiling.

You already unveiled it back in 2017, but we're gonna unveil it.

Neil unveiling.

And he said that was gonna be by the end of 2024.

Well, that came and went.

They said by the end of 2025, that came and went.

Then at that shareholder meeting, he said on April 1st, and I feel like he said on April 1st, just so he could say it's a joke or not, or even what we see is a joke or not, just like that dancing optimist when that first got unveiled.

Indeed.

So we'll see.

So he said then that they would have a new unveiling on April 1st, delivery starting in 2027.

2027.

That will be 10 years after people gave a quarter of a million dollars for this thing.

So it definitely won't deliver in 2026.

I think the question probably should be will there actually be this unveiling in 2026.

I think they will.

There may be an unveiling.

Part of what's happening, and I think the same idea will come back again later on other products.

But Tesla is used to being somehow the best or being able to claim the best, the fastest or whatever.

But that's a moving target.

That is a moving target.

It used to be that no one else was selling a proper EV, but that's not true today.

And of course, what BYD has done with the Yang something that was doing amazing stuff and also jumps over potholes and has around rivers.

So what's gonna set this thing apart and the stuff he's talked about is like it will fly and it will have coal gas thrusters.

Well, okay, but none of that's street legal.

And he's even said safety isn't even the priority now.

It's as if this is not a safe vehicle.

Safety should be a brand thing for Tesla.

So who really wants that?

People want a sports car, they don't want some science experience.

Show you a death trap, no warranty and no safety.

So it's been too long, they do need to deliver something.

Just deliver a car.

I think the Chinese manufacturers have basically caught up and they're able to push the envelope much faster and further because lack of regulation, lower costs, all kinds of other factors.

No qualms about corporate espionage either.

Exactly.

They've already got EVs that are over 3,000 horsepower.

Like the roadster was not going to be 3,000 horsepower.

They're already at the point now where you're not going to release something that's going to outperform those vehicles.

So just release what you originally promised.

A cool two-seat sports car that's more powerful than a plaid, or maybe as powerful, but much lighter, whatever your factor is, but that's what they should go for.

And all the extra nonsense is just delaying.

But I think they delayed so long that he feels more obligated that he's got to add more stuff to it.

So let's get us down here.

So what are we saying?

Will we see it in 2026?

In unveiling?

Yeah.

Yes, I think we will.

Yes.

Will they deliver in 2027?

No.

Probably not, but it's hard to say.

I'd have to see what they're gonna promise.

I think between all the other things going on, I don't see where they've got the bandwidth or the finances for it.

I hope we actually see something next year.

You want to see those jets, yeah.

I'm morbidly curious.

Morbidly, I mean, I do want to see what they end up doing.

Yeah, I mean, it could be some pretty cool things, it just doesn't make any sense, though.

Show car, concept car, sure.

But to sell it, no.

Oh, I'm gonna go to my Praxair supplier and get some LN2 to recharge the things.

It's just not that you think buying hydrogen gas is a problem.

That's much harder.

LN2 is actually pretty easy because it gets used a lot in the food industry.

And well, but you gotta get into the car.

That's easier than hydrogen.

Hydrogen is hydrogen is a lot colder.

Hydrogen is like around 20 Kelvin.

LN2 is 77 degrees Kelvin, so it's that's not anywhere near as dark.

It's practically practically warm.

Well, it's a huge difference.

It really is.

Yeah, it is.

Yep.

Next question.

This one was for turn to drive.

So will Tesla add the turn signal stock on front camera, the model S3 and X?

So this came up because is it Highland or Juniper?

It was Highland they pulled the stocks off.

So Juniper, they brought it back, and then the Cybertruck got a front camera.

So the question is would these show up on the other vehicles to bring them all in line?

Tesla basically has admitted that okay, removing the stock was a dumb idea.

Because now there's a retrofit kit for Highland.

There's a retrofit kit for the Model 3s.

So yeah, but the question is in 2025, right?

So Lewis, you said yes.

Mike said yes, I said no.

I'm not quite sure what the answer is because I think that is the plan.

I'm just not sure if they're done yet.

So technically, the answer is yes because of the or in the statement.

Yeah, the orange turn signal stock or front camera.

And they've definitely done the Boolean logic at play here.

But yes, they also started to do the turn signal stock, and it looks like they're gonna be just doing that.

That Model F that I borrowed, supposed to be a pretty new car.

It had the front camera, it did not have the turn signal stock, and it was kind of annoying having to press the button.

But honestly, it was on FSD most of the time, so it was only an issue once or twice.

Did you have a wheel or a yoke?

It was a wheel.

I was hoping for a yoke, but I think they made the wheel standard, yes, and they made the yoke an auction subcharge.

So that was another backtrack.

The X I drove had a yoke.

I love my yoke.

Maybe it was just too short of a time, but I did not like it.

I wanted it because I grew up watching Knight Rider, and also I wasn't touching the wheel that much, but I still, because of my height, have visibility issues because of that top bar.

Yeah, so I was really wanting the yoke so that I could see the nice binnacle that I don't have in my normal car.

You just know I relive your childhood, that's all.

Yeah, well, that too.

Yeah, I mean, I never lived that it's not really if I wanted to live the fantasy of my childhood, live it at all.

Well, now with Groc in your car, you can talk to it.

And you got FSD, so it'll drive itself.

Do we have a real answer on the stalk and stuff?

I think we all said yes, basically.

Or you said what's I'm just wondering what the what the current state is then?

So they so they they're definitely doing the front cameras, uh-huh, and they're at least doing the stocks on some of the models.

I think it's fair to say that yes, they are.

I don't think you'll ever get the shifter stock back, but I think the turret's gonna be a good thing.

Yeah, I agree.

And to be honest, I don't think the shifter is required.

I think it's completely fine without it, to be honest.

Yeah.

So, next question Will Tesla unveil a brand new model, something you do not currently sell, have not sold in the past, or have not announced it will sell in 2024.

I said no, Doug said he hopes not, Mike said no, and the answer was yes.

They revealed the cyber cab or a robo taxi.

Let's get the nomenclature right.

So I think the way they're doing it now, even though they're mixed up with it before, is that the cyber cab is the vehicle, that gold-looking two-seater thing.

Yep, and the robotaxi is the service, the cyber cabs will act as robotaxis.

Right.

Oddly enough, Tesla's failed to get the trademark on either of those.

And they tried, I ruined the hell.

They tried to give robotaxi too generic of a term that other people can use the word robotaxi, like Waymo's, those are robotaxis.

And then apparently they screwed up getting cyber cab because they had their We Robot event, which I think near around there, they unveiled the word cyber cab, they still hadn't gotten it, and like two weeks later, some other company managed to slot the trademark on it.

Like, that had to be somebody's job.

That's a mistake.

So, going back to the question, in 2024, the answer was yes, they did technically unveil the cyber cab as which is a new car.

Yeah.

The new car.

In 2025, I said probably no.

Doug said no, but they should refresh and release a van, which you know you've been saying for a while.

Mike says they'll build the van based on the why.

And so the answer for 2026.

Well, that's the Y L, right?

No, it's not a van.

Nice try, Mike.

So 2025, we all said no, basically, and we were right, there was not one.

2026, what are we thinking?

I'm sticking with no.

I don't know, man.

If they care about cars at all, okay, because they do first stipulation.

Is it required for Elon to get part of his pay package?

How about this?

There have been cyber cab like things spotted in Palo Alto and in Austin, but they all had steering wheels.

It feels like the company has vacillated a bit on what we've been calling the Model 2.

The Model 2, yeah.

Isaacson that said that they had convinced him that the Model 2 would just be a version of what they end up calling the cyber cab, what they used to call Robo Taxi.

Yeah, big method.

Um, and then Elon said, No, we're not doing it.

But if they sell a car, are we gonna count that?

I guess no, huh?

That we should just call it.

I would say it's still a cyber cab.

Yeah, okay, okay.

But I mean, it depends if they do them separately, then someone calling it the cyber car.

Cyber cars involved.

So, what I would say is, will they maybe yes?

So I can be different and say they will.

Should they no?

I don't think they should.

I think they need to fit some things, probably not, but maybe they might unveil some other model just to hype this stock further.

He's got to juice it somehow, right?

I guess.

So I don't know what that would be, but yeah, they might release some updated reveal.

He's got the three and the Y, he's got the roadster with the super fancy jet motors and everything else.

He's got the apocalypse now truck.

I mean, he's running now the features to sell as a new vehicle.

Oh, look, I'll say it again.

The way he redeems the Cybertruck is he uses the same lines, same technology, and just round it off a little bit and square off the back and make it a people mover.

But what if they take the cyber truck and they make it a little bit more truck like since the lightning is gone?

There's technically some potential in the market to go after the pickup truck groups.

Well, it's not just the lightning.

I mean, they've all dropped these trucks.

I think the lesson of the lightning, they looked at who was buying the lightning, and what they found were people that weren't already truck owners and maybe not even previous Ford owners.

So the way Ford looked at that was like, wow, with the lightning, we're acquiring new drivers, adding more people to our segment.

These are conquest sales.

But I think the real lesson was that the people that are buying these aren't truck drivers, they're just other people.

So the lightning wasn't something that truck drivers wanted.

And I think that may be the same with the Cybertruck.

I mean, these aren't really truck drivers, maybe a small percentage of them are, but they're people that want this interesting, crazy looking EV thing.

So I don't think you're really tapping into that big Ford F-150, sell so many, and it's just a different market altogether.

So those different people that bought that lightning as opposed to all these big truck owners, and it failed at some things, especially towing, where you have no control over the arrow off what you're towing, then your range is much worse.

And then you're dealing with how do I charge and do I have to unhitch to charge and all that sort of stuff.

So I don't think making the cyber truck more truck-like is necessarily going to help.

I mean, I do think it would sell more if it on its own was a little less polarizing in how it looked.

But I think it's not really truck drivers that are getting it.

If they made it more of a suburban type, big SEV people mover, soccer mom type thing, and turn that space into seats, also does vanishes.

You want it to be the canonero.

Cannonero, yes.

Actually, that one.

I have to say, one of my best friends has an F-150 Lightning and he loves it.

He's a truck guy, but he also works in tech.

Does he ever tow anything?

Probably not.

That's probably the big difference.

But I would argue, having lived in Texas for many years on several occasions, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, and having lived and worked on farms, most people that own trucks never tow anything.

Most people that own trucks don't actually use them for work.

I think it's an identity thing.

I think it's a culture thing.

Yeah.

Yes, there's a huge ton of people that do it for work.

Even when I worked in construction, a ton of us people had trucks, they never towed anything, just their identity.

They have a pickup truck, they have whatever, right?

Yeah, so part of that identity is probably people that are less likely to be interested in EVs.

Agreed.

That I agree with.

I think culturally it's just not an attractive offer.

And if you did care and you have money, Rivian is the choice, right?

Yeah.

Right.

So just to be clear, Doug, you're saying no new model.

Mike, you're saying no new model this year.

Okay.

And I'll just to be different, I can say yes.

I'll say that there is, just like Doug does.

You know, I it's a free world.

Again, I think that's what they should do.

That's why you think they should do it, but do you think they will?

Yeah, it's so easy for them.

So we're gonna show something, and yeah, this is something we're gonna sell.

And we I think they're gonna do it to the hype there's nothing that's the only reason I think they might do it.

Okay.

Next question Will Tesla offer FSD transfers?

So in 2024, I said yes, Doug said no, and Mike, we didn't have an answer, apparently.

2025, Doug said yes as needed, I said same, and then Mike also did not have an answer.

Were you there, Mike?

I thought I was there.

I didn't get a solid answer from you.

So 2026, maybe we can frame the question a little bit differently.

Go ahead.

Okay, we have to be careful because they have offered transfers in a limited format, right?

They've allowed people to buy up, yeah, buy a new Tesla, and they'll move their FSDs, they'll pretend like it's a limited time thing, and then they'll do it again.

For sure.

At this point, who are the people?

All you hardware three people.

When hardware five comes out, I'll consider it.

Yeah, they definitely will just keep offering it.

It should have just been a given at this stage.

In this last meeting, someone asked, Will you allow transfers again?

And Elon went, Okay, yeah.

As if he's making some big concession.

They think they literally already were offering it at the time when that person asked that question.

But the real reveal was like a year or two prior at the shareholder meeting when someone asked, Can you just make this permanent?

And Elon paused for a long time and he said, Well, we have to make money somehow.

They make the money on people rebuying literally free software over and over again.

Yeah, so it's a standard business pattern, right?

Of having different level licenses and other types of stuff, right?

Why do coupons exist?

It's because really the prices, whatever you're gonna get out of the person.

Yeah, so anybody that would say, I would do it, except I need to transfer, they'll just do it when they open up the transfers and they make it exclusive, but it'll be every this sale, that sale, whatever.

And then all the rest of the time, anybody that's willing to spend the money, they'll take your free money.

So I agree.

I think effectively it is always gonna be available, just not 24 7 365.

It's gonna be like every quarter, the last month.

I would also say that if you could get lucky enough to reach a person when you're trying to buy a new Tesla and ask them, they'll probably do it.

They're close to deal, regardless of whether it's official or not.

You might be able to swing that.

Yeah, I wanted to read this comment at 1951 MW said I totaled my model three and they transferred to a new model three.

That makes sense.

It makes sense, it's obvious.

But I know people over the years that have bought model S's and then their car got totaled and they had to buy FSD again.

That hurts.

Yeah, that's terrible, especially since back then they were selling a product, it was like FSD capability that never came.

So I think the writing was a little more on the wall about it now.

And so I'm glad that they transferred it for this listener because I know several people that have been screwed and they're very pro-Tesla, and they've had several Teslas and have bought it again, right?

Like five times.

Yeah, okay.

Okay, from back Elon successfully got his money then, yeah, yeah, over and over again.

Anyway, so I think at this point, this question's kind of dead then because we all basically agree it's already happened, so we can kind of throw that one out pretty much except for like because he never said yes or no.

Yeah, but it kind of ties into the next question, yeah.

So will Tesla offer an upgrade path for hardware three owners?

Not a chance in hell.

Doug said 2025, no, but yes, eventually.

I said same.

I also agreed it was not gonna happen last year, but eventually they will.

Mike said, not a chance.

Mike's consistent at least.

I am consistent on that point.

So the question is: do we think it'll happen in 2026 or not yet?

I don't think it will happen in 2026 yet.

Me neither.

I don't think it ever will.

Okay.

Well, it doesn't matter until they actually have this thing solved because it's possible that hardware four isn't enough.

Then that becomes a bigger issue.

Hardware five and hardware six are already on the road, Matt.

Already on the road.

Yeah.

In fact, hardware five is delayed.

I'm pretty sure they were supposed to be in production by end of last year.

It definitely delayed, but hardware five is not that far away.

I would be surprised if we didn't see it in cars later this year.

And then hardware six is already in development.

So again, hardware four, probably not enough.

Hardware five, maybe.

We're starting to get somewhere where it seems for what most people consider self-driving and what they care about.

Hardware four already can do a bunch of things, hardware three can't.

Hardware five might close the gap more, but depends on what level of safety and reliability.

Well, they'll need some headroom on the hardware itself to keep upgrading and bringing new features out.

In my opinion, hardware five would be the earliest they would let us upgrade.

I think hardware three people will never upgrade to hardware four.

It'll probably be a jump over that.

Which would make sense.

Yeah.

I think all that's pay for it.

Honestly, I think it'll be a probably like a couple thousand dollar upcharge, would be my guess.

How else is Elon gonna make it?

I think they'll certainly offer it for some people to pay for it.

Like they did on some Model S's that had hardware two and they needed to do some kind of my father-in-law went from like two to 2.5,

but he had to pay like a $1,500 upcharge.

Tessa is kind of slippery about it, but I I think for people in my situation, uh Lewis and my situation, there might be options like we'll get a new computer, but we'll have to pay for new cameras or something.

Right.

You know, I'm sure they'll find a way to extract money.

The real thing is they'll try to convince us to buy new cars, right?

They'll let us transfer our FSD.

I wanted to insert a new question here.

Elon's been talking about, like with hardware five, we're gonna need so many chips.

We've had a mega factory for batteries, we've had gigabactory.

He called it a Terra Factory, a Terra Factory.

So another factor of a thousand.

Yep.

Uh basically for Tesla to become a fab and start making their own chips, they're gonna need so many of these AI chips that Tesla have to do it themselves.

Now, Tesla likes to be vertically integrated, but man, I don't see it.

That's a tough sell.

I mean, as somebody who worked at a brand new fab that was cutting edge and spun up at a brand new fab and did all that billions of dollars that went into it in the decade of time and everything else, like it's so hard decade, huh?

Stephen, just even having your clean room work and like getting your particle count down.

I mean, I worked in research labs and they'd make some change, and then it would be like weeks before our particle count came down, and it did all these things that we started out as like a class 1000 because like research, and we're trying to get down to like a class 100 or class 10, and they did all this stuff, and we were nowhere near class 10 after all that.

Yeah, I just don't see it.

And even looking at companies like Intel, man, Intel has failed to keep pace with TSMC.

Intel failed.

Global Foundries gave up on it entirely.

They literally said it was not worth the investment.

So I worked there when they were doing seven and ten nanometer research.

We were shipping 14 nanometer devices and doing seven and 10 research, and they gave up and straight up said, you know what?

After a couple of years, this is not worth doing.

There's not enough customers because there's only so many people in the world willing to buy your yields, willing to buy those chips, and there's not enough money to go into it to make a profit out of the investment required, right?

Like one litho machine EUV is 400 plus million dollars, and so you just to do a full setup, you're talking several billion dollars to be able to set up to make that level of device.

There's not enough customers that are willing to buy the devices at a markup enough to make back the money, right?

So TSMC is the only company in the world that does it for profit.

Samsung technically has some capability, but it's not, again, not nearly at the yield or scale.

And China now claims that they have a company that can make their own X-ray lithography machine, right?

An EUV lithography machine, which is the hardest part, not the only hard part, but the hardest part.

So they're claiming they're starting to get there, but again, I think they're easily 10 years behind, but we'll see.

They may narrow the gap.

But yeah, if if Tesla actually needs those chips, like actually needs it to be four nanometer, two nanometer, whatever, there's no freaking way they should open a fab.

Like it's genuinely.

A bad idea.

Doesn't mean they won't try, but it's a bad idea.

I feel like it's one of those things that Elon has a little bit of knowledge about, but just enough to be dangerous and doesn't really know.

It's kind of like when he was talking about the cyber truck and that they'd have to have submicron for citizen or something.

Absolutely ridiculous if you ever actually worked on this stuff and to know what tolerances actually mean and how something like that is so much more difficult and extremely more expensive and unnecessary for what he was doing.

So he's just talking out of his literally talking out literally, figuratively, literally talking out of his butt there.

And to be clear, TSMC can't even do it in the US, right?

They've even tried themselves, company that actually does it, tried to do it here.

It does not work culturally and for the cost of me to do it.

They have to pay a certain amount of money and they need a certain type of labor that you could not.

Yeah, you have some very specific skilled labor that they have in Taiwan.

It is in Singapore and in the region that they don't really have here.

And even I mean, I'm I'm just thinking about just stuff I've done.

So I worked in a fab at university, and then for a little bit I worked in industry.

And just because I was familiar with it, I was kind of on the fab path.

But even the people I was talking to, I was working for some aerospace company.

As a smart guy, you don't deal with doing fab stuff, you deal with the designing the design circuit or whatever, or maybe even the chip design.

But right, you don't worry about the fab and the yield stuff because that's right, that's not the that's not the process engineers, they don't get paid anywhere close.

Yeah.

Like those process engineers are very important.

Are very important, very sharp and they're very dedicated to what they do.

Yes.

I don't know if it's culture or whatever, but even in the smart person realm, they're not doing that.

It's like being a very fancy plumber or something.

So that's an interesting thing that he would say.

I'm not surprised that he would say that they should.

It's a terrible idea.

I don't think they'll do it.

Hopefully, somebody will talk about it.

I could see them actually trying.

I don't know if they'll succeed.

So I guess the question is, will they actually do it?

Will they try?

I would say no, purely because I don't think chip production is the problem anymore.

There's always more opportunity to make more chips.

I think really the issue for a lot of these companies is not the chips anymore.

Certainly in the West, it's more the power production and the infrastructure to use the chips.

A lot of them supposedly have GPUs just sitting on the shelf, unable to be plugged in and turned on in a lot of places, almost like the dark fiber era.

Um, I don't think they need to actually make more chips themselves.

I don't think they'll do it.

What do you think, Mike?

No, we'll keep it straight and simple.

No, yeah.

I mean, I really hope they don't because I think it would be a mistake.

I want Tesla making cars and they can get all the chips they need.

We can get all this tariff craziness to stop happening.

And we should figure out a way to do that kind of manufacturing here.

Yes.

Maybe hire those people to come here.

Of course, crazy stuff happened.

They killed that import process.

So yeah, and of course, it happened that Hyundai with all those Koreans trying to teach us how to do stuff the right way.

And then, oh geez, what a mess.

Yep, yep.

All right.

When will Tesla start offering a Robotaxi service?

Now Mike said 2027, Lewis said 2027, I said 2026, but I said they could easily do a pilot program.

And they did that.

I said they could have 10 or so and do it in Austin.

Because my feeling is that FSD is pretty good.

And if you're able to do it in like an urban, relatively low speed environment, and if it's sort of geofenced in some place without too much weather, that they could probably do it.

And I live in Austin and I've signed up and I still don't have access to it.

So yes, you're right, it technically exists, and some people apparently can use it.

I'm not one of those people.

I'm actually kind of shocked that you can't use it.

I can use a Wambo, but I cannot use a Tesla.

Are you out of the active area?

Uh I just mean when I'm downtown.

I live in Austin, but I live south side, which they don't offer down here.

They only do it north of the river.

But interesting, even when I'm there, I don't have access to download the app and even try to order it right to like set it up.

So they put out an email that felt like some kind of bait and switch because the email was like, Oh, are ready for you to sign up for a RoboTaxi?

I'm like, Great, because I happen to be in California and I knew they had something in the Bay Area going.

And I'm like looking at this email, like, oh awesome.

And I try to sign up.

There was no real sign up.

I don't know what the point of that email was.

I just got the email and thought I got in because I was on the waiting list.

I was like, Yes, I'm finally in.

Nope, not real thing, nothing.

All I was able to do was re-register for the waiting list.

And so I'm like, well, is this thing actually going on or not?

So we talked about this stuff last year.

By the time we did our next episode, it was announced that they'd be rolling this thing out.

And then we did have an episode before and after they started doing the Austin pilot program.

Tesla, I feel like all their names of stuff is just oxymorons and irony because already FSD beta went to FSD supervised.

So it's full self-driving supervised, which is already an oxymoron.

And they talked about with this robotaxi, it's FSD unsupervised, right?

Okay, so here's a robotaxi service using FSD unsupervised, except there's a supervisor.

There's a supervisor sitting in the passenger seat.

Okay, come on, what is this?

My sense is that it hasn't really expanded much.

They've expanded the area, but it still seems there are only like maybe 30 cars out there, which is not a whole lot.

And so when I was in the Bay Area, I was hoping to ride a Robotaxi.

Of course, it didn't.

I did get a couple Waymo rides, which were really great and interesting.

I kind of like the integration because I had my phone and it could just play my music, my YouTube music would just come up.

And they have their lidar and it's very interesting.

You can sort of see all the people walking around you, and you can even see people in other cars.

And yeah, it looks like it really has an awareness of what's around it and it knows where all the other Waymos are because it displays them differently.

Then you have a sense that its sensor reach extends beyond itself because it kind of has the sensor reach of the other vehicles.

So it's almost like the way the F-35 works, you know, we have the sort of network.

Yeah, the sort of tactical awareness of the area.

Waymo embarrassingly had a failure where there was a power outage.

And a Tesla's like, well, you know, the Teslas had no problem, and here's Waymo blocking traffic.

Well, those Teslas have people and the driver's seat.

And my understanding about the way the Waymo's failed is it was kind of a network error in a way, because when they're in a situation, they're programmed to check in with the mothership or whatever, just for safety's sake, to get a suggestion of what do I do here.

But because there was a power outage, you had some critical mass of vehicles all asking for help at the same time.

And so they're all just sort of stalled out.

Overwhelm the network.

Yeah.

And so that was the problem.

And that's an important failure condition to know about.

And that's maybe an advantage Tesla would have is if they'd all have something like Starlink that wouldn't be affected by a terrestrial network issue.

But Boymo, I was perfectly happy with, and I was really excited to try to robo taxi since they advertise it being available there.

But I don't know how many people can actually use it.

Maybe we're blacklisted.

Very possible.

It's very possible and blacklisted.

So the question then for this year, I suppose, is do we think they're going to do it without a driver?

That's a real question.

When will the safety driver leave?

Like Elon made this prediction.

Didn't he say?

I don't even remember because he made so many promises.

But by the end of 2025, last year, Robo Taxi service was supposed to be going wide.

They talked about FSD unsupervised.

They talked about not having the safety driver.

He also talked about flipping the switch or like it awakening or something.

So I don't know, none of that stuff happened.

So any of those things are worth predicting.

When will I get to use RoboTaxi?

When will you who actually live in Austin get to use it?

Will you get to try it next year?

And then just basically when will the safety driver go away?

So I think this year I will get to try it.

I'd be surprised if they make it the whole year without opening it up to more people.

So I would expect I'd get to try it this year unless I am actually blacklisted, which is possible.

The safety driver, though, I don't think goes away this year.

To me, it's not real until that can happen, but I don't think the safety driver goes away this year.

So the safety driver still all through 2026?

Yep.

I think yes.

I think that would be the responsible thing to do.

Yeah, I think you're right.

I don't think FSD has got enough redundancy in place for something like a commercial activity without that safety driver.

I could see it going away very specific region.

Like I could see them going away in Austin, but in the Bay Area in California, they don't even have a license to be a rubber taxi.

They're signed up as a rideshare service, like Uber.

Yeah, like the Ubers that are already driving.

That's true.

They might actually do it just because they legally can.

Yeah.

They want to be able to say it.

Yeah.

I'm going to say they they'll get rid of it in Austin.

I'll say that.

They'll get rid of 2020.

Yeah.

It's very possible.

What do you say, Mike?

Nope.

So next one.

Will we see driverless ride from West Coast to the East Coast?

So last year we all said no.

Yeah, that's kind of open-ended.

So we all said no last year.

Define driverless, right?

Technically, if you have to get out and plug it in, set out.

So we had this discussion a couple times over the last year or so.

And I said that I think it could do it with someone sitting in the car without an intervention.

You guys were very much against it, but I tend to think having ridden a lot and then it being pretty good, you could probably do a long ride without an I think you could now.

Yeah.

I would say favorable weather during the day driving only.

I would say during the day you got a fighting chance.

I think they could do it now, right?

I feel like I think during extra highways, you got a fighting chance.

So let's talk about what's happened.

Last year, a group tried to go from LA to I don't know.

Yeah, they got one like 100 miles.

And then there was something road debris.

It was sad.

There was like and they weren't doing nothing.

And then at the last moment, like, whoa, it's not an animal, and it was something hard, and it just bang messed up their car.

That's sad.

Now, within the last month, I think.

Yeah, some guy claims he did it.

Like in December.

Some yeah, a guy claims he did it.

And I believe that the car could do that.

He said no interventions.

Now, just in my experience, intervention.

Well, not no intervention means I'm sitting on the side of the road, I hit start, and I don't touch it until I end up in the supercharger parked.

That's been my general.

And I think that you can do that.

I've been able to do that.

You can do that within reason.

The thing is, though, like I said, it missed a turn and then I intervened, but I didn't need to.

I'm sure it probably would have just ended up having to go the wrong way for a bit, but I just think eventually it would have figured it out.

Cheap highways have been on that forever could be a long way, so you can turn around.

Okay, and also it's recalculating when it has to charge.

And my experience with that hardware 4S was I had to go to a supercharger twice, and the first time it screwed up in terms of the parking, but the second time, again, it finds an open spot and it just pulls in.

All I had to do is get out and plug it in.

And then when I was done, I unplugged it and have my new destination or continue my trip and then press go and it just went.

So I don't know if that counts.

If someone's in the car, I think what Elon said back in was it 2016?

It was nobody in the car.

Nobody's in the car, nobody in the car, which is until it's got like inductive charging or something, or a robot or an optimist that gets out and plugs in the thing.

That's what you need.

An optimist attended at every supercharging station.

That's what I want them to announce this year.

Let's get let me get that Elon.

That would be a sight to watch.

Yeah, it'd be like getting gas in New Jersey.

Yeah, somebody in the chat did make a comment though that I agree with.

Basically, the guy pissed off a lot of people behind him, which, yes, I mean, like that's the thing that I would agree with.

I feel like today you could do it from coast to coast under favorable conditions during the day.

It is possible to do.

You'll be a jerk on the road.

At some point, someone will be mad at you, and you're not worried about road debris or potholes or other types of things that it's gonna not see or it's gonna mess up your suspension, whatever.

Is it a great experience?

No, but it's technically possible now.

I think the experience will keep improving, but anyway, I would say yes, they can do it now.

I would give it credit.

We had a prediction, right?

Didn't we?

Yeah, so for last year we all said no.

Well, I said they're making steps.

I think what I was saying is that it could accurate.

I mean, they are I didn't straight up say no, I thought they could do it.

I do think it's technically possible to do now.

You know, they did only once they had a car self-deliver, but of course there was like a minder car driving behind it.

What's that follow car doing?

Like follow car probably has a kill switch.

Probably.

So will they do a car without somebody in it coast to coast next year?

No, no, without somebody in it this year, I don't think this series.

I don't think so.

Yeah, I think with somebody in it under optimal conditions, it's doable today.

Yeah, I think they'll do it with a safety driver basically, but I don't think they'll do it without.

Okay.

I think we can say that they already did that last year.

We'll just take that guy at his word.

Yeah, that's fair.

I'm just thinking of some of those fun roads that may not have gone up and down.

With any drive, it's probability.

You don't know what other people are gonna do.

Like I could get in an accident at any time.

So let's see, will a competing company beat Optimus to market?

Tesla's planning to sell Optimus in 2026.

And we all said yes.

And that was quickly true.

And it was very true pretty early 2025.

Like Unitrees, then there are a bunch of humanoid robots around that you could buy now to very teleoperated by a person in China.

That's an interesting model, teleoperated, but that gives it an opportunity to learn.

I mean, factory robots are easy in a way, a factory is a very controlled environment, every home is different.

So many random things going on, so many chaos agents, children, and that's they're quite good at it.

So, yeah, that question's done.

But Tesla has been predicting to start deliveries in 2026.

And so in 2025, we were making predictions about 2026 already.

Will they actually deliver something?

You guys said no, I said yes.

We could ask the same question again.

Will they actually deliver something in 2026?

I think yes, they will at this point.

I would change my answer.

Nope.

And Mike says no, I still say no.

I'm staying with yes.

The thing is, though, there's so much competition now.

It's kind of like the roadster in a way.

Like, I feel like part of the roadster delay has been Tesla wanting to be able to say they're the best at something with it.

I don't see Tesla being able to do that with Optimus.

They've been spending so much time on hands, they wanted these very fancy hands.

I just don't think that's the way to go.

If you want a useful robot that's going to do stuff, a three-finger hand will probably get through most of the useful things that a robot can do.

Like, do you want the thing to play the piano and play the violin?

No.

He talked about performing surgery.

I mean, we have purpose-built robots for performing surgery.

I feel like he's barking up the wrong tree, or he has some sci-fi mindset of it'll be really impressive.

Do my laundry.

That's the only thing that matters.

If it can load and unload the washer and dryer, I will buy one.

And fold and fold, yeah, exactly.

Hold it, hang it up, whatever.

Folding requires some dexterity, but I think about my own hands.

Where do I really use my dexterity?

Probably mostly is when I'm typing.

Of course, the robot doesn't need to type, they can input other ways if it needs to input.

Maybe when I'm washing dishes, but there are machines to do dishwashing.

And when I play an instrument, I use my dexterity, but I don't need the robot to be playing instrument.

If anything, if you're gonna have some machine playing music, AI can just generate music.

You don't need it, you don't need it playing an instrument.

But I feel like in Elon's head, oh, this is the cool thing, the amazing, brilliant thing, but that's not useful, you know.

I'm impressed when I listen to live music of the skill of the person that's able to play the music.

I'm not gonna pay money for a robot that's going on.

Robotic skill is not impressive.

Yeah, and might as well be listening to a recording.

And what's the point of that?

Right.

So I would not invest so much time in the hands.

Sure, eventually you might want fancy hands, but you want it actually doing useful stuff, laundry.

That's probably the main thing.

Don't want it taking care of my kids, being able to fold or hang up clothes.

That is probably the main non-automated task in the home that people do that's kind of annoying.

That's all my wife asks about.

Can it wash my laundry and fold it?

Right, exactly.

The dishwasher itself, we already have a robot that washes dishes.

Your dishwasher, that's what it is.

Again, what's the annoying part left?

The loading and unloading.

That's harder to do.

It's fragile, breakable.

I would start with the clothes.

Do the clothes part, load and unload the washing machine, the dryer.

Let's do that.

So I think Neo has the right approach there.

The Neo 1X is I kept wanting to say Neo Rest, but that's my toilet because I have a Toto Neo Rest toilet anyway.

So well, with remote operation, that robot may help you there too.

There you go.

My toilet is already robotic.

I don't need any additional robotic help.

Okay.

So it's a new point approach in that they design this robot to be safe around animals and people.

It's soft to the touch, relatively low weight.

And then, yes, they do have this sort of teleoperation model, but that gets it in homes, that gets it learning how to work in a home.

In a way, it's like the Tesla model of FSD, in that you have people driving it and it's sort of learning how to work in the environment.

So I'm impressed with them.

I'm impressed, but a little bit wary of Boston dynamics right now.

Yes.

Um, their robot approach, or at least the barbot that they have right now, the electric atlas, the one that replaced the hydraulic atlas.

I think it's very smart in that, okay, it can be human form, but there's no reason for it to have a limitation that humans do.

Like its joints can go all around.

They have this idea of having these two hot swabbable batteries in its back, but it can just walk backwards and turn its head around and pull out its own battery and then charge the batteries in its one at a time so it stays powered and they can just keep working instead of having to wait around to charge.

My issue is I guess they've been bought by Hyundai, and what they showed at CES was CGI renderings of this thing.

I'm a little worried.

Like, I don't know what's going on with this acquisition, you know, and Boston Dynamics has been doing stuff for what 30 years or something.

Yes, a while.

I just don't, I just don't know where they are now.

Like I looked at this new robot, it looked like it was using the same actuator in a lot of spots.

It just seems like, is that the approach you want to go?

I I, you know, make it modular, make parts interchangeable or upgradable or whatever.

But it just looked a little weird to me.

See, it looked like someone was trying to save money and they didn't have a working prototype at the show.

They just had a static thing, and then they showed a bunch of CGI that didn't inspire confidence in me, where the existing thing that they had looked really cool, but maybe that wasn't quite manufacturable.

So we'll see where they go.

But still, I just don't think Tesla is.

Are they in the same league there?

I just the way Elon's been talking about unlimited abundance and never have to work again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's just kind of crazy talk.

But also, in terms of what it means for Tesla as a company, if Tesla's gonna be this eight trillion dollar company because of Optimus and Robotaxi, I just don't see it because there are so many competitors that will also be in that space and I think are better or definitely have the potential to be better.

And again, the way he talks about this stuff, it's gotta get your radar up.

It just sounds like snake oil.

It's the underpants gnomes, you know.

The underpants gnomes from South Park.

Actually, Elon quoted them in some presentation for SpaceX many years ago, but of course he got it wrong.

He misquoted the thing.

But it's step one, collect underpants.

Step two, like a bunch of question marks.

Step three, profit.

So here it is.

Uh, step one, optimus, step two, step three, unlimited abundance.

How do we get there?

What's the step two?

It seems to me it's just uh people who are already rich protecting their resources, and even middle class people have no real access to making any money to afford this optimist thing.

And Elon even suggested that you wouldn't have to put people in jail, you'd have an optimist follow you around and just make sure you don't do crime.

Uh that sounds pretty dystopian to me.

Yeah.

Who's deciding what kind of crime you're about to do?

And you have a robot minder.

What's that robot gonna do to keep you from doing a crime?

It's gonna tase you, or what is it gonna do?

What if it decided that you insulted a cop?

You need to get tased for that.

It just makes no sense to me.

So I don't know where that's going.

Yes.

Robot army really doesn't make sense for anybody that isn't already in power.

For most of us, it's not a good future to have.

Yeah.

Um, we're almost done.

So this one was Will Tesla at a publicly facing COO.

We all said no, they didn't.

I don't see why they would now.

Yeah, I mean that's a kind of a perennial question.

Do they need one like a Gwen Shovel?

Yes, they do.

Yeah, desperately need one.

I guess the main problem is it's all about the stock price right now.

And Elon being CEO is what props up the stock price because of some cult of personality.

Yeah, cult of personality is, I guess, a more accurate way of putting it.

And then everyone that is a stockholder wants him to stay CEO because if he left, the stock price would tank, reset to something realistic, something that matches actual production.

Well, he's probably never going at this point.

He's tied himself to it.

He'll threaten to leave, which again is ridiculous because if he left, he would tank his own value.

Yes.

Yep.

So it's the false threat, but he'll make that threat anyway, and everyone will thank him for it.

Yep.

Weird.

So not gonna happen.

We don't really need to keep going with that one.

All right, and then the last one we had was will the SLS survive past the Artemis II?

And we all said no.

You know, at the time when we first asked this question, Jared Isaacman was nominated to be the new head of NASA.

Elon and Trump were all chummy.

And Elon is like, well, we could do the whole program by ourselves.

SpaceX could do the whole thing.

And SLS is very overpriced and is essentially the Senate launch system.

It looked like Artemis 2 was already going to happen.

We're already moving forward with it.

Now, a lot of weird things happened.

Jared's nomination got yanked after Elon and Trump had a falling out.

Then there was a lot of weird stuff with the Secretary of Transportation.

Duffy, it looked like he was trying to get the job, but eventually Jared was renominated and he has it.

So it's after a delay of a year, he's got it.

One thing that happened with Duffy, he basically said, Well, maybe we need to open up Artemis III because Blue Origin was showing progress.

Blue Origin managed to return their booster with their new Glenn, and Blue Origin has at least designs for a lunar lander, one that's for cargo, one that's bigger for crew.

And they've even been doing tests at the MBL, the neutral buoyancy lab in Johnson.

So that's in Houston.

I don't even know how you would do MBL testing with Starship.

It's so freaking big it wouldn't even fit in the tank.

Now, SpaceX, after that happened, SpaceX did show some renderings and some actual photos of things they're working on for the HLS Starship, the human landing system Starship, but it didn't feel far enough along to me.

And Starship has been kind of stalled for a bit.

Like their version two, most of those vehicles did not get to be completely tested because they burned up on re-entry.

And they had failures before getting to re-entries.

And now they're on to version three, which has yet to do a launch test.

So it's anybody's game now for Artemis III, which is good, I think.

Yeah, whoever gets there first, but it's a battle of the billionaires.

Will Blue Origin or will SpaceX do it?

And the goal is to do it before Trump leaves office.

So that's the limiting factor.

So he's out in 2028.

So Artemis 2 right now is supposed to be this year.

Yeah, the first launch window is February.

Yeah, Artemis III was originally supposed to be in 2027, but it's more likely not going to be.

It's likely unlikely.

The thing is, the money's there.

The presidential budget proposal cut a lot of science out of NASA and seemed like the only thing that was getting any money was SLS, but Congress actually controls the purse strings, which is there.

And they just brought it all back basically.

And they they pretty much brought it back.

Maybe the Mars sample return won't happen, but I think the money's there.

I think RMS3 will happen.

The question is, SpaceX or Blue Origin, HLS, is the lander actually going to be ready?

SpaceX has a ton to do because they have in-orbit refueling.

They have yet to demonstrate a bunch of stuff that's supposed to be demonstrated the last few years.

I don't know if they're the problem.

They got all that Starlink money coming in.

They should be able to make some progress.

And they might go public too.

So anyway, will SLS survive past Artemis 2?

I think now, yes, at least it has the money for it.

Artemis in, whatever, it could happen without SLS.

And that's the goal, actually.

I think past Artemis 4.

There's an upgraded SLS that probably is never happening where its second stage gets upgraded.

That's probably never happening.

So the goal would be to replace that with New Glen or Starship or something, some other launch vehicle.

But I think yes, SLS will survive at least Artemis III because the money is there for SLS to do it.

Alrighty.

So Doug changed his answer to yes.

I think you're right because the money being there with the budgets.

SLS at this point, like you said, it's probably going to make it through to Artemis 4.

Would be nice if they would replace it with something much cheaper, but it is what it is.

But yes.

So we all said no.

We still could be right, but we were probably wrong.

And now Doug says yes this year.

What do you think, Mike?

Do you agree?

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

So we're all basically.

Yeah, with the budget.

I think there's too many jobs at stake.

Well, there's too many jobs at stake.

So right, exactly.

I will say that's the thing that a lot of people always seem to screw up or not realize.

When you talk about these huge programs spending billions of dollars on all this stuff, a lot of that money is getting people having jobs and doing work.

Congress knows that.

And that's how those projects get crazy.

Now, what sucks is when they're public companies that are also using that to pump up their numbers and their share prices and all the other nonsense, and it's not like just salaries for people.

But anyway, any final thoughts or comments, Doug?

You wanted to make some other SpaceX related things was that Elon had been planning to do a launch to Mars and he's acted as if he could do all this stuff at the same time.

And there is a Mars window, I guess, this year.

So basically land uh get an Optimus on Mars.

To me, it'd be like crash land it, which you know is still an achievement.

It's an achievement.

Will that happen this year?

I'm gonna say no because I'm not seeing enough progress fast enough.

But they could maybe do it, but I don't think they'll make the window with the current progress.

I mean, there are other things, people talking about data centers in space, and now Elon has jumped on that bandwagon too.

Terrible idea.

But I think we can save a bigger discussion about that for another show.

Cool.

Again, welcome back, guys.

We're in a new year, 2026.

Did predictions.

I feel like we did pretty well on last year.

Not too bad.

I didn't actually do the tallies this season.

Yeah, me neither.

But this is fun.

So again, thank you.

Thanks for listening.

Thank you, everyone, that supports the podcast and Tesla Motors Club.

Uh, as always, you can go to Tesla Motorsclub.com,

sign up and become a supporting member.

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And if you listen to the audio podcast, the audio version, big shout out to Doug for all the hard work he does in editing the audio.

That's all for us.

We'll see you next time.

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