Electrek Jan 16, 2026

Podcast: Tesla stops selling FSD, Canada and EU to slash Chinese EV tariffs, the battery that could change the world, and more

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Car

Toyota Chr

The Toyota C-HR is a small SUV that is easy to drive and has a modern look. It's great for city driving and comes with safety features to help keep you safe on the road.

Term

FSD

FSD means Full Self-Driving, which is a feature package from Tesla that helps cars drive themselves. The cost of this package has been going up as Tesla adds more features.

Term

self-driving

Self-driving means that a car can drive itself without needing a person to control it. It uses technology like cameras and sensors to understand its surroundings.

Term

subscriptions

Subscriptions mean you pay a regular fee, like monthly, to use something instead of buying it outright. In cars, this can apply to features like self-driving technology.

Term

Autonomy Plus

Autonomy Plus is a feature from Rivian that helps the car drive itself a little, making it easier for the driver. It uses technology to assist with driving tasks.

Term

Autopilot is a feature in Tesla cars that helps with driving, like keeping the car in its lane and adjusting speed. However, the driver still needs to pay attention and be ready to take over at any time.

Term

level two system

A level two system means the car can help with driving, like steering and speed, but the driver still has to pay attention and be ready to take control if needed.

Car

Tesla Model Y

The Tesla Model Y is a popular electric SUV made by Tesla. The 2026 version will have some updates, especially for the more expensive premium version.

Term

black badging

Black badging means the car has black logos instead of the usual shiny ones. It makes the car look cooler and sportier.

Car

Tesla Model 3

The Tesla Model 3 is a smaller electric car made by Tesla that many people like because it's cheaper than other models and can go a long distance on a single charge. It's important because it helps more people drive electric cars, which are better for the environment.

Term

Two, one, we are alive on the episode of Electric Podcast.

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

How are you doing this week, Seth?

I'm good.

All right.

I hope you're ready for a big show because we have a lot to talk about this week.

Let me give you a little sneak peek at what's ahead.

So we're going to discuss the big announcement from Elon Musk this week that Tesla is

going to stop selling FSD subscription only as soon as next month.

So we're going to discuss the implications of that.

And a slight little 2026 refresh, no matter why, nothing too crazy, but worth talking about

since this is the best selling electric vehicle in the world.

Then we've been talking about this for weeks, if not months, but now it's official.

Canada has come to an agreement with China for Chinese electric vehicles to come into

the country, breaking the hold that the U.S. had on the Chinese EV coming to North America.

Oh, I mean, Mexico is still, it's considered North America to be going there, but the

North-North.

It's hard to think of Mexico as North America knowing that I'm freezing my balls here

in the license.

Yeah.

Also, I think the Caribbean, like some of that, it's a good point.

The weather's just too nice there, though.

Yeah.

It's all the north.

All right.

And on top of Canada, the EU in China also had progress on the deal there.

So it's a big, big break here for the Chinese this week.

Then we discuss a Rivian getting really close to the R2 launch.

We're going to talk about the Toyota CHR, the SUV that's arriving soon too.

Then as promised, last week, I talked about this world-changing battery potential with

the Donut Lab battery.

That was kind of confusing.

It's like too good to be true stuff.

And I told you that I was still investigating it.

This week I posted my report about it.

I talked to the CEO, did a lot of investigating, and I can give you a lot more details

about it.

My take is that this battery is either about to change the world in three months or make

this guy, the CEO, look like a complete fool.

We're going to see that very soon.

All right.

Let's start with the FSD here, because that was a big change here.

Yeah.

So basically, just simple as that, announcing that Tesla will stop.

I'm quoting Elon here.

Tesla will stop selling FSD after February 14.

FSD will only be available as a monthly subscription thereafter.

All right.

The context here is important, obviously, because Elon has been telling us for years

while he stopped saying it for a while, because it's like too crazy of a lie even

for him at this point, but that Tesla is an appreciating asset, because starting

since 2019, and his idea was that Tesla will keep increasing the price of the FSD

package going forward as the features get better, leading to unsupervised self-driving,

and that will accrue the value of the existing fleet, because again, the FSD is

costing increasingly more.

That was somewhat through from that moment, 2019, when the FSD package or

the Enhance of the Palette, and it had different names for a while, or the features were in

those packages.

They moved around those packages, but FSD was basically $4,000 at the time, and then

it's a continuous increases here.

We have a chart for those who are watching.

It continuously increased up until 2022, and then in 2023, at the peak of vehicle

deliveries and everything, price started going down from a peak of $15,000 to $12,000, and

now today $8,000, so a sharp decline.

The idea of the appreciating asset was false.

The idea of continued increased prices as the FSD gets better was also not true.

Then what happened around that time too, Tesla introduced subscriptions to FSD.

Instead of having to pay $8,000 for FSD, now you can pay $100 a month and use it.

The two of them coexisted for a couple of years, and now it's apparently going away as soon

as February 14.

There's a lot of implications to that.

First of all, it's giving up completely on the appreciating asset thing.

There's nothing that's going to appreciate now if it's just a monthly subscription.

It's a software as a service.

Maybe the worst thing that ever happened to software is software as a service.

We used to buy the software, and you pay for what you get, and then maybe it improves over

time, maybe it doesn't, but if a company would improve it enough, it would make a new version

of it and sell that new version to you, which was fair game.

Now it's all subscription maxing out.

There's a real thing.

There's a subscription FATC going around, all software right now, all the subscription services.

Maybe Tesla, the timing of Tesla's move is not the greatest, but there's plenty of other

things that are also impacting this move rather than just trying to optimize for

profit here.

One of these other things is liability.

For years and years and years of electric, we've been saying everyone's screaming it

in the face of the shareholders that they're missing a big part of the story with FSD is

that the value that FSD is going to bring is currently nowhere near as close as the

liability of the FSD, meaning the promise that it will deliver unsupervised self-driving

on consumer vehicle.

If Tesla cannot deliver that, well, it's false marketing and Tesla is going to be

liable for it and going to have to compensate all these owners.

Well, up until February 14, Tesla keeps accruing more liability with that by

keeps selling that to people.

And that's going to stop now because that liability won't exist for subscribers

because you're subscribing for the month that you're paying for.

So you know what you're paying for.

You're paying for FSD, the capability that it's delivering that month and the

next month and so on.

So you're not buying the promise of unsupervised FSD anymore.

And that will help Tesla stop accruing more liability, even though there's still

a lot of time.

There is also the idea of pushing the Elon's new trillion dollar package,

compensation package, the first milestone on it is 10 million subscription.

So 10 million subscription to FSD, it's a lot easier to get if you don't

sell it anymore and everyone has to start subscribing to it.

Now to be fair said, like we're laughing at everything and I agree with you on that.

But 10 million is still going to be hard to get from there because

Tesla has a fleet of nine million and a take rate of like low teens for FSD.

So yeah, I wonder how they're going to tabulate that because, you know,

I know some people do FSD like only when they take long trips or something

like that. And then they go off of it.

I wonder how they're going to say, you know, 10 million is going to be 10

million over the course of a year or 10 million all at once.

Yeah, I think once they have like in the same month, 10 million people

that are subscribing right now, I think I think that would come for it.

But I don't it's we're not we're not close to that.

Anyway, I guess the time that but but the next step,

though, that's going to accelerate that greatly.

And I think that's another factor in the decision of making that is a competition.

So for FSD didn't really have competition for the longest time,

not just because the lead on, you know, advanced driver assist system.

I think I think it did have the lead on that and probably still has

a small lead on that front.

But also because other filmmakers and other companies just didn't want

to offer the service that this was offering this kind of level two.

That's kind that acts as a level four is marketed as a level four.

But it's a level two because it's supervised.

It's not something that's has been really attractive to two automakers

for a bunch of different reasons, including the liability that I was just talking about.

But now you have, you know, Rivian with Autonomy Plus

and they're offering that for two thousand five hundred dollars

and fifty dollars a month subscription, very different pricing in Tesla.

Then you have in China, several automakers have similar

advanced level two systems,

but they're not charging for it at all in the in a lot of occasions,

or they're charging just for certain features and not nowhere near

what this is charging right now.

So I think there's a lot of pressure on Tesla for a lower price there.

And I think that's what's going to happen next.

I think this is going to slash that hundred dollar a month pricing,

maybe not on February 14, but not too far after that.

Now there's another potential factor here.

And I won't go into the details because Jamie just posted an article on this

and I haven't time to read it because it was just before the podcast.

So I suggest that you guys go read it because I'm sure it's a fascinating article.

Jamie is pretty good at that stuff.

But there is this idea that Tesla might have been might be doing that too

because of the liability reason that I say that like Tesla won't be now selling

you something that's going to come in the future,

but rather something that you subscribe to right now.

And the timing of it February 14 is the limit date for Tesla to respond

with a plan to correct the situation with the California DMV

and their misrepresentation of their system of an FSD and autopilot.

So that may be a response to that.

Tesla might be my tell the DMV.

Hey, look, we actually going to start stop selling full self driving to people.

It's just going to be a service to subscribe to.

And right now that service is a level two system as we've been telling everyone.

So it is a big shift on how to stop present this.

And, you know, I don't think like Tesla stock was a bit down on the day

and everything, but what does that mean?

I don't know.

But looking at more of like the commentary around around the announcement,

it doesn't seem to have changed either side of the spectrum.

Like the pro Tesla people are just like, oh, this is super bullish now.

It's just like your steady revenue for Tesla.

While the bearish cloud was like more my idea was just this is actually bearish

on Tesla delivering unsupervised self driving on consumer vehicles

because now they know it's just about the system.

And like maybe gets better, maybe not.

But Tesla basically stops promising unsupervised self driving

on consumer vehicle, especially on other word three and other word four.

So the this entire idea that this is going to happen now, I think should

be off of people's mind for the most part.

Yeah.

And if you extrapolate the price out, so what it'd be 12, 1200 a month.

What's a typical lifetime of a car?

10 years.

So $12,000 over 10 years.

I think I think I don't think FSD will ever reach that $12,000 price ever.

Like I think it'll go down in price as you do, especially with Rivian.

What they're at half that.

Yeah, currently and the price is going to go down for sure.

There's no I mean, unless they deliver unsupervised, then you can go up.

But I don't I just don't see that happening time soon.

I don't see time soon.

Right. Yeah.

And then then Nvidia is giving it out for free.

Yeah.

Well, not for free exactly, but yeah, the open sort, the open weight model

and the simulator and the driving data.

So you can you can basically for free, you know,

have the good base to have your own system to catch up to Tesla, basically.

And from what we've seen from the first taker of that system, Mercedes

men's people impressed already.

So the pressure, the pressure is there.

So I think and right now we already see it like for all the people

like we have Donald here, FSD is doing very well on my current road trip.

And like, I'm sure I'm sure it does and that's good.

But for for how impressive it is, you know, not a lot of people want that.

No, when people want to pay a hundred dollar a month for the car

to do the driving, but you have to supervise it.

It's just like, would you would you pay a hundred dollar a month

for a Uber driver, but you have to look over his shoulder all the time?

It's like, nah, doesn't sound like a great situation for me.

Like it's a little bit more comfortable than having to look over someone.

You're, you know, nicely seated in a comfortable.

That's the seat, but it's it's the same action, really.

So yeah, even even if the we've reached the value proposition

for a level two system, like it's as good as a level two can get with supervision.

The next step is achieving unsupervised system.

And but the the that step is bigger than any step

that Tesla has taken before by a wide margin.

And Elon admitted it just a few weeks ago,

but he admitted it in the context of other people,

specifically NVIDIA launching their system.

So like he admits it when other are working on this, but not when Tesla is working on it,

which I thought that was it's very tell either.

Yeah, poor case slash disingenuous.

So yeah, I'm going to have to read Jamie's post, but, you know,

the idea is it might be, you know, a way to calm down the DMV regarding

like show that they are taking steps in the right direction with the DMV.

But like I said, there's a bunch of different factors affecting this,

including specifically competitions, competition and liability.

I think it's order two main ones.

All right, moving on.

So Tesla is not exactly known for making model year update

like most automakers, but in recent years,

as often time, slightly bigger refreshes

and model year update with an actual new year.

And and this is what's happening with twenty twenty six

with the Model Y in the U.S.

and Europe and getting in China, getting a slight update.

So everything I'm going to tell you about right now is all only for the premium trim.

So for those of you who don't remember in since the launch of the standard

stripped down, decontended model Y and model three late last year,

there is now two main trims of the Model Y standard,

which used to be standard range, but now it's about the features inside the vehicle

standard and premium.

And then after that, you have your powertrain options, which are,

you know, smaller batch pack or bigger batch pack, rear wheel drive,

all wheel drive and then performance version.

So now everything, all the updates are just for premium, which makes sense

because, you know, the standard was launched just a few weeks ago, which a few months ago.

All right, so third row is making a comeback.

Third row, seven seater is making a comeback to the U.S.

Of course, there was a third row in the model YL in China a few months ago,

but this is not a model YL.

It's not an extended base version.

It's the same model Y.

They just fit the third row in there, just like they did with the previous

version for those who don't remember, you know, the it was an option

for a short, somewhat short period of time for a third row in the U.S.

In Europe, it was a few months it was offered in China,

but the take rate was so low that they can still did or they didn't

relaunch it right away with the refresh model Y that was launched

last year, early last year.

Now it's making a comeback for $2,500.

You get this tiny little, I mean, it's hard to tell on this picture here,

but I mean, it's so small, it's really small.

It doesn't look terribly comfortable either.

No, it's for children.

It's for it's for children and even then small children.

If you're getting like starting getting into their their teams

and growing, it's it's just it's very small.

So again, I don't think that's going to be a very popular option.

The model YL is even even the model YL doesn't have a very impressive

third row, but it's significantly more usable than this.

So I don't think this is going to be a big feature at the end of that.

But there's a few other update.

Now you have these new 20 inch wheel option.

This is the same design, the Elix design, but they are now in gray

instead of being like a lighter gray, silver, chroma color.

I think it looks good.

I think it's a good change, even though very small change.

Now, the biggest change I think is the black headliner.

Now all premium get a black headliner instead of the gray lighter one.

And it looks good.

It looks great on that I put the picture of the white one with the black interior

or white interior.

It looks great, big upgrade, in my opinion.

I just got a model three and you model three with the lighter one.

And I wish I could retrofit them to this in liner.

Other update you have now the the 16 inch higher resolution display

that was launched in the model YL and the new model Y performance.

It's now making it to all the premium versions.

And finally, the badging is now black badging black badges

rather than chrome one.

So the chrome delete is now complete.

Even the little dual motor badge in the back is black.

So yeah, nothing crazy, but you know, a slight update to the best selling

electric vehicle in the world worth noting.

Yeah, I think there's third row seats look worse than the last third row seats.

Last third one looked a little bit softer or something.

These kind of just look like a board.

Yeah, they cannot be very thick.

There's just no room for that, no room at all.

All right, moving on from Tesla News.

And if any one of you want to ask us a question about that,

we have one, two, three, four, five, five more news item to discuss.

And then we're going to jump into the comment section.

So if you have any questions for us, I see William is already there

posting a bunch of stuff.

Hi, William, we have any pull yet also in the chat.

Donald is here.

So you guys have questions.

You can put them in the comment section right now and we can get to it

in just a few minutes.

But now let's start out the big news that broke this morning.

We've talked about it earlier this week, as we expected it

with the Prime Minister of Canada going to China.

And then in the last few weeks, there was a lot of discussion

of a negotiation between Canada and China about a new trade deal

and that the new trade deal was specifically involved electric vehicles.

So quick reminder, Canada followed the U.S.

in 2024 with implementing 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs.

The goal was to, you know, follow the U.S.

in protecting the U.S.

automotive market, not market industry, which is also linked

to the much smaller Canadian automotive industry.

Both on the supply level, but also a few automakers

that still have production, but a lot less production of electric vehicles

in Canada, especially since the recent trade war with the U.S.,

a few of the investment have shut down in Canada.

So yeah, we did that.

And then Canada and the U.S.

went hostile on trade in Canada under Trump,

resulting in tariffs on both sides on electric vehicles.

So now we found ourselves in the second half of 2025

and basically the whole of 2025, having a lot fewer options

for electric vehicles in Canada since most of our EVs came from the U.S.

So that created a very bad situation in our goal to accelerate EV adoption,

which we haven't given up in Canada, unlike in the U.S.

And and China started becoming a lot more attractive now

because, all right, if we're not, if our biggest deal partner

is not, he's being hostile with us, might as well go with China.

So that's what's just happened.

So the deal basically involves reducing the tariffs on Chinese EV

from 100 percent to 6.1 percent, so massive difference.

However, there's an annual quota, which right now is at 49,000 units,

which is only 3 percent of the Canadian market.

So it's very small.

But the idea is that it's going to increase over time.

And it's going to increase over time based on investment

from Chinese EV companies in Canada, not necessarily in production

itself of EVs, but also like super supply chains of those EVs.

So that that could be very interesting.

Literally talking about like joint ventures they're talking.

So they kind of like taking the Chinese approach.

They are just copying that, which is pretty smart.

And work for China.

Yeah. And with China is like China has the biggest auto market out there.

So it's the that's where that was their carrot.

Like come you want to have access in our giant market.

We don't really have that in Canada.

We have a rich market, but we don't have a big market.

But we do have also a lot of resources that goes into batteries

for electric vehicles.

So there is a dual approach here that all right, that joint venture

is going to be actually like on the supply chain access.

And then at the same time, you guys can compensate that by selling us EVs,

which we actually need at this point in exchange.

China is is a lifting restriction on canola seed

from 85% to 15% and on lobsters and crabs.

So the Chinese is going to get some Canadian lobsters and crab again.

Good for them.

I mean, I'm sorry, I cannot lie.

Yeah, it's just a strange thing.

I cannot lie.

I'm pretty excited about this.

I mean, I'm going to get to drive a bunch of I mean,

I've been to China twice last year for the first time.

And I've been extremely impressed by the electric vehicles they have there.

Extremely jealous of Chinese buyers, honestly.

And I wish we have them here.

And I understand the fear like the dog for the prime minister of Ontario,

the premier of Ontario is very unhappy about it.

Because obviously most of the auto industry in Canada is in Ontario.

So it's like the rest of the country is not going to be affected much by this.

Ontario's might take a hit if they cannot compete with Chinese EV,

but that's the thing.

If they can compete with them, like, what's the point you have?

Are you going to just try to sell to the Canadian market,

which is a very small market or you want to compete on the global stage,

which I think was the goal.

But we cannot compete on the global stage in Chinese EVs with Chinese EVs.

And part of that is because we're not competitive with them,

because we don't have to be in our home market.

So if anything, I think long-term, this is going to change the dynamics

and makes it make it a lot better for the local auto industry.

In fact, much like the Chinese learned a ton about auto manufacturing

with German inventors from foreign automakers coming in,

I think we could do the same in Canada to bring back some manufacturing expertise

with the Chinese coming in here with a factory.

And then we learn from here.

Our workers learn from here.

And like anything, our workers then go on other companies and help out.

Like, this is how we improve.

And I was shocked that I was like going on X

and going on local media outlets here,

looking at all the opinions on the deal.

And it's all just fear mongering.

That it's like, all right, it's like a new world order

that we are just bending to the Chinese wheel and everything like that.

And like, China has their problems for sure.

It's a one-party system.

It's not great on that level.

They have humanitarian issues and everything like that.

But all the arguments of those people was like,

Mark Corny couldn't get a deal done in the US.

So he went to China and was like,

I think Mark Corny really wanted a deal with the US

because it's still our biggest trade partner.

I think the problem right now is in the White House.

It's very hard to make a deal with the US.

And also if your problem is with human rights issues in China,

I mean, I would have problem with some human rights issue in the US too right now.

Yeah, we've ceded all high ground.

There's no... Exactly.

Moral high ground, yeah.

Yeah, I don't think you can argue with this decision,

especially with the quota, 3%.

I mean, that's really kind of a slow start.

Yeah.

But it could turn into a big thing.

I mean, I think Chinese EVs are going to be quite compelling.

And 3% of the market, but that's also a big percentage of the EVs, right?

Is it like 20% of EVs or something?

Pretty much, yeah.

So that's a big chunk of the EVs being sold.

And that's going to hurt Tesla.

And that's the thing I don't know though,

because Tesla used to sell Chinese EVs in Canada.

So I don't know if they count within that percentage,

if they can bring back, or if it's for Chinese companies.

I don't know exactly how that's going to work.

Because then if you let Tesla bring back their Model 3,

Model Ys from China, they can fulfill that $49,000 pretty quickly.

Minus maybe some brand damage

that makes people not want to have Tesla in Canada these days.

Like I'm saying, who could benefit quicker from that would be Tesla,

because Tesla already has an entire infrastructure built in Canada.

And they can just import their Chinese EVs.

Yeah, but I mean, there's not really as many compelling competitors.

Like Xiaomi and BYD, they don't exist in the US.

They didn't exist in Canada really until now.

Now there's going to be some really good inexpensive competitors to Tesla.

So it's going to be harder to even sell the Chinese Teslas.

Exactly. Yeah, you're right.

I'm sure BYD is probably going to be the first one to move in.

They just have the most experience expanding globally.

But it's going to be interesting for the US now,

because you're literally going to have BYDs in Mexico,

and then BYDs in Canada.

Surrounded.

Surrounded by

cheap Chinese EVs.

And from what I'm understanding and like, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Apparently, I'm e-ring and we've talked about this before,

but you can go buy an EV in Mexico and bring it back to the US and no tariffs and you're fine.

Yeah, you can put a title on it, everything.

You can legally drive it.

My understanding as well, like it's not like straightforward or easy,

but I mean it's straightforward.

So I'm going to Mexico next month.

Nice.

And BYD is trying to get me into a BYD shark.

What is the shark?

Is that the cheap one?

It's the plug-in hybrid pickup truck.

So it's like 100 something kilometers of electric range and then gas,

which for where I'm going, I'm going on the Riviera Maya part of the country.

And there's charging infrastructure.

There is not great.

So I prefer that.

So for the day-to-day, I can charge it at my Airbnb, get out.

And then if I need to do a longer trip, I can use the gas if I have to.

Nice.

All right.

Then on top of Canada, you have the EU in China,

which already a bigger agreement when it comes to electric vehicles.

The tariffs were, instead of being 100%, were up to 35%.

But there was a right range.

So you could negotiate the tariffs based on basically like

how much the government was actually helping you.

So for example, Tesla has tariffs on their Chinese EV being exported to Europe.

But they were pretty low, their tariffs,

because Tesla is not a Chinese company.

And it's still benefited from the Chinese government quite a bit.

They got low interest loans and all that,

but not as much as other Chinese automakers, I'd say.

So I think Tesla and BYD were the ones with the lower tariffs,

and then some of them went 20%, 30%, all the way to 35%.

Now they are negotiating another deal with the European Commission

that's going to be a price minimum, a floor price instead.

So to avoid any kind of like dumping of EVs out there,

you're going to commit to like,

I'm not going to sell this car for lower than this price.

So instead of having to pay at the port the tariffs,

you don't pay any tariffs,

but you are not going to be dumping any cheap EVs on the European market

and disrupt the auto industry there,

which is critical, especially in Germany and France.

So my understanding is that everyone is happy with that.

It's like, and it should help automakers there

accelerate EV adoption from Chinese automakers there.

But like I said, Europe wasn't that big of a deal

because they are already a little bit more open.

And several Chinese automakers already made investment

in manufacturing in Europe.

I know BYD as an Hungary factory coming up soon.

So, but still progress both in Europe and Canada

for Chinese EVs this week, so worth noting.

All right, the Rivian R2,

which is arguably the most anticipated EV of 2026

and should launch soon

because if we're talking about early 2026,

not exact timing other than that.

But this week, Rivian announced that the first validation units

are now rolling off the production line.

So we've seen the R2 being tested for months on the road.

So these are not like the first test vehicle coming out.

Validation units are a vehicle that are built on the production line.

So they are basically production vehicles.

They are just there,

but they are there to be validated,

both for evaluating the production process

but also for, you know, crash unit for safety,

the crash test and like the EPA rating and all of that.

So I think this is a step in the right direction.

And at the same time, when RJ's courage,

the CEO of Rivian made the announcement,

he said that we're going to start deliveries to customers soon.

So a lot of people have been speculating

that it would be very early in 2026

that there are two at lunch,

but this kind of helps with that.

I don't know.

At this point, I would think probably like late Q1,

early Q2 will make sense

because it's not going to take a little minute

for these validation units to go through all the processes

that they need to go through.

But yeah, they're almost like sellable vehicle at this point.

Do you have a reservation for one?

No, like, you know, I kind of given up

putting reservation on cars anyway,

because especially on U.S. cars because in Canada,

it's take a year or two to get there anyway after that.

Yeah, you had an early Rivian reservation

and you weren't even able to take advantage of it for years.

It took like three years for them to tell me to configure

and then by then I was like, yeah, moved on really.

You have one, right?

You think you're going to go for it?

I don't know.

You just got your EQS, I don't know.

If I get rid of my Tesla, if they have, I don't know.

You got a good price on the EQS.

I got an absurd price.

I can't believe how cheap it is.

Yeah, so you could be just switching it up

wouldn't be like that worst thing.

But would you like the R2 is a weird vehicle

because the R2, like a lot of people are saying

it's a Model Y competitor.

It's probably going to be a little bit bigger

than the Model Y, I would assume.

Definitely a higher.

It's definitely going to ride more like a truck than a car.

So that's what, so I'm giving up my Rivian basically.

So what I didn't like about the Rivian

is that it doesn't drive like a car, it drives like a truck.

And I go off-road maybe two or three times a year.

Not something I do on purpose too often.

It sounds like you crashed your car.

No, sometimes you're navigating, for instance,

there's this place I go in Vermont

that just all of a sudden the road turns to dirt.

And I don't feel comfortable in a Tesla, for instance.

But in the Rivian it felt great.

But that doesn't happen that often.

So the EQS actually had the SUV has an off-road mode.

It's fine.

They have big tires on there.

So in those instances, it does fine for the off-roading.

And then it's quite fast like a Rivian, but it drives like a car.

So when you're going on the highway,

you can go 80 miles per hour.

It doesn't feel like you're going insane.

So I think that's just more for me.

I mean, I love the Rivian.

It looks great.

It's fun, but it just doesn't drive like a car on the highway

or on streets.

And it's not as fun.

Hopefully the R2 is closer to that with its smaller size.

It's a bit both like the R1, but yeah, I understand what you mean.

For me, I think the biggest disruption is one Rivian might become

a sustainable company financially with that.

And that changes the game because not a lot of other companies outside

of China have done that in Tesla, obviously.

So if they can do that, I think it's a big deal.

And then on the market incumbent, it's specifically Tesla.

I think it's going to put a lot of pressure on the Model Y at the top.

And so at the profitable side of the Model Y,

I think with the R2, the BMW iX3, the Mercedes Benz DLC,

all those vehicle launching basically at the same time

at very attractive spec, all a little bit more expensive than the Model Y,

but still in the price range at the higher end of the Model Y,

I think you're going to put a lot of pressure on Tesla.

And normally, I would say great, great competition.

Tesla's probably going to have to strike back with something

at the product level, I mean, but obviously we don't expect that anymore

as Tesla is now all in on autonomy and stuff.

And striking back for Tesla now is more on the political front,

I feel like with Elon backing Trump to remove the incentives and all that.

I think that you knew that that would benefit Tesla on the long run

and her companies like Rivian were just trying to right now to ramp up production.

All right, another electric SUV on the smaller side that's coming

is the Toyota 2026CHR, the new mass market global EV from Toyota,

a rare global EV.

Toyota has been big on the Chinese market,

launching new vehicles there all the time.

In global markets in the US, it's the BZ4X,

that's been the primary product that they released.

And it's been a flop.

Let's be honest about it, just the people that are buying it

is because they're giving it away.

At one point set here, it was like $250 a month lease that you can get the Canadian.

So that's like basically 200 bucks US.

So if you were coming from any car, it's basically free after fuel savings.

So they sold a bunch like that, but I don't remember,

a lot of Ubers here have it, for example,

because it makes a ton of sense for a Uber.

You basically have no cost to printing money.

But I would ask them every time, like, how do you edit the car?

And they're like, yeah, it's a car.

There's nothing special about the BZ4X, nothing great, nothing.

But the CHR is a big upgrade.

First of all, looks way better, a lot more refined.

And also the same battery pack, about 75 kilowatt hour battery pack,

but it's expected to be a little bit more efficient than the BZ4X.

And it comes with NAX native.

So also a big upgrade, 150 kilowatt DC charging.

So nothing huge on that front.

All will drive, power train available, 0-60 in five seconds.

A wireless Apple CarPlay Android Auto.

Not every car have that these days.

You have bigger wheels, bigger 20-inch wheels option.

But the price is expected to be also quite attractive.

They are talking about starting under $35,000.

So that would be quite interesting when it comes to market.

And yeah, it's supposed to launch very soon.

So they're releasing the latest image right now.

Looks pretty good.

Kind of reminiscent of the BZ4X,

but just a little bit more aggressive looking.

A little higher, right?

Yeah, a little higher, more rounded.

Full a little bit more efficient.

All right, the last thing I want to talk about,

we discussed it a little bit last week,

but it's doughnut lab battery.

Like we discussed last week, it was on Ville at CES.

It cut fire in use when everywhere pretty fast,

unlike most battery breakthrough news,

most of the time.

It used to, I remember the early days of electric,

we would post about those

and they would do very well.

Everyone would look at them and everything.

But we kind of got a fatigue of posting them

because even though it gave a lot of people hope,

it was kind of false hope

because most of the time you just don't pan out

because either the longevity wasn't good,

the cost wasn't good.

There was a material that couldn't be scaled.

There was always something.

Now, the reason why the doughnut lab announcement took fire,

it's not just because the spec were crazy.

The spec were definitely crazy.

400 watt hour per kilogram solid state battery

that has 100,000 cycles, like Seth said last week.

That's basically like 200 and something years

if you charge it once a day.

It's absolutely insane.

The cost supposedly lower than Lidsum batteries.

The charging, five minutes charging on this thing,

just everything sounds too good to be true.

So normally, like just like any other announcement,

we just put them in the trash can.

But this time, the thing that forced us to report on it

and forced all the entire industry to take a look

is that they said that it's in production right now.

And it's going to be in a production electric vehicle,

the Verge motorcycle,

this quarter.

So that forced us to pay attention.

Now, that doesn't mean that it's true.

But I had to take a look.

And I did, I did a whole investigation.

I had a lot of people help me, a lot of expert

sent me things.

I appreciate every one of you that contributed to that.

It was very helpful because I'm obviously not a chemist

nor a physicist.

And also that we don't have the chemistry on that thing

because they reveal all the specs almost

and see that it's in production,

but they refuse to tell us the chemistry,

which is a bit strange at first look,

because like if you see that it's already in production

and you say that it's going to be a production vehicle

in a few weeks, well, in a few weeks,

anyone can buy the vehicle, open up the battery,

test the battery, reverse engineering it and all that.

So I had to talk to the CEO too.

I wanted to talk to the CEO and I did.

So it's Mr.

It's Marco, I have a trouble with his last name

because it's a finished last name,

but Marco, let him Mackey.

Sorry if I missed up his name,

but yeah, I'd talk to him to get, you know,

I tried to get more details.

He wouldn't be giving me,

he didn't want to give me more details.

Didn't want to talk about the chemistry,

but at least he gave me some explanation

for what's for that

and how things are going to roll out

going forward if he's right.

So first off, let me give you some background on Marco

because this is not just a random guy yelling

at the world I have a battery

that's going to change the entire industry.

And to be clear, if this is true,

it changes everything.

If it's true, it's commercial airplane

are now in play, electric commercial airplanes

are getting electrified.

Energy storage is now going to be much cheaper,

like, you know,

it's now going to be much cheaper,

like, instead of amortizing a mega pack

like a Tesla mega pack over 10 years,

you can do it over 100 years.

It's going to lower an energy cost across the world.

And your, even your cell phone battery

is going to last like a week.

Like it's like, everything's going to change from that.

If it's true.

So Marco, who's Marco?

Is it just some random guy yelling that

I have a battery that's going to change the world?

No, he's not.

He's actually a legit entrepreneur,

a computer scientist by training.

He actually built a no coding app builder

back in the 2010s.

Way before vibe coding was a thing

that people would talk about.

Like nowadays, like everyone has an app

that they built with no code

that you actually build one of those.

Not an app without code,

but he built an app builder

that didn't require coding knowledge

from the user.

And he sold that to SAP,

which is one of the biggest companies in Europe.

So yeah, the successful exit from that

and then from there with the money

and everything,

he became a serial entrepreneur and investor

investing in a bunch of different things.

And his biggest or his most well-known company

is Verge Motorcycles,

which build electric motorcycles.

And as real product on the road,

about 100 bikes have been delivered

over the last few years,

especially in Europe.

So he's a real guy,

basically betting his reputation on this.

And that's my main point on all this

because we don't have the chemistry.

So I had to do an investigation on this battery.

And my investigation has come up with a few things.

Because it's kind of strange that

with Toyota, with Quentums K,

with Mercedes, with CATL, with BYD,

with all these major companies investing heavily

in cell-to-state batteries,

that a small startup

would beat them all to market

with the production battery cell.

Extremely surprising, right?

So I thought I'm going to investigate the claim.

I'm going to find that it's just based on nothing.

And it's just a scam.

And that's going to be it.

But my investigation actually didn't prove that.

My investigation showed that

this is based on real research

backed by government money from Finland

and a real peer-reviewed breakthrough, if you will,

in nanostructures.

So what I found is that Marco, through Donald Labs,

invested in a company called Nordic Nano out of Finland.

And this company called Nordic Nano

is led by Chief Scientist Bela Buskulte.

Okay. I have her name here.

I'm sorry if I'm missing it up.

It's another tough name for my French tongue.

But this investment kind of went under the radar.

Like when I wrote this article earlier this week,

it had 184 views, the press release of the investment.

And that was done in October 2025, so very recently.

Now, it's not clear if this is like a takeover of the company,

if it's a controlling stake that they bought,

or if it's just like an investment

and then they have a licensing agreement.

It's not clear.

And Marco didn't want to go into the details.

In fact, when I brought up to him

Nano Nordic and I asked him to confirm this,

he was very coy about it.

He said, oh, you know what?

Nano Nordic is more of a solar company than a battery company.

And now I have to push back on that

because actually even the announcement

of the Natlabs investment on Nordic

mentioned both solar and energy storage, like batteries.

And Nordic Nano's website mentioned

that its breakthrough works for both solar and batteries as well.

So what is this breakthrough?

Again, if I get anything wrong, I'm sorry.

I'm no chemist.

This is based on my research on the research papers

that were released by Bella and some expert

that helped me figure that out.

So she was a researcher at Tempored University

doing a PhD on amorphous titanium dioxide nanostructure.

So my understanding is that titanium dioxide

is the stuff that you will find in like sunblockers and paint.

And she figured out a way to use that in a new form

in a amorphous form, a porous form, a breedable form rather

than a hard crystallized format.

And at the atomic level,

like very much at the base atomic level.

And the idea of that is like using that

as a solid state rather, it's still solid.

It's not completely fluid.

So you can still call it a solid state,

but it's instead of crystallizing and being solid

and breaking, having the pinhole problem

that's the most common problem in solid state batteries

where it creates pinholes and you lose capacity

and degrade much faster.

So the idea of 100,000 cycles would work with that.

With the amorphous state of the titanium dioxide

would be breedable and would basically already

be like a Swiss cheese.

So the pinhole problem is not a problem anymore.

It's kind of a feature that's already exist in the battery.

And the chemistry of the battery.

Also, the chemistry stores energy at the pseudo-capacitance level,

which acts kind of a velcro where the ions stick

to the surface rather than deep inside the material.

So that enables a better charge and discharge rate,

explaining the 500 charge battery.

And at the manufacturing level,

so nano Nordic use what is called

a nano fluid printing process known in the solar industry,

it's already used in the solar industry.

Some companies have tried to use that in the battery.

So they call it like a battery screen printing technology.

But as far as I know, that hasn't worked.

I know that one company in Germany tried it Blackstone

and they went under because when they tried to scale,

there was too much scrap and that increased the cost of the batteries.

So yeah, this is what I found that what the breakthrough

will be based on.

Again, when I asked Marco about it,

it didn't want to confirm any of it.

He was like, yeah, I can tell you about that.

So this is my idea of what the chemistry is.

My idea is like, this sounds like a sodium battery,

a sodium solid state battery with titanium dioxide,

amorphous nanostructures to hold it together.

Whether it's that or it's not that, I don't know,

but at least I found the Zurich link between DonutLab

and that battery solar conductivity breakthrough research.

So there's the, and the Finnish government invested

in that company in nanostructure.

And so it's backed by both university level research

and government funding.

So there's a real thing going on there.

Now, how do you go from that in a few months

to volume production that goes into electric vehicles?

That's the more difficult part to understand.

However, the other thing I wanted to approach

with my interview with Marco is

what would be the incentive to lie here?

And obviously the incentive-

It's going to have, it's going to come out soon.

Yes, soon.

That's the thing.

It's very soon.

It's not like if he says two years from now,

we have this battery that can change as well.

It's like, yeah, yeah, okay.

In two years, we're going to forget anyway.

So if it doesn't happen, it doesn't hurt him too much.

But now he says in 10 weeks, we know.

So the reason he doesn't want to share the chemistry is

you can obviously patent that stuff.

And I'm sure they're working on that.

But patenting specific chemistries,

it takes time if you don't want your patent

to be too revealing.

Because otherwise your patent is kind of a blueprint

to the chemistry.

But you can hide things in the patent too

and still get it, but it gets harder to be approved.

Now, so they're working on that.

But the idea that in 10 weeks,

you're going to be able to reverse engineering

anyway from the bike is point is that 10 weeks

is a long time for them.

And they are optimizing that time

with the approach of going directly to EEMs instead.

So they want to build during those 10 weeks,

direct relationship with OEMs to sell them the batteries.

So they are shipping right now battery packs

and sales to those OEMs that basically

with the CS announcement, they captivated everyone's attention.

And now they're using that attention

to get direct relationship with the OEMs

to send them the battery,

getting ahead of the rest of the industry

that's going to find out about the chemistry

in the next few weeks if it's real or not.

So that logic is sound because 10 weeks

is actually a long time

if you are optimizing it correctly.

So I can get behind that.

Now, so now we come back to if it's fake,

how do they benefit from it?

The only idea that I couldn't think of

is that if they're raising money on this.

So if they are right now going to VCs

and like raising a ton of capital on this

based on those promises.

Yeah, you don't have to deliver

and you already have the money

and then you can just like fake it

until you make it type of deal.

He assured me, Marco assured me

they are not raising money right now.

They are getting a ton of interest

for a bunch of investor obviously,

but they are pausing any kind of discussion

about investment until these OEMs deals go through

and they have independent testing of the cells.

So they're working, they say right now

with a bunch of different labs.

I tried to get a sell myself,

I'm still hopeful we can do something,

but they don't want to give it to anyone.

They go with those labs, with those cells

because they don't want to let anyone open them.

So they want people to confirm the specs

and capabilities of the batteries

without opening them.

Which Dan Oberstey had a good point here,

how do you test a hundred cycles

in such a short period of time?

You cannot, even with years

you cannot test a hundred thousand cycles.

We have a battery cycler, my new company,

and we could try to do that and test it for them.

So that's one idea, I want to convince them

to come to my house with the batteries

and test them there

and we film them for electric and everything,

but the cycler wouldn't be worth it that much

because you can just make a few cycles

and try to create a curve of the degradation.

But you can actually test the energy density of it,

so that alone would be a great deal.

And the other thing Marco told me too

is those batteries are in verge bag

for almost a year now in testing,

so they've been doing their testing for a while.

But even then over a year,

even if you can cycle them every day,

you're still so far away from a hundred thousand cycles

that it would be hard to tell.

So yeah, I don't see any clear value for Marco

and for the lab, for the Verge motorcycle to lie here.

It's like, you don't have nothing to gain

and on the contrary, you have a lot to lose

because if in 10 weeks, you don't deliver that bike

or there's no independent testing of the cells

that prove the capacity,

they lose all credibility right away,

like in three months.

It's not like also he and Verge have a lot of

bankable credibility to lose here.

It's not like Elon Musk, for example,

can say that in three months,

Robotex is going to cover half the U.S.

and then it doesn't cover half of Austin in three months

and it's like par for the course with Elon

and at least he's landing rockets.

Yeah, he built Tesla, so he has some credibility here.

I think it's still a terrible look for the guy,

but Marco doesn't have that.

Then Marco, if he turns out it's not true, it's bad.

So I don't know, Seth, I'm so confused here

because everything screams too good to be true.

But then I research it and instead of most of the time

if I research something like that,

it's like within a few hours,

within talking to a few experts,

I'm like, I'm being told like, yeah, it's nothing.

All right, with this, I cannot do that.

My research actually shows that there's real

a research behind the supposed breakthrough.

However, the company is not even confirming

that this is the breakthrough,

this is the chemistry, this is the research.

So it's like, but they have decent reason to not confirm it

and they also don't have any incentive,

clear incentive to lie about it,

clear benefit from lying about it.

So I'm so confused here.

So that's why my headline is that

it's the batteries,

this battery is about to change the world in three months

or make this guy a fool.

It's one or the other.

Yeah, I mean, there probably is like some middle ground

where like this battery performs as stated

under some optimal conditions

and it's not really as scalable as they said

and it's hard to build.

And you know, there's some middle ground

or something we're not thinking about.

I really hope this is the real deal.

Like that would be amazing for EVs and for everybody else

and it would be just great.

Yeah, that's the trap though.

You want to believe too.

You want to believe it too.

So like I have to take that into account in my...

Well, I have that, I want to believe

but I also have the, you know,

we've been lied to 10,000 times.

So yeah, yeah.

You're right though about the middle ground.

There's an idea of like maybe like the battery

has all these specs

but then when you scale production

just like the Blackstone thing.

Yeah.

You found out, oh, there's actually a crazy scrap

right of those batteries

and now even though like the battery itself

with the material that's in it,

it makes sense at the cost level

but then when you account

where you have to scrap three batteries

to make that one,

it's like now the cost doesn't make sense anymore.

So there is that too.

But we should find out pretty quickly.

He told me things that Marco said,

like he said they're already preparing

for 20 to 30 gigawatt hour next year.

So that's where I was like, eh.

Like, all right, because I told them,

I told them to his face,

if you're not lying to me right now,

you're going to be one of the richest men

in the world by the end of this year.

Right.

Donut Labs going to be one of the biggest

company in Europe

or at least Finland by the end of this year.

Yeah.

And Dr. Billa Buscute

will is going to win the Nobel Prize

for the chemistry of that area.

So that's the level we're talking about here.

So if we're talking about this level,

like you have a lot to deliver.

Right.

It's a big deal.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's move to the comments.

William Pisano, 75, 73,

Canada is going to make the USA

card and manufacturers hurt as much

as possible by letting China in

and cause a market crash in America,

automotive and sign deals

for manufacturing trade hero.

He continues forward as one

of the big sales market in Canada.

A lot of other manufacturers

will lose job and auto recession starts.

There's only three countries.

Crappy oil come from Canada,

Russia, Venezuela.

The U.S. has some oil too.

Canada cuts oil from America.

Gas prices will go up one or two dollars

before the election.

And Canada could impact midterm

by cutting off oil.

But if Trump has,

we're going to get in diatribe here.

Yeah.

All right.

So yeah, the point is that

this tariff will hurt the U.S.

And I think we can all agree.

I agree that it's a messy situation.

Like there was no reason to go

hostile on Canada because of a trade deficit.

Like you guys have a 300 plus million

people market and one of the richest

market in the world.

We had 40 million people.

So of course,

we're going to just a few things

we're going to sell a lot more to you

than the vice versa.

But it wasn't.

It makes no sense at all.

Yeah.

It wasn't a leaching parasitic situation

with Canada.

Just the normal trading.

Like the population of Canada

is the size of California,

which is like what is the deficit

with inside the U.S., inside of California?

Yeah, between states, the same thing.

And then I guess that also maybe

the population of Canada

being the size of California

is also something to consider

when we talk about how many exports

are we going to lose in the U.S.?

I mean, it's not going to be

the end of the world kind of thing,

but I think Canada was certainly

one of the biggest export markets

for U.S. cars.

Yeah.

All right.

Rene Puglio 6616 says,

I think FSD is closer to being solved.

The monthly fee will increase over time.

FSD is very good now compared to a year ago.

It's a lot better than a year ago,

but no, I don't think there's room

to increase the monthly fee

because now there's competition at that level.

90% of the value of FSD

if the promise is unsupervised,

it's in delivering unsupervised.

So yes, if you have a vehicle

where you don't have to pay attention

and the owner of the system,

Tesla in this case,

is responsible if something happens.

Yes, there's a ton of value for that

because it's a personal chauffeur.

You have a personal chauffeur.

So whatever you would pay

a personal chauffeur

minus a discount for optimizing

for adoption,

people would be willing to pay that.

It's going to be a lot more than $100 a month,

maybe two, three, four,

probably some people

going to be $500 a month for that, whatever.

However, as long as Tesla

doesn't take responsibility,

there's no more value

than taking over your capacity to drive,

which for the most part,

FSD already does that.

Like some people are getting 100%.

I don't know how they do that

because I'm sure,

and I'm not right now

with the snow and everything,

but I could in the good conditions

drive 100% with FSD.

It would be a nightmare though

because it doesn't drive very well.

It takes super decision.

It slows down in people's face.

Take a turn that doesn't make sense.

Take the wrong lane and things like that.

But you can do it.

But how much more value is it

if it gets like 10% better at doing that,

which already can take all of your driving?

It's like there's not much value in that,

especially if now other product are competing

at the same with the same features.

So yeah, I don't see the monthly fee increasing.

I see the monthly fee going down

until they can deliver on supervised,

which I don't think they can deliver

on the current order wear.

All right.

Jesse 77 says,

definitely glad for price competition.

FSD has been awesome and doing great,

but $100 has always been a lot.

Less per month would be great.

Yeah.

Yeah, I guess they could,

they could,

I wonder if they would,

Tesla would offer like autopilot

for like 20 bucks or something.

You know, like the highway.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Do you use that to do a enhance of the pilot and stuff?

Right.

It's handling Houston rush hour traffic

a lot better than it would,

since I'm not familiar with the city.

That's one of the nice things about FSD.

Protection allows the Model Y

to be perhaps still the world's

biggest single version EV,

but it's over now.

Not sure about you.

Yeah.

I think that was, I don't know.

Fred, which Chinese EVs

would you be most excited to see for sale in Canada?

What is the closest Chinese rival

to the Model 3 and the Model Y?

Well, I've discussed that plenty of times.

Xiaomi Su7 for the Model 3,

YU7 for the Model Y.

It is a way better value proposition

than those vehicles.

Now, I think it would be probably

around the same price,

because they are a little bit cheaper

in China right now

than the Tesla vehicles,

but with the tariffs

and the transportation costs

and everything,

they'd probably be around the same price,

maybe a little bit more,

but the value proposition

would still be Tesla opinion

because it's just a lot more core for the price.

Now, do I think that Xiaomi is going to be

the first one to come in, though?

I don't think so.

I think Xiaomi doesn't even sell

their personal electronics,

I think right now in China,

in Canada.

Wait, wasn't the Xiaomi woman,

the one who got kidnapped

in Canada or something?

I think it's Huawei.

I think that's Huawei.

Oh, Huawei.

All right.

Yeah, I might be wrong,

but I think Xiaomi

might have similar issues

in Canada as Huawei

in terms of accessibility

to the market.

So maybe that's not...

I think BYD is going to be

the first one most likely

because they are

expended in more markets.

They're used to it.

They have 100,000 employees

just for R&D right now.

They have a million employees total.

It's a giant machine

that's great at entering new markets.

And they have a lot of extra,

so you said the most excited.

So I would be super excited,

I think if Xiaomi were to come,

but I would be super excited too

with BYD

because they have some

very interesting,

the Han, the seal,

super incredible vehicles,

that 1,000 kilowatt charging,

Jewelport 500 kilowatt,

each side charging,

things like that are just crazy.

And then they have the Yang Wang vehicle

with the tank turn,

the jumping suspension.

Like there's just some crazy stuff

that would be super fun

to drive around Canada.

So yeah, there's plenty of

things we're excited about.

Canada car market is declining

and letting China in

will cause American car manufacturers

sales to crash.

It's the best way.

Oh yeah, we've talked to this guy.

Well done.

Kind of repeating herself here.

All right.

I subscribed to FSD,

but it was not worth

the 100 bucks on each hardware

3 with this subscription-only model.

They may have more incentive

to offer FSD 14X light

for hardware 3 CPU Teslas.

I don't know where you're based, Dean,

but personally,

like I just made the jump

from hardware 3 to hardware 4

from V12 to V14.

And it is an improvement,

but I actually was shocked.

I'm like, on a day-to-day basis,

I'm not,

I don't find myself using it more

or less.

Again, some of that is

because it's the winter right now

FSD is just not optimized

for winter driving

in the snow and all that.

But I used it yesterday.

I came down from Shawingham to Montreal

and I used it on the highway.

And it was good most of the time

when the highway was clear of snow,

but I had to take over a bunch of times

if I wanted to get over

some like light snow

between the lanes and things like that.

So yeah, for winter condition,

it's just not,

FSD is just not great.

All right, I wrote in the third road

Model Y in Norway last summer.

My first time seeing it,

it was tight,

but I fit surprisingly okay

for the short Uber trip we took.

I just can't get in the back.

It's just too,

it is too claustrophobic for me.

Like it just does not feel safe at all.

I feel like I get stuck there

and never get out.

The China Model YL

extra length is okay,

but Model Y, no.

We're talking about the third row, I think.

All right, crash US market, Canada.

All right, having been big innovators

in the EV industry,

Tesla was short-sighted

and naive,

thinking they will always have

a large gap to competitors,

hence threats to FSD price hikes.

They were wrong.

Yeah, the Elon always said it,

the main factor

is the pace of innovations

of a company.

And if that pace slowed down,

it's not a good look.

And the pace has definitely slowed down

for Tesla's innovation

on the EV side of thing.

And on FSD, I think,

especially with tools like

what NVIDIA is releasing right now,

it's like the gap is definitely

getting shorter, not wider.

All right, Jesse SCA 77,

so excited that Canada gets

some Chinese EVs one day.

The US might wise up.

I mean, you see one thing

that I could see set?

What's that?

Assuming there's still going to be

elections in the US and that

that's a biggest assumption.

And Puck and Spice,

Palpatine just goes away

and all these cronies and all that

just don't get any power anymore,

which I'm still some hope to that.

Even though some of the rhetoric

in the US now is

extremely disappointed

I'm disappointed by it

from a democratic standpoint

and just like a freedom standpoint.

But let's say that he goes away

in three years

and some more reasonable people

take over and reestablish

more respectable trade with Canada.

And then in the meantime,

Chinese EVs make ways in Canada

and start doing some joint

ventures in Canada,

start building factories in Canada.

Imagine if now they can sell

to the US

through those factories in Canada,

which would be a great deal

for Canada

and a great deal for US consumers.

But it would now

it would be extremely bad

for American automakers.

Yep.

Something to consider.

Yep.

Vancouver is one of the

largest Chinese communities

in North America

and also a huge EV adopter

at BYD and other Chinese brands

under the market.

It's game over for Tesla here.

Yeah.

I see that.

Yeah.

I really want the Bronco EV.

It's new and it's 32K

but I need to be sure

we can register it

before I would buy it.

It starts at 32K

but in Mexico.

Oh, it's available in Mexico.

I didn't realize it was available in Mexico.

In China I didn't know

it was in Mexico too.

That's interesting.

All right.

What will FSD subscription

only do to transfer

and Luxe package?

I'm going to surprise you here,

Spikes,

but Elon didn't mention

any of that

when you made the announcement.

So everyone is asking that

and Luxe package,

I don't know.

I think for sure

FSD subscription now

is going to become

an incentive

when Tesla wants to

pull the man trigger,

they're going to like,

oh, FSD included

for like three years,

like things like that.

So maybe in the Luxe package,

it's always included

for a few years.

So that's something of the sort.

So that I can see

for a subscription transfer,

look,

going forward,

Tesla is going to do

everything it can to

control the liability

that come with its promise

of FSD.

And one of the biggest tool

that they have for that

is FSD transfer

to newer vehicles.

So I think

even though Elon's

not going to say it,

he's going to use it

also as a demand trigger

and telling you,

yeah, I'm not doing

any FSD transfer anymore

and then the next quarter

he does it.

It's going to be like that.

So it's going to be going forward.

But it's so strange

that as a reporter on Tesla,

I have to like,

assume that what the CEO say,

like it's going to be the contrary.

You don't see that often.

All right, Eric Poppins,

6104 FAFO,

which means fork around

and find out

for the U.S. auto industry

bending a knee.

Yep.

Yeah.

I mean, what happened

with Ford this week

and do you heard,

do you heard what Trump said

about the chairman of Ford,

like the Ford family?

Bill Ford, yeah.

Yeah.

What did he say?

He was caught on a hot mic

saying to,

I think,

I think to Farley was saying

or like someone at Ford

while he was visiting Ford,

he was like,

you know,

Bill Ford keeps calling me all the time

and he's like,

can we get rid of

all this environmental shit?

Geez, that's funny.

All right,

let's see what else we got here.

All right,

as soon as I heard

there's a billionaire investor

behind Dona Labs Battery,

my hopes of this being real crashed.

I really hope that they have it,

but my hopes are not high.

What billionaire investor?

Yeah.

I mean, I know Mercedes is investor.

I don't know.

The fact that they're saying

it's available now

is why I'm interested.

Either they've got a real product

or they've got the world's dumbest scammers.

Yep.

That's another alternative title

to that story.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a little less,

a little bit meaner title.

Well, full is not exactly nice, but

all right.

I didn't hear any reports of anyone

having placed an order

and expecting delivery this quarter

or next.

Or at least I've heard

is end of 2026,

which furthers the doubts

that they have a working battery.

He told me that they plan

to deliver the bikes

this year starting

at the end of the quarter.

And all of the pro bikes

at Verge

that are going to be delivered

this year,

which they are aiming

for like three or 500,

so it's not like crazy volume

or something like that,

is are going to have those

solid state batteries in them.

So as the claim,

so if it doesn't happen,

we start going through

the second half of the headline.

Right.

All right.

Would any Chinese cars

be sold in the United States

to the used car market?

Yep.

That could happen.

I disagree that commercial airlines

will shift to electric

because of this battery

as Boeing and Airbus

where they are with electric,

nowhere.

I mean, it won't happen

overnight,

but yeah,

400Wh batteries

would make commercial airlines,

electric commercial airlines work.

There's no doubt about it.

Does any of the leadership

of Lyft or Ubersie themselves

as a future mobile electric

grid company

rather than a rideshare company

reporting suggests the latter?

I guess I'm not sure.

Yeah, like as a

like bi-directional

charging situation,

is that what they mean?

Because I guess

you know,

the future of

of rideshare is obviously

electric and autonomous long-term,

but I don't think

bi-directional charging

is going to play a big

role in that.

Maybe to some degree

because there's definitely

different like the usage time

has changed quite a bit.

So at peak usage,

you need peak fleet.

And then when the users go down,

your fleet could potentially be used

as for grid services.

Yeah, maybe.

Maybe there's something there.

How much is donut valued at?

If it's real,

there would be a hostile takeover

by an automaker,

still skeptical

that this is a game changer.

They're claiming it is.

It's private,

so it can't be.

Yeah, this is,

like you said,

it's private,

but my understanding of this,

like I tried to get

a read on Marco,

and you know,

I told them,

I told them like,

if you're lying right now,

you should be nervous as hell

because in three months,

everyone's going to know

whether you lied or not.

And I didn't get from him,

someone that was like nervous

about any of that.

What I got from him

is like he's someone that has

double aces in their hand

right now,

and he's just trying to

optimize them

as much as possible

by getting the OEMs

to put all their chips

on the table

so he can grab them.

That's what I got from.

Now it could be also

an amazing liar,

I don't know,

or he could be,

like I said,

middle ground

where he thinks

he has something,

but he hasn't,

he got full

and it's not as good

as he think he is.

So there's that,

but I don't get like,

I'll stop, take over.

He said you're not trying

to raise capital.

Probably don't need to

right now.

Yeah, not the moment.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's looking like

this is carbon nanotubes

with sodium

as the active material,

3D printed.

If it is real,

I really hope that

donut doesn't get

squashed by giant rival

industries and regulators.

Yeah, that's the tinfoil

hat.

Like, you know,

the oil companies will go

just buy up donut

and, you know,

bury it, right?

Unless he plays this car

like perfectly,

which, you know,

it seems like

what he's trying to do.

If this is true,

the world will be

a different place

in a few years

and people don't even

know what's coming.

Yeah, that's right.

If it's true.

A donut is backed

by Mercedes and Stellantis.

Battery will change

everybody's

will change somebody's world,

either everybody

or donut CEO, right?

Unlike most batteries,

these guys are making

insane claims

so testing 100,000 cycles

is much easier

just charging

and hypercharging

every six minutes

so you could

theory slam it out

in 14 months.

All right.

I missed the last two weeks

so I apologize

if I repeat the question,

but I'm curious

your thoughts on

Geely potentially

bringing Zeekr,

et cetera,

to the U.S.

via the Volvo factory.

Yeah, I mean,

that's kind of what

they're already doing

is like the Volvo

that's going to be announced

on the 21st

kind of feels

like a Chinese EV,

the EX60,

400 miles of range,

really fast charging.

Doesn't sound

like it was developed

in Sweden.

I mean, the Zeekr

Waymo vehicle

that's going to come

to the U.S.,

like what's that about?

Like where it's

going to be built?

I don't know.

Yeah, I think that's

a Chinese car

and they're just

taking the hit.

Taking the hit,

100 percent tariffs.

That's fine.

Yeah,

for me,

FSD is a great level too.

Still sometimes

takes wrong exit

in New York City.

I don't trust it

against other crazy

drivers and pedestrians,

but on the highway

in small towns,

it's great.

I agree.

Yep.

Same.

Do you have a

guesstimate

how many Tesla sales

have been lost

in total

due to buyers

not wishing to buy

any product

from Elon Musk?

We have that.

Say one.

Yeah.

We have that

in the U.S.

there was

there was a study

in the U.S.

that that look,

you know,

it's hard.

It's super hard

to make a study on that,

but the figure

that was about

a million sales

that they lost,

like a potential

million sales.

And you know,

Tesla didn't just

decline its overall

sales globally

last year.

It also missed out

on a 20 percent bump

in EV sales in the world.

Yeah.

And as the EV leader,

it should have benefited

from that.

Just like BYD now,

which is now the new

EV volume leader

in the world,

it still grew

overall.

Yeah, it's wild

that Tesla is

because of one man

losing so many sales

and yet

giving that

same man

billions of dollars

in incentives.

Yeah.

It's just a wild

situation.

I mean,

it's unprecedented.

It makes no sense.

Yeah.

All right.

It's the Model 3

third row inside

the rear crush zone

only put people

you don't care about

in those seats.

You know, I actually did

a lot of research.

I used to have

about 10 years ago,

Tesla Model S

with the third row

facing back,

but they did double

reinforce the back end

of that.

And, you know,

something like 90 percent

of accidents

are, you know,

hit the front of the car.

So, I don't know,

you have to do some math

on that,

but it is a little scary

having little

people in the back

of your car.

I'm wondering how many

verge motorcycles

will sell in the next

three years

if everything they claim

is true

and how long

will car manufacturers

take to develop

these for auto use.

I imagine there's

probably going to be

a lot of sales

to battery manufacturers.

Yeah, everyone's

going to want on.

But yeah,

I mean,

so that's the idea

behind like,

like fairytale

scenario here.

Like I'm giving you

the fairytale scenario.

Like if everything

is true,

like the idea

would be like

verge,

small company,

developed a crazy

motor,

crazy hubless motor,

real technology

developed it

so and,

you know,

made some progress

with electric motorcycle,

but doesn't do their

own battery

or they do their own

battery pack

without their own battery

cells.

And,

you know,

being an

electric motorcycle company,

you're looking

for the most

energy dense cell

possible

because you have

a small package

to put,

you know,

as much energy

in there.

So you still,

even though verge

in verge was

selling a high hand

vehicle too,

so still is.

So it was hard to get

people to buy

a $30,000

dollar bike

that gets

100 miles

on the highway,

not even that.

So,

they were,

they were actively

looking for the best cells

and

the fairytale would be

that the,

as they were looking

this research from

from Finland

comes out

and goes on notice

because like most battery

break too,

goes on notice,

they check it,

figure it out

that it actually works,

invest in the company,

bring them to market

for their verge

and after that

go try to

sell it to other OEMs

and it's going to go fast

with other OEMs.

It's not,

I don't think like,

you know,

once,

once the technology ramps up,

it's,

it's going to,

it would happen pretty fast.

Especially the idea

behind it

is that those solid cells

would be like

screen printed.

So if the,

the manufacturing process

is scalable,

fast,

again,

fairytale scenario,

I'm giving you right now,

I'm not saying that's

what's going to happen.

All right,

I'm in California

recently drove a model Y

with 14.2 FSD

and it was notably better

than the 12.x FSD

on my 2021 model Y.

The biggest enemy to buying

or subscribing to FSD

is simply free autopilot.

Yeah, like I said,

it is better,

but I would,

it's not,

it wouldn't be

something that convinced me

to upgrade personally.

Like I thought it would be

at some point,

like I need

auto wear for,

but now like the only reason

I bought it

in December

was because I was at

$9,000 of Tesla credit

that was going away.

That's the main reason.

Auto wear for,

I'm like,

yeah,

it's better.

But like I said,

most of the driving

out of where three,

out of where four

can be done by the system

is like the value

is the new responsibility.

And in both case,

that's the guy that's

behind the wheel.

All right,

James Willingham says,

where do you think that

49,000 Chinese EVs

will be distributed in Canada?

You're going to have to

set up their distribution

that works

really there through

third party franchisee

dealers

or setting up

their own production

on distribution

of Tesla

and region and whatnot.

I wonder how they're going to

divvy it up

or how they're going to

like stop at 49,000.

Like is it going to be

like January 3rd?

There's going to be 49,000.

Oh, it's as soon as March.

It's happening March 1st.

Oh, it's happening.

Yeah, March 1st this year.

Yeah.

Yeah, I also was thinking that

on how you're going to

fight for the quotas

and everything.

But my understanding

is like if you invest

in manufacturing,

then you can increase

the quota.

So I would guess

that a lot of Chinese companies

right now are looking at

potential partnership

joint ventures.

Sorry.

Just doing the live podcast,

but did you

you interview the doughnut lab guy

and find out the volumetric

density of the cells?

If it's a supercapacitor,

it may require a huge volume.

I don't think that was the case.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I did.

Well, I didn't even ask

about the supercapacitor.

You actually shut that down

before I even ask it.

It's like this is a battery.

It is not a capacitor.

It's a battery.

Okay.

So that's gone.

I did ask about the volumetric

capacity because like I said,

he didn't want to talk about

chemistry whatsoever.

So I literally had during the interview,

I had to be like

titanium dioxide.

What do you think about that?

They were like, no, I'm not.

No, I'm not.

It's based on my research and everything.

So he was like, no,

I'm not talking about that.

But I did ask him

about the volumetric density

because my idea,

even though

by that time,

like I know,

I think I mentioned supercapacitor

in the last podcast,

but by that time with my research,

I was early past it

because I had found the

titanium dioxide stuff.

But the amorphous nature

of the titanium dioxide

because it's more breathable,

it's less dense.

So yes, at the volume level,

not at the weight level,

it would be bigger,

potentially bigger.

But again,

this is at the atomic level.

So like it breeds more,

but like not excessively more.

So I thought that

if there's something where

it could be not as good

as lithium ion cells,

it would be at the volumetric density.

One red flags,

he didn't know the volumetric density.

He was looking for it in his head.

It was like,

I don't actually remember,

but then he said it was better

than the titanium ion batteries.

So what do we know?

All right,

I guess we'll find out soon.

Yeah.

And then yeah,

you'll be able to buy

a battery-less motorcycle

on the used market

for cheap soon.

Maybe, we'll see.

Does Elon's pay package

remain in place

if the board of directors fires?

No, I don't think so

if they firemen would cause.

There's cause left and right.

You just open this Twitter page.

It's just,

you know,

half of it is white nationalist bullshit.

Anyway,

all right,

let's end it here.

We're already an hour and a half in.

It was a long one,

but we had a lot of

interesting discussion,

a lot of great question

from you guys,

a lot of great comments.

We always appreciate

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If you see those of you

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If you do appreciate the podcast,

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So that's it for this week.

We're going to see you

same time, same place next week.

Have a nice one.

Bye-bye.

0:00

85:27

Podcast: Tesla stops selling FSD, Canada and EU to slash Chinese EV tariffs, the battery that could change the world, and more

Toyota Chr

FSD

self-driving

subscriptions

Autonomy Plus

autopilot

level two system

Tesla Model Y

black badging

Tesla Model 3

EVs

BYD

BYD Shark

plug-in hybrid

electric range

Rivian R2

validation units

Rivian

BMW iX3

Toyota bZ4X

kilowatt hour

DC charging

0-60 time

Android Auto

Apple CarPlay

20-inch wheels

starting under $35,000

Verge Motorcycles

Mercedes

CATL

Peugeot Ions

Ford Bronco

Tesla Model S

About this episode

Original notes