Tesla goes all-in on Elon, Robotaxi crashes, Nissan kills Ariya, and more

We are live on the episode of the electric podcast. I am Fred Neyberg, your host. And as usual, I'm

joined by Seth Wintra. How are you doing today, Seth? I'm good. All right. You have plenty of

stuff to talk about. As usual, we're going to focus on this little bit first and then

move on to other stuff. But that's what we're going to talk a lot about the situation

right now with Elon's basically trying to get... Well, not that he didn't already have full control

of the company, but going even deeper in it. A little bit of a RoboTaxi crash data was released

this week. That was interesting. A redesign of the door handles that was forced a little bit on

Tesla. Then good news on the Tesla Semi-Front, a big partnership with Uber Freight. I want to

talk about the 2026 OPTIQ Cadillac coming with a few new interesting cheaper variant. We have

Rivian breaking ground in Georgia and we have Nissan and has a little big change to its EV line

upcoming. I just posted this big article. I've been writing this throughout the week a bunch

of times and I finished it today. But I kind of summarized everything that happened this

week with... Am I lagging a little bit? Everything's okay? You hear me? Okay. All right. Looks like I

was lagging. I'm in this computer sometimes. All right. The week started with Elon investing

a billion dollars into Tesla, which is big news, big change, a full B. It's more than he's

ever invested in Tesla, by the way, for people that are not familiar with Elon

investing about roughly 200 something million dollars, about as much as he invested in Donald

Trump's campaign into Tesla over his career. Of course, Tesla created a lot of wealth for him,

a lot more than he put in it. But now out of nowhere, out of the blue, without any

clear explanation, he bought a billion dollar on the market. Tesla shares first time in a long

time, first time since Tesla is like a giant trillion dollar company. We have to speculate as

to why he did that, because obviously he didn't go into the details about it. But I think that it

plays into what's happening at Tesla right now, which is it's trying to sell you on his

compensation package big time. And you know, Elon hasn't been at Tesla that much over the last

two years, really, specifically over the last year and the first half of this year,

before he got kicked out of the White House. He needs to convince a little bit people that he's

all in Tesla. And it's more like Tesla is all in Elon than Elon being all in Tesla. And that's

what's happening right now. So just to give you an idea here, we often complain that Tesla

doesn't do enough advertising. Tesla should invest in advertising to try to normalize itself right now,

which are going down at a rate of 13% per year so far this year. And advertising is a proven way to

boost sales in most of the makers. Tesla has been against advertising for the longest time.

Then per coincidence started dabbling in it a little bit after Elon bought Twitter, which

you know, relies on advertising for its existence. Yeah, very curious.

But quickly, Tesla gave up on their first stop advertising. Now it's back advertising.

Currently, Tesla is running five ads on Google. If you're not aware of that,

Google is actually pretty transparent about that. They have, they show you

each advertiser what the ads they're running on their network right now. So you can just

go Tesla Inc. And you'll know exactly what ads they're running. And Tesla is running five ads

right now. You would think, all right, one from the MOLS, one from the MOLX, one for the MOL3,

one for the MOLY, maybe one for the Powerwall, something like that. That's five ads. Nope.

All five of them are about votes for Elon Musk's compensation package. It's that crazy really.

And you see here, Tesla's next chapter, the future of Tesla, you click on it.

The link is all about selling you on, on increasing the number of shares at Tesla and

voting for the three board members and voting for Elon's compensation package. Again,

this one here, but instead it's mentioned the annual meeting specifically. Tesla growth is

infinite. You know, normally a giant red flag, you see that like in penny stocks or something,

not in a trillion dollar company. And then another one advertising the annual meeting and

the vote. So Elon, I don't know if you saw that said, but it gave me a good laugh. So Elon

is also pushing for the vote. And he said, this shareholders vote decides the future of Tesla.

So giving him the biggest compensation package ever, that's decides the future of Tesla and may

affect the future of the world. I mean, the guy is full on delusion of grandeur right now.

He thinks that Tesla shareholder, he really, he literally thinks that the most important thing

in the world right now, you know, there's the wars, there's famine, the engineered famines, there's,

you know, there's a bunch of this climate change happening. There's a lot of crazy things

happening around using free speech in the US, which has been like the hallmark of the,

the whole country, the whole nation for centuries. But the most important thing he

thinks happening right now for the future of the world is Tesla shareholder voting to give him

him a trillion dollars worth of Tesla shares. It's bananas. So I wrote this, this whole essay

basically on, on how Elon has this the shoulder traps. And we talked about it a little bit last

week where, you know, we were very confident that this is going to pass, that shareholders

are going to vote for it, because especially of the timing of it, that, you know, this is going to

have a good Q3. They released the deliveries first week of October, third week of October,

they released the earnings going to be very good earnings in my opinion. Then two weeks later,

week or two later, Tesla shareholders vote. Great timing for Elon on this. After that,

Q4 is going to be disastrous, Q1 is going to be disastrous, but that's, you know,

an issue for another time. But yeah, a company that says like the future of Tesla, the future of

the world, infinite growth, all on this, this vote here is, is Elon trapping the shareholders in,

in this idea of where they've been clear, even the, the chairwoman, Robin Nanom, said that

Elon's written to leave Tesla if he doesn't get this, if he doesn't get this share package,

if he doesn't get 25% ownership of Tesla. And now the shareholders are trapped, like, okay,

if they vote against it, Elon leaves the stock crumbles, there's just nowhere around it. The

stock right now is completely dependent on Elon's delusional prediction regarding autonomous

driving, regarding Optimus robot. And those are, he's, he's single in and Lee, him and his

cult of personality around him, keeping that delusion alive. Because everything that we've seen

so far is, is not going great in those two very two specific program, we just reported today,

that the head of Tesla Optimus AI has left. And that's after the head of the whole program,

you know, because the Optimus AI is sort of like, the Optimus program is separated like in the

robotics and AI. It's sort of melting the two together. And in June, you have Milan Kovac

that led the entire program leaving. And now you have the head of the AI program for Optimus

leaving also. So the program is not doing very well. Then you have the

autonomous driving stuff, which is also not going super well. So

we reported this week that, you know, a few last month, we reported that the floodgates

are open for autonomous driving crashes lawsuits with Tesla. After the first one went to trial,

the first wrongful debt lawsuit went to trial. The plaintiff one awarded $243 million in damages

infinitive damages for Tesla. Tesla is appealing this, but obviously the first trial

happening with a crash that happened in 2019, by the way, is a big deal for what's coming up after

that. And so we suspected that, you know, others are going to lose, the Tesla is going to lose other

lawsuits in the same form, or they're going to be quicker to settle. And this is exactly

what's happening. So last year's Tesla settles the first wrongful debt lawsuit involving

an autopilot crash, a crash that happened in 2018. Last month, Tesla loses the first trial for

a wrongful debt related to an autopilot crash that happened in 2019. Now we learned that Tesla

settled another one that happened in 2019. We discussed that case before, but it's a case where

someone on autopilot was not paying attention, ran into a pickup truck, a 15 year old kid

tragically died in that pickup truck after the crash. So it was the same lawyers with the Florida

case that they won last month. So they were using a similar strategy where not all the blame is on

Tesla, the driver was not paying attention should have the blame. But why was the driver not

paying attention? This Tesla has some responsibility for these abuse of the system. And the jury

found that yes. So now this is a big problem because look at this here. So this is a 2018 crash,

2019 crash, 2019 crash. This is the FSD Cabels of mileage chart. We're not even at the beginning

of it here in 2021. The mileage went way up after that the crash is when way up. So we're

going to just keep seeing those coming. Like I wouldn't be surprised that within the next year

or 12 months, 18 months, we're going to start seeing one of those every week, because we know

already that there's over 50 fatal crashes involving autopilot and fossil driving 50.

There's many more that resulted in injuries and all that that also are going to result

likely in lawsuits. So this is nuts. And how much is Tesla settling right now? Because we

$243 million if you go to trial and you win. And that's that's just in Florida that has,

you know, lenient laws regarding that. And in California, they were no cap on the

defensive damage. And it could have been way higher than that. And we know that in the

Florida case, Tesla refused a settlement offer from the plan set for $60 million.

So what do you think is the going rate right now for a wrongful debt

autopilot could be like, I know it's morbid to talk about, but it's crazy.

Like, yeah, I mean, the actuaries at Tesla have to be formulating that right now.

So I don't know. I don't know what I don't know what a human life is worth these days,

Tesla driver, but somebody's somebody's making that calculation.

Yeah, it's morbid, but it's happening. So can you imagine like 50 debts,

the $50 million rate, it's massive. It has to have an impact at some point.

It's crazy. Because what I wrote in this is like, so you see like more people

are dying in crashes involving Tesla's half-baked driver assistance system.

Then Tesla compensated the victim and their families with millions of dollars each time,

essentially using the money that it earns from selling the dream that those half-baked

driver assistance system are going to become autonomous driving at some point.

Isn't that a crazy cycle? Yeah, it's not really what you want to see from a company

that promised to deploy some potentially like life-saving technology that so far,

you know, I'm sure that autopilot and FSD has saved lives before, but it also has taken them

or contributed in taking them at least based on what the jury said in Florida and it's crazy.

So that's just autopilot and FSD, which by Tesla's online mission is a level two,

our level two systems. Then there's the robotaxi, which is the other little illusion that Tesla has

going and it's to make it look like they have, they're near a level four system. It's going to

happen. It's coming, coming soon. We just, you know, right now we need a supervisor in the

passenger seat with a finger on the kill switch, but at some point it's going to,

we'll go away because we're going to proven over a certain mileage that there's no

intervention needed. Well, you know, all sounds good when you say it like that is just that

based on my experience reporting on Tesla for 10 years, reporting on the driver assistance effort

and the lack of transparency when it comes to data, I have a hard time believing it. And now

we are finally getting some data on the robotaxi, a little bit delayed, but still

due to the standing order, which Trump is getting rid of by the way. So we won't probably

won't see that for a long time. The automakers are deploying autonomous driving system and

driver assistance system have to report crashes within five days of being aware of them. We reported

on that recently, if you remember, because Tesla is being investigated by NetSoft for not reporting

on time. But Tesla has only reported on driver assistance crashes. Again, because autopilot

and fossil driving are considered level two driver assistance system. However, robotaxi is

considered a level, you know, between three and five, they haven't been precise. I would assume

it's level three because of the kill switch that's happening. It's probably considered level three.

And now for the first time, Tesla has to report autonomous driving crashes.

And they reported three of them here. I have them here. And they happen all in the first

month. So the reporting for the July has been posted. So in July was Tesla's first month of

operation for robotaxi in Austin. And within the first month, they had three accidents.

Now it's hard to say just how, if that's bad, or if that's good, because we don't have the

knowledge over this period of time. But we know one thing we know that they were about a dozen

vehicle operating in July in the robotaxi service. So three crashes, three different vehicle,

that means that one in four Tesla vehicle, Tesla robotaxi had a crash on its first

month of operation. Or one had more than one crash. Yeah, a possibility. But I think, I think they

do list the car, I think each car was different. But, and that's my second problem that I want

to discuss here. The information that we have on this is extremely limited. We know when

they happen. We know actually not really when we know like the month, the time of day. And that's

about it. If it's the street and intersection on the highway, so there was two on the street, one

intersection, we know that there was property damage in each one of them. And one minor

injury without the specialization. But that's about it because Tesla out of everyone that

reports crashes when it's so that's that means for autonomous driving that that means

way more that means zoos. That means now Tesla. Everyone shares what they call a narrative of it,

which explained exactly what happened in the crash. Everyone does accept Tesla. Tesla redacts the

whole thing. We don't know anything. So you know what, this might not be responsible for any of

these crashes. It might be some crazy people that see the robotaxi and they like screw

it on us and run into them. We won't know. I mean, if that was the case, I'm sure that

Tesla would have said it by now, but we don't have the details on this, which is again, extremely

worrying. We need transparency for a company like that. That's deploying technology like this.

And, and yeah, I mean, one of the other things that do that's worrying about this is that

we haven't heard of these crashes, these crashes from the Tesla influencers that were,

you know, the only people that were using right, what happened in July? How come we didn't

get the information from the people who all have like very active Twitter accounts? Like why didn't

one of them? And we're filming all of these drives to everyone was filming these drives the

first month. Everyone, that's all they were doing. They weren't even like using the robotaxi to go

somewhere they needed to go. They were just using it to use it and driving around in circle,

basically filming the whole thing. We know, we know these crashes are probably on camera

somewhere and the Tesla influencers, or at least some of them, I think one of them, again, we

don't have enough details about them. But the one of them might have been the one where they ran

into the tire of the Uber, Uber, the UPS truck. So that might be one of them. But

yeah, other than that, the other ones are not on camera and pretty sure they should be.

So it is a further indication that you cannot trust those Tesla influencers. So this is an example

here of the narrative that's posted. So you have three Zooks incident here that's,

you know, fully explained. Way more goes into very easy details about what happened with

every one of its accidents here. And but not Tesla Tesla, you see, you can easily spot which

one is Tesla. It's the one that says redacted may contain confidential business information.

Not great. This also doesn't post its version of the system that's running or other, all other

companies does. It's a bummer. It's really, it's really worrying about this.

I just, I don't have a lot of hope Tesla and Linus properly. All right, Tesla has confirmed

that it's redesigning its door handles to be, to combine the electronic release with the manual

release. So everyone that's familiar with Tesla is familiar with the fact that virtually hall models,

I think, I think all models have frameless, frameless doors, frameless windows around the

doors. So that means that you need to lower a little bit the window before opening the door.

So they have an electronic release that when you press it, the first thing it does,

it's exactly that, then it releases the door. And so Tesla prefer not using the manual release,

you still need a manual release for obvious reason, because if the electronic system inside

the car fails, then you get stuck inside or someone gets stuck inside, whatever.

Now, there is manual release, you see it here on the car here, it's inside. So that's in

model three, model Y. So normally you press the bus. So this is the release for the electronic

release on the top. And this is the manual release. It's kind of well hidden though. It's

seamlessly within the door handles. So you don't really see it. You need to know where it is.

You need to read the owner manual or, you know, be aware of where it is. And a lot of people

aren't. And it has caused problem. It has caused problem with NHTSA this week announced

an investigation. And the investigation is specifically about there's been a lot of instances

of a parent exiting the vehicle and then the electronic system crashing while a kid is still

inside the car. And it can be difficult for the parent to communicate to the kid that

where and how to use the manual release. So that's a real danger concern.

Hey, do you remember that woman who drove into the pond in the Model X?

Yeah, that billionaire woman lady in Texas. Yeah, she was in the car and the car apparently

failed with the electronic release and called her friends and say, like, how do I get out of

there and then slowly sink into the, her private little lake, sad, sad and sad the way

in your life. Yeah, there's the other thing is so that that's, that's a scenario. But

the other scenario is what you just described where panic, even if you know where it is, if

you just had a crash and that's, you know, that can be when the electronic system fails when there's

a crash. Sometimes, you know, the car even catch on fire and then you need to get out

and this can be a panic and you just cannot operate the manual release. So that can be a

problem. So Tesla, you know, because of a Bloomberg article on this this week, then

NHTSA announcing that they are investigating the situation,

Franz Wall-Holstens, the chief designer at Tesla, went to an interview on Blueberg later in the

week and said that the idea of combining the electronic one and the manual one together

into one button, I think makes a lot of sense. That's something that we're working on. And

then he also said that they're already testing it in China. So they already developed a system

in China to do that. And they plan to deploy that in the vehicle in the future.

That's good news. Tesla taking feedback, even if it's after, you know, some tragic accident,

obviously took a lot of time, but they're taking some feedback, they're doing it.

By the way, this is not a novel idea for that Tesla is having. Like there's another Lexus

Beezie, whatever the Beezie that is equivalent for Lexus, they have that. So the manual release

is basically pulling on the electrical one. So that you call it as a button,

but you can also see that it's a flap. And if you pull the flap, it's managed to release.

If you press it as a button, it's the actual release. I think that makes a ton of sense.

So I'm assuming that they're going to do the same thing here.

All right, moving on. Back when bless you.

Yeah, we have one good news at Tesla. We're not just hammering Tesla on bad news. We do share

good news at Tesla. It's just far and few in between with the current state of the company.

Oh, no, there's another bad news. Forgot that one because it happened last week,

just after the podcast we didn't discuss last week, but it's still seeing a thing.

Whoa, what is it? Keep jumping at it. Tesla has officially discontinued the Cybertruck

base. We will drive the cheapest version of Cybertruck. Launched it earlier this year,

but it was not what was originally supposed to be. It was supposed to be it.

Basically the same thing with a little bit less range, but a smaller batch pack,

less range and one fewer motor, rear wheel drive system. It had a fewer motor.

It was rear wheel drive, but it didn't have a smaller battery pack. You had the same battery

pack as the all-wheel drive Cybertruck, so it did have a longer range, but it had just a $10,000

lower price point, so $70,000 instead of $80,000. But for that $10,000 less, yes, you had a little

bit more range, 350 miles of range to be precise, but you lost a lot more than the

all-wheel drive in the front motor. You also lost active air suspension, motorized tunnel cover,

the power outlets in the back, the rear screen. You lost a lot of things, and especially the

things that people found very useful. The active suspension in the Cybertruck obviously super

useful. The power outlets in the back. That one hurt a lot of people, I think,

because it's super useful, probably super cheap to put in there, and Tesla instead released the plug

that you can use a plug in the Nax connector, and then you have a couple of outlets coming out of

that, but it feels like a bad substitution for just put the power outlets in there instead.

So basically no one wanted it. I literally don't know anyone who bought this. After they

discontinued it, I posted on Twitter, just by curiosity, does anyone know anyone that

bought this and no one knew anyone? It was a complete flop on top of the Cybertruck program

itself. I think it's a big flop, but the rear wheel drive version just didn't hit at all.

All right, now moving on to the good news that I want to talk about when it comes to

Tesla, is Tesla Semi just partner with Uber Freight, which is interesting. It's actually somewhat

similar to the Tesla partnership it has with Uber for passenger vehicle for the Uber ride

ailing program, where they subsidize the price of the Tesla vehicle, just a thousand bucks for

the program. I'm sure it's a little bit more for the Tesla Semi, and also Tesla integrates

the Uber software into the software where your Uber driver now can have the

navigation directly on the Tesla vehicle rather than on the phone. The Uber app knows about the

range of the Tesla, so it only pushes you rides that matches the range, things like that.

Well, they're basically doing the same thing with Uber Freight for the Tesla Semi. So it's

called the Dedicated EV Fleet Accelerator Program, and Tesla is the first partner for it.

So there's a few things that happen. First of all, they subsidize the price of the Tesla Semi.

They don't say buy all much, but they do it. They say that Tesla is going to talk with specific buyers

that go through Uber Freight, and they can figure it out based on the needs. They don't say the

exact price. And we don't know the exact price of the Tesla Semi 2, and we reported earlier

this year that we know it increased a lot. We know that the original 150 for 300 mile version

and 180 for the 500 mile version are, it's not good anymore. We know it's probably around twice

that now, based on the information we have, but there's nothing confirmed yet. So they're

going to subsidize that a little bit. They're also going to do predictable growth where they're

going to assign, they're going to predetermine a period of time. Again, they don't, they're

not big on details, but they do say that they're going to, for a period of time, they're

going to forecast you exactly how much you're going to make with the vehicle and give you,

because Uber Freight basically gives you jobs to do with your truck, and they're going to

give you exactly, like you're going to make at least that for a period of time. So it's going to

help you finance the purchase of the truck because you're going to have a predictable

revenue coming from the truck. So that's good too. Then they're going to optimize

utilization, routing around the range of the Tesla Semi, obviously, and the

Smiga charger network, which doesn't exist really yet, but it's coming up slowly. Right now, it's

mainly at Tesla's customer partners for the program, but they're working on the first few public

stations. So you can see that. So this is good news. All around the thing, you know,

Tesla Semi set, you know, is like, it's probably the vehicle program I'm more excited about

that Tesla. I think it's going to be, I think it's going to work out great.

Hopefully, and when production should start later this year, but volume production is

not going to be until next year. One thing that I thought was interesting about that set,

Rebecca Tanushi, who used to be the head of charging before she got fired by Elon Musk,

and along with their entire team reportedly, because she didn't want to fire a higher

percentage of her team, after already firing some people as part of a weight of layoff,

Elon, you know, got a knee jerk reaction and fired her and the entire team because of that.

She's at Uber now, and she's just got promoted to be the CEO of Uber Freight.

She's the UBIUS Uber Freight, just when they partnered with Tesla again, which is I think

that was interesting. I'm sure Elon has very little to do with that anyway.

And she's known for being someone that's like big on the

electrification mission too, so I'm sure that she's perfectly fine working with Tesla on that.

All right, moving on from Tesla news. We have a few news that we want to discuss

about the EV world this week. And then we have some time to take some of your comments.

I see that there's already plenty of people in the chat talking.

You're hoping and joining the show. We see Carl is there. Donald is here.

We're going to get to your question in just a few minutes. So if you have a question for us,

you can put them in the comment section. It can be about any other topics we're

discussing today or any other topics in the EV world that you like, set a nice take on.

All right, the Cadillac OPTIQ Cadillac entry-level electric vehicle, electric SUV,

just got a 2026 lineup update. And the 2026 lineup update includes now the rear-wheel drive version,

which lowers the base price of the OPTIQ to now $52,400. So it starts with the luxury rear-wheel

drive version, which is the price I just said, 317 miles. But that might be a little typo here

because the sport one is the same price. It's not the same price. It's just $500 more.

Okay, that's weird. Then you have the premium luxury at $54,600. And the premium sport, $55,000.

And the V-Series is the one that was already available. The all-wheel drive, this one is

basically $69,000. So you gain a lot more range with the rear-wheel drive

and lower price point. And then you have different packages with different options to

use. The V also has a lot more acceleration, obviously, 0-to-16, 3.5 seconds.

But you still get a lot of power in the rear-wheel drive version. So the rear-wheel drive is

turned into 15 horsepower. That's that's pretty good. Have you driven the OPTIQ yet,

Seth? I haven't had the chance. There was an OPTIQ at the Lyric V event. I got to play around

in it. I think I drove it around parking a lot, but didn't go too far with it. It's a nice car.

Yeah. I'm really impressed that my Cadillac Escalade review is going to come out probably next week,

I would assume. My girlfriend is working on the edit as we speak. That's going to be on

YouTube too. We have a pretty extensive YouTube video that's going to come with it.

Rivian is breaking ground on the Georgia factory plan where they're going to build the R2

and R3 after they're going to build it also in Illinois. The R2 at least, maybe not the R3.

But yeah, it's officially happening. I've had the little breaking ground ceremony here. We see

RJ in the middle, which I assume are local politicians, most likely. The plan to start

production in 2028. It's going to take two to three years to get this thing running.

$5 billion investment in this. Did they get their Biden money? I can't remember. I know

the Doge folks, they wanted access to that or wanted to buy it, which is a coincidence, I'm sure.

They got a $1.5 from local and state, but the feds were so alone of up to $6.6 million

before I say, and wait a minute.

Millions not going to do much. We know from the past that the R2, which is going to be Rivian's

mass market vehicle, they're going to start building it in normal a year earlier, or a little

bit more than a year earlier. They're setting up production this month, I think, to start

installing a lot of the production line for that. Then production is going to start late this

year and delivery early next year, I think they're aiming.

Yeah, this is going to be probably the most challenging time for Rivian because they're

going to have to switch. Basically, they lose money on every R1 vehicle they sell.

Right now, the R1 program is basically a branding campaign so that they can

sell R2s and make money on R2s. Just like Tesla went through

something hell. Yeah, production hell. Rivian's going to go through that.

They're also going to have to turn down their R1 production, and then they're going to have to spool

up Georgia all at the same time. It's going to be a rough couple of years for Rivian.

Yeah, but it's worth it. It's their model three moment. It's when they really shift gears.

They're going to do it in two phases, so it's not going to be as ambitious, but each one is 200,000

units. It's going to be by the end of it, it's going to be a significant factory.

Yeah. And man, the South, if all goes well, it's going to be like a hub of electric vehicles.

Georgia also had the Hyundai factory, if everything goes well with that too.

Yeah, I visited that thing. It's actually incredible. I'm surprised

Ice chose that place to make a mockery of themselves.

And then we have Nissan that's updating its lineup for 2026. They confirmed that the area won't

survive it in the US. So the area is basically dead starting 2026 model year. They haven't

explained why, but obviously the new leaf here, if you look at this area,

then new leaf, new leaf looks a lot alike. The leaf is not what it used to be back

then and they evolved it into a little crossover. So the area becomes a little bit less relevant

and they just don't want to catalyze the whole lineup with that. And the leaf is maybe

branding-wise has a lot more impact. There's a lot of love for the leaf in the EV community.

It was one of the first electric vehicle to be available mass market to have affordable for people

because back in 2000, the leaf launched in 2010, 2011, I think, 2011, I want to say.

And back then, it was just the Model S basically and the Roadster.

I mean, it wasn't even the Model S. It was the Roadster.

And then the Chevy Volt was kind of, it was like the Volt and the Leaf. And what is that,

the Spark and a bunch of the BMW type stuff.

Yeah. So the Leaf is the only one to survive that period, really, because it's still alive,

but it's not the same, obviously. It has involvement, something else. It's basically

just reusing the name with a completely different vehicle, really.

But yeah, so the Aria is gone, but I think it's still going to work in Europe.

It's still going to be available other places that are a little bit more available to electrification

in the North American market these days.

Yeah, let's jump into the Aria's interior. I think the interior of the Aria is way underrated.

Yeah, yeah, it's nice. Jump into the comment section a little bit.

All right. Crown San Diego, we keep waiting for Tesla to cut musk loose

and they keep doubling down, promising one trillion, proving it's all a scam factor.

Yeah, I mean, you cannot say that the shareholders don't have an opportunity.

They could vote no on this. And technically, I'm sure you would fight back. You would kick

and scream. And he said it himself. He said that most of the time, CEOs don't go away by

themselves. They go away being dragged out, kicking and screaming. That's an actual

Elon Musk quote. And it's clear by this point that the only way you can get out of Tesla is

kicking and screaming. And that would be, you know, that would start by voting no on the

compensation package. But I don't see it happening. I think, you know, for the

reason I talked about earlier, I think it's going to be a big yes, probably around,

probably a little bit, not as big as you used to. I would say around 70% of people

that vote yes. All right, moving on, Donald Parish. I wish I'd waited for the Equinox or Leaf,

but I do love FSD. That's interesting. So he's talking about his decision to get a Tesla.

I'm also in the same boat. I have a Model Y that's like one of the first out of the off the

line. It's got full self-driving and full self-driving is helpful. And there's nothing

quite like it. It's not full, it's not self-driving, obviously. It's not full self-driving, but it's

quite helpful sometimes. And, you know, the technology in Tesla is still much better than

Chevy or Nissan. So I don't know. It's hard. I'm going through that same kind of

mind process that Donald is. How about you?

Yeah, I decided just to hold on to my Model 3 right now as my daily driver because I still love it.

But yeah, if I was to buy a new car right now, probably it wouldn't be a Tesla.

What would you buy?

You know, I really like the Lyric.

Yeah, it's a nice one.

It's a nice one. It's fun to drive. You know, and I want something a little bit bigger too.

And so something would make sense for that. And but right now, the other thing that's

holding me up right now is like Canada is talking about potentially removing the tariffs on the

Chinese EVs. So there's a pushback right now. It's Ontario. Basically, Ford in Ontario is

like pushing back because they have the only one that had significant automotive industry there.

But Carney is discussing like, ah, maybe we remove them. And if that's the case,

then, you know, I'm going to be the first one to import there and shall be why you seven for sure.

Nice. And a U8 too.

I'm not that crazy.

All right, we got some stuff there. And then why when I charge at EV Go Station,

rated at 200 kilowatts, the max I get on the prologue is 65 kilowatts. The Honda prologue

is basically a Chevy Blazer EV same stuff. Don't know why EV Go has this little bit notorious for

not getting the speeds that you're hoping for. Might also be the battery temperature. A lot of

things. Hard to say. All right, down parish 50 fatal compared to a total fatal crashes in the

period. We don't know how many people die with regular cruise control. We don't know.

Yeah, I don't I don't like this narrative that people push. It's it's about if Tesla would have

deployed and marketed differently autopilot and full self driving, not as these things that are

basically full self driving, you know, as the name implies, is it possible that it could have

reduced the abuse of the system of people not paying attention while using them and reduce the

number of crashes? That's the question here. You cannot compare, you know, apples to apples,

like the crashes or you would need all the mileage is you will need comparative technology

and you know, it's it's hard to do. Yeah. All right, Tesla does doesn't it have

actuaries that he meant to say? I would doubt that. I'm sure the insurance part of the company does at

least. Yeah, exactly. Can F ski how many more miles are driven with regular? Okay, we're still

talking about that. Save more than 50. All right, we don't know how many I mean, these say

that's a thing. Right. And I do admit that that it's it's more difficult to pinpoint

an instance where FSD would have saved someone that it is from FSD, you know,

contributed to this someone's debt. I can admit that, which is a problem for Tesla,

obviously. But, you know, people the the obviously they have a problem with an autonomous technology

contributing to someone's debt. That's that's the real issue here. You want to be extra careful

about that. And based on the data that we have, based on Tesla being not very transparent,

we have concern that Tesla is not optimizing for safety with its autonomous and driver

assistance features rollout. That's that's all we're doing here. And we have good points about

that. All right, Christian Hemelsbach from Facebook says autopilot is still a level two

system, nothing more the same as for FSD. So it's always the driver who's responsible.

Yeah, we but we already went through that like three times on this show.

But he says McDonald's has also paid for a hot coffee. I think he's it's not this. I mean,

there's there's a link to it. But like, you see, but the link here is like McDonald's,

I think I don't remember that case exactly well. But if I'm, if I'm correct,

it was not just about the coffee being too hot, it was extremely hot, and it burned severely the

lady. But it was also no warning that it was like ultra hot or something like that. And

the argument was made that the issue should have been worn. And then since that day, I think

McDonald's has warnings on their coffee that they are super hot, which I know sounds a bit

stupid that like, okay, coffee is hot. But in that case, it was extremely hot, which might be,

you know, a possibility. And Tesla needs to be more clear about warnings, their

user, their drivers, that, you know, it's not it doesn't give you back time as they claim.

It's, it's, you have to pay attention all the time. And it doesn't drive for you,

you're the driver, you're the one responsible. And that's more the vein that we need to go through here.

All right. Moving on, Kenevsky have to normalize per mile, we're still talking about that. Carl says

Tesla doesn't hire actuaries, they can barely retain fraudulent accountants. Okay. Okay. Jason

from engineering explains the YouTube channel was fed up with Musk and dumped his beloved Model

3 performance. Sounds like somebody I know, more lucid, be considered a lucid at all friend.

I mean, I would, but it's a lot more expensive. Like one thing I found is like, you know, I do

appreciate like the very nice cars and everything, but I'm more, I don't like the idea of like

driving like a super expensive vehicle. Like for me, like the $50,000 price range is more

is more like that. I don't like the idea, like I'm parking it on the street. Like I was driving the

Cadillac Escalade, $200,000 Canadian vehicle. I was getting, it wasn't even my car. And I'm sure

that if something would happen, like I had insurance and everything with, with, because

it was loaned by GM and everything, I'm sure it would have been fine. But just parking it

on the screen in Vancouver, where, you know, there's zombies everywhere. It was, it's

like, it's not, it makes me nervous.

When you say zombies, you mean like Fentanyl or Fentanyl people.

Oh man, Vancouver is pretty rough these days. It's, it's very rough.

West coast. There's no other car that deserves more to survive than Lucid. Absolutely amazing car.

They do, they do make a beautiful, beautiful vehicles and super efficient and fast.

They're just a little bit on the expensive side. I'm really curious to see like what's

going to be their, their next gen, like their $50,000 or so vehicles. Because, you know, we already

Rivian went with a different approach. And we have, you know, we've seen them for like, what,

two years now already? Yeah. R2s. So we know exactly what's coming. And we know that they're

sticking very close to their R1s, you know, but yeah, I'm curious to see what's going to

be Lucid's approach on that front. All right. BMW and Mini have used frameless doors with

electronic window lowering for decades using fully mechanical door handles.

So you don't have to be electronic, I guess on that is the point. Joseph notes that the

Texas incident that we were talking about the woman who could not get out of her Model X

when she was underwater and passed away, it was Mitch McConnell's sister-in-law. Oh yeah.

That former. I don't remember that. What is it? I remember that there was like a billionaire or

something. But yeah, they were all very wealthy folks. Carl and San Diego Uber Freight, your

closest available driver is 1,247 miles away and should be there in 37 hours. That's a good one.

That's a ruble taxi joke. Don't get must seems like folks looking at Tesla Semi never talk about

other electric semis. Curious if you guys have done a deep dive. Makers have them on the roads today.

Tesla is absent. Common kind story at this point. We have checked out Freightliner, a couple others.

Yeah. No, no, we do. I mean, we have Joe Barris that reports on this full time for us.

Like we don't talk about them as much, obviously, but they are out there. I think the Semi is

different to be honest with you though. I think they do achieve a longer range. They do

are more competitive with gasoline version. I think most of the other trucks out there is more for

local deliveries, city deliveries and like in closed routes like, you know,

between distribution centers and things like that. While Tesla Semi should technically work as

you know, long haul Freight should electrify that. So I think there's a there's value in that,

obviously. I just seven says I'm getting a new Model Y before the tax credit goes away.

I believe it should be coming from Gigafactory, Austin anyway, to know what battery cells are

inside. Would it be 2170 or 4680? There's no 4680 in the Model Y right now. The only 4680

use or use for a Cybertruck. So it's going to be a 2170. Long range wheel road shot. Okay.

Kata says based on recent news that quantum scape insider sold large amounts of shares,

how close to production do you think the latest Ducati demo battery is?

To be honest, I haven't looked too much into the Ducati demo battery. I know that the

quantum scape is working closely with Power Co. I know that they are deploying lines right now

production pilot production lines. I don't. So I love the Ducati is really going to be the

first very first project for them. It wouldn't make sense because it's going to be obviously a

very low production system. But yeah, I mean, I don't know about the insider trading too much.

I know that the stock has gone. Wow, these days. And to be honest, I did sell a few of them after

31 to like 1350 or something like that. I just thought it was becoming like just too

crazy for me because I think I bought them like $3 or something like that. So I did the

shave a lot off the top. But yeah, I think I think so in states. I've been very clear about

that. I think I think it's going to come by the end of the decade. We're going to have a few

electric vehicle in production with solid state batteries, probably from quantum scape,

from fractional, from Farisa's also, maybe solid power, maybe a little bit behind. I'm not so

sure. All right. Is there any information pointing that quantum scape are closer to

production, not showing unicorn with a lot of kink siren out other than solid state batteries?

I've done it before. I guess it's kind of a follow up. Yeah, kind of went through that.

The July RoboTaxi crash with a minor injury was into a fixed object at eight miles per hour,

not into a vehicle. This matches Waymo's worst crash into a pole at eight miles per hour in

2024. Yeah, I mean, fair enough. Crash is a crash. Yeah, crash is a crash. And I would

say that Tesla is about a few years behind Waymo in 2024. It's about the way they are.

So that's the thing. I'm not saying that Tesla's technology is not impressive. I think it is. And

I said many times if this FSD was developed in a vacuum without Tesla standing yet as something

that's going to become fully autonomous level four on supervised, I think it would be celebrated

as the best level two system out there by far. It's just it's not the case. It's not

allowed to be marketed. And then you have to compare it to what it's been marketing at, which is

unsupervised autonomy. And it's nowhere near that. So that's the core of the issue here.

All right, I'll let you read this one. Yeah, waiting for the SKI Q video.

When are you going to buy a Cadillac? Fred Cadillac Europe is having a lot of success

with the Lyric. Yeah, I'd be considering it. I mean, I think I'm going to wait until

next year before going forward with upgrading my car. But the Lyric is going to be on the

on the short list. I'm also considering like the Lucid, if the R2, but I don't think the R2 is

going to be available in Canada by then, but you know, I'm, I'm leaving my options open. And

like I said, I'm waiting for that. What happened with the Canadian tariffs on Chinese

would you consider like a used German sports car? That's so candidly, I am considering a used German

sports car. Yeah, which one said which would you which use one that you sent me on Slack this

week? There's a very inexpensive 40, I think it was $48,000 Porsche Taycan Turbo, which I got to

drive at Willow Creek in round LA. And that was quite fun. And I can't believe that car is only

50 grand. So yeah, I mean, it's a fun car. It's a and you know, you can get your kids in there,

the kids can fit in the back and right. Yeah, kids drive though. No, no, no, you have the

bull TVs for that. Yeah, there you go. Do you have any information on the new Tyga Orca? I believe

that's for you friend, bi-directional vehicle to great capabilities. I know that that's a feature

of the new one, but I know it work on I saw it work with the last one, the original Orca, which

is an electric jet ski. You we tried it and my friend Sylvain is a signal energy system that

I did an article in a video about on the electric a few maybe a month ago or so. And

it worked. Yeah, you could pull energy straight from the Orca. So it sounds like it was already a

feature that was like capable of in the original one. I know the new one is a little bit better,

a little bit more refined. It looks like a good machine. And I know they reached out to me to

try it out. I didn't have much time, like I'm pretty fully booked for the next few months.

But I'm going to I'm going to try to find some time to go check that out because I love

the Orca. It's so much fun. All right, Charlie Duel says Tesla matched Waymo's worst crash ever

in just one month while Waymo has over 100 million rider only miles. Yeah, that's a good perspective

to put. Man e-truck may be interesting. Thanks for answering. Man is a German company.

Yeah, the Volvo, man, you know, Cascadia to certain degree, they have a straight

liner, I should say. Yeah, they've been investing in electric for a long time.

All right, for wireless charging dedicated to cyber drugs at superchargers, simple way would be to

make dips in the parking stall where the wheels go to birds one stone, big car overcharger and

bring it close. Is that are we on the right? Yeah, looks like we're talking about that last

week. Yeah, last week we were talking about that. Yeah, I don't know if like supercharger

was really ever discussed that much for wireless charging. I think it was more like home charging

situation. Yeah, that's a lot of power to go through wireless charging. And then we have

Carl that's just driving the i4 and i5. Yeah, I haven't that you know, I haven't spent much

time with the BMW use lately. We had other people doing those reviews. Yeah, I did the i4.

It's a good car. Like it's actually a pretty great car. But like, you know,

a lot of, I mean, it's expensive too. It's expensive and BMW for me the problem of the

user interface that was never a big fan of I don't know if they improved that lately.

All right, one last thing. Lucid Pure, which Jason bought is only 10k more than the Lyric,

right? I personally don't trust that Lucid will survive. Well, 10k is 10k. Yeah, 10k is not

nothing. Yeah, in Canada, that would be 15k for me. So it's still a big, big jump. But yeah, I do

like the Pure and I need to test out the Lucid air again for the, they want me to go check out

their new draw resistance system that's apparently much improved. So looking forward for

that. So I should check that out in the coming weeks. I need to get back to them about that.

All right, well, that was it for this week's episode of Electric Podcast. I hope you

enjoyed the show. If you did, please give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe,

whatever it is on the app you're watching, it helps the show a ton and it's free to do.

We're going to see you same time, same place next week. I hope you have a safe-

Tesla goes all-in on Elon, Robotaxi crashes, Nissan kills Ariya, and more

Cadillac Optiq

Hyundai Grandeur

Tesla Model Y

Tesla Model X

Tesla Cybertruck

Tesla Semi

Cadillac Lyric

Rivian R2

Nissan Leaf

Tesla Model S

Chevrolet Volt

Chevrolet Spark

Tesla Model 3

Honda Prologue

Chevrolet Blazer EV

Rivian R1S

Porsche Taycan

Lucid Air

About this episode

Original notes