Electrek Feb 6, 2026

Tesla hit by Epstein files, Roadster still lives, new Chinese EVs, and more

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Three, two, one, and we are live for a new episode of the Trek Podcast.

I am friend Lambert and on Do Not Disturb.

And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Wintraub.

How are you doing this week, Seth?

I'm good.

All right.

We have a lot to talk about this week.

We're going to start about the biggest story of the week,

even though we talked a little bit about it on last week's podcast.

But it was breaking news at the time.

Like I said, I'm still going through everything.

We're talking about the Eves-Steel Fowls here and how it affects Tesla,

there's no word for it, if it will affect Tesla to any degree.

I think it will.

I think this is not a story that's going away anytime soon.

Because, yeah, Tesla doesn't have just one person in the Eves-Steel Fowl.

It has two literal board members in there.

We're talking about the Musk Brothers, obviously, Elon.

There was a lot of rumors going around before the release.

So we knew that there was some emails between Elon and Epstein's.

Elon's story was always...

Epstein's was trying to get me to the island and I always refused.

So the keywords here are always refused.

And then there was media reports that Kimball Musk,

Elon's younger brother and Tesla-born member had a relationship with Epstein

and that Epstein had presented him with women in the past.

Those were media reports that were clearly...

They didn't know what they were talking about

because we didn't have the emails public then,

but now we do have the emails public and it's clear as day.

So Epstein has provided women for Kimball Musk.

One women in particular.

Her name is sometime redacted in the Fowl, sometime isn't.

I'm not going to name her right now.

But the rule that was put in place for the release of the Epstein Fowl

is that the DOG is only allowed to redact the names of the victims.

You're not allowed to that name any other people's name.

There's plenty of other names that have been redacted.

Even Elon's own name is redacted at a time in there.

But what we know is that Epstein has presented a woman to Kimball

and then Epstein was sort of in charge or at least had a lot of oversight

over this woman's agenda for the...

or schedule for the remainder of the last few months of 2012.

No, sorry, 2012.

And he was keeping up with Kimball, saying,

how do you like said women?

And he was like, I love said women.

And he was like...

And Kimball was responding to other people in the Epstein circle,

telling him that you need to take care of Epstein's girl.

You know, things that look obviously very bad

when we're talking about someone that was at that point

already convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor.

So basically here are the things that we know for a fact

that we can say, you know, Elon or Kimball will not sue me for saying that.

They both had a relationship with a convicted pedophile

for an extended period of time.

And in the case of Elon, we can say that he was actively trying to go

to the wildest parties thrilled by Epstein

at a time that already we knew he was convicted of soliciting prostitution

from minors.

And in the case of Kimball, he was hanging out with him

and, you know, having access to certain women through Epstein.

So obviously things that are quite terrible to hear in the first place.

But then the craziest part about this is Elon's reaction to it.

Elon was already previously lied about saying that he refused to go to the island.

We now have all the evidence pointing to him asking to go

at least on three different occasions.

We cannot prove that he went to the island,

although there is one specific calendar notification for December 2014.

2014, where it says that Elon Musk to the island in Epstein's calendar.

There's the people that wrote that are redacted, which is strange again,

because only the victim are supposed to be redacted.

So unless the victim put that in Epstein's calendar, it's unknown.

There was another time in 2013 where Elon was

arranging all the logistics to go to the island.

And it's actually Epstein that had a conflict of schedule and said that in our coming.

And there's some rumors about if there was really a schedule conflict,

because one thing is clear, Epstein was trying to get close to Elon Musk.

There's several evidence that he was trying to approach Elon,

get people in his entourage to as intermediary to meet him and talk to him.

So he was trying to do that.

In that case, he was the one that backed off for the last second.

But in 2012, there's another time, too, that we don't know what happened.

So 2012, 2013, 2014, it was three occasions.

Two of them, we don't know if he went or he didn't go.

And that's it. He claims that he didn't.

Now this is, Elon then started changing his story throughout the course of the week,

where he said that actually he admitted to the emails and admitted he was trying to go.

But he said it was no big deal because he was trying to go with his wife.

So a little bit change of his story.

I don't think that really is a good counter argument.

Plenty of people have done terrible things with the right prison.

And also, I would know that's that's the same time that they got divorced.

Also, I'm not saying that this is the reason for the divorce.

But, you know, if my husband was hanging out with the convicted pedophile, I don't know if

it would it would it would play into it, let's just say.

Yeah. So yeah, now the big question is like, what what happens now?

Because Elon had a bad week.

Elon even admitted to being depressed on Twitter.

He was like, you know, all the money in the world doesn't buy happiness.

That's true. I can tell you that right now.

So he's not having a good week.

But that's that's on his own.

Like I wrote a tweet that went viral this week where I was like,

there was a way that if Elon is clean in all this, which, you know,

he cannot be completely clean because obviously he didn't

entertain a relationship with Epstein after his conviction.

So that's in itself is not really clean.

But let's say he never go to he never went to the island.

Let's say that he he didn't do anything illegal with Epstein,

with his sex trafficking stuff or anything.

He could have just come out and say, look, guys, I know these emails look pretty bad.

I admit that I didn't know that Epstein was a convicted felon at the time.

You know, possible, unlikely, considering the way that the email

and he knows that he throws like wild parties, it's pretty clear

from the emails that he knows like that.

Yeah, he does.

He asked to go to the wild party twice, twice and also in another email,

Epstein's like, yeah, I'm saying there's no girls over 25.

Yeah, yeah, he was that that was a weird one.

So that Elon, he said that that that's good for him that email because it shows

that they were up to 25 was inviting him to a party in New York

with the UN diplomat and one was like, yeah, I don't want to hang out

with UN diplomats and then Epstein was like, that's code, you moron.

It's just cute girls under 25.

And it's like that.

But then we don't have a follow up

in that email so we don't know what happened.

Maybe maybe he took the phone and then call it like I'm coming

because during that time, by the way, he did just got on the plane.

Yeah, he did hang out with Epstein.

So what we the other thing we do know from the emails, Elon

had several phone conversation with Epstein's and met him at least twice.

One gave him a tour of SpaceX in California in Los Angeles and once

gave him a once met him at his house in New York.

And that's probably the craziest part is like there's a chain of emails

from when he went to his house and they went to a party in New York and

Epstein emails his assistant saying that to arrange a massage for Elon Musk.

And we all know if you've been following the Epstein story quite a bit,

the massages, we know what he means when

I mean, they mean a lot more than massage.

And it's a lot of what is six trafficking stuff was going around.

Now.

All terrible stuff, obviously.

And

normally what would happen, I wrote that in the story here,

in a normal company, you would have

the story, I'm just kidding.

You would have an independent investigation right away.

OK, we have our a board member and our CEO

in Brawl in the biggest candle in recent US history.

And Kim Boll, by the way, has been silent for four weeks now.

He hasn't been public whatsoever.

He's not tweeting, he's not doing anything.

He probably has real PR people behind him telling him to shut up while Elon does

not and he's just blabbing his mouth and just digging his grave deeper

because he's lying about the situation consistently.

But yeah, you open you open investigation, say, all right,

let's get to the bottom of this.

And then obviously, Elon and Kim Boll recused

themself on the board during that time.

And then normally termination, I would assume like because it's out there.

It's clear as day.

It's not like I mean, Elon can claim all every once that he didn't touch

anyone, whatever is like, OK, but you still lie like crazy about it.

And you did entertain a relationship with Epstein after he was already convicted.

And you are asking about the wildest break.

And then a bunch of shoulder lawsuit would come.

Now, is that really what's going to happen with Tesla?

I have serious doubts just because of everything else that the board just

brushed away with when it comes to Elon.

He has full control over the board.

So it would require like a mutiny.

Mutiny, is that how you sound in English?

Mutiny, it would require a mutiny from the board where, you know, I mean,

I am I don't have much hope for anyone on the board other than GB.

You know, that's

that's the thing I'm most disappointed about right now is that we're not

hearing anything from GB.

GB seems to be perfectly fine with what's happening.

Like, there's no if I was on the board at Tesla right now,

there's no there's not a amount of millions of dollars I could be making that

would make me hang out with those guys as it's like, all right,

I either try to do something or I leave.

I just don't want to be involved.

And we are not seeing that from these people.

I'm seeing a lot more Tesla departures, though, in the last few days.

I have to admit, like I've seen a lot of people leave Tesla.

So there's there's that, but not at the highest level just yet.

And not at the board.

It's extremely disappointing to see someone who's been covering Tesla for a decade.

I'm like, I think

I mean, I think we reached peak Tesla a few years ago already.

But I think it's quite downhill from here.

If if, you know, there's a bunch of more

operational stuff that we talked about all the time, a bunch of strategy stuff

that we we think Tesla is doing wrong.

But the core morality,

even though it's a company doesn't necessarily have like a moral compass,

there's there's things you just want to get as far away as possible.

And things like that should be one of them.

And the fact that they're not doing anything tells you everything you need

to know about this right now is just

a family business of the Musk and Elon in particular to do anything with.

It's not a company that employs a hundred

thousand people that you need to protect their

their livelihood.

You have an important mission until last week when they changed it to

to amazing abundance or whatever.

But yeah, that's mission to accomplish.

It's yeah, it's if you cannot

detect it from my my voice right now, it's extremely disappointing Tesla.

What do you see?

Do you see something coming out of this?

No, I like I just don't see them doing anything about it.

I mean, unless Elon is walked

with handcuffs on into a jail or courtroom, I just don't see them doing anything.

Yeah, I mean, now at this point,

do you think anyone's going to go to prison for abstinence?

I've seen the situation other than actual no and certainly not.

And again,

we don't have any proof of Elon doing anything wrong.

We just have him proof of him.

For a fact, asking to go to the wildest parties of a convicted pedophile.

And to lying about it extensively after the fact.

Yeah, I don't see anything happening.

Yeah.

I mean, Tesla had a bad day on the stock market the few the few following days.

But the entire stock because of that, they're not like, oh, man,

I don't want to be invested in a company led.

You know, was asking to go to the party of a of a pedo.

It's speaking of pedo, it's it puts it puts in perspective, right?

When the old people think when he said that you're a pedo guy.

Yeah, the pedo guy thing.

Yeah.

And when when Elon had this little spat

over the big, beautiful bill with Trump last year

and he came out with the email saying that another email, the tweet saying that.

Oh, big, big shocker.

Trump is in the fall as if like he was revealing something something new.

Yeah, that that was really the last time you talked about the abstinence

file on until last week when he was like, I was the one pushing for the file

to be released more than anyone.

And that was his narrative for

for like half a day and he referenced things like back then when he said like,

isn't it funny that Epstein killed himself for for a Democrat oaks?

Because Trump was calling when he's still

calling the abstinence files a Democrat oaks.

So he was like poking at the fund that Trump would say that even though

like it's obviously not a hoax.

And four days in of, you know, this happened like Friday night, the release

Friday afternoon and then, you know, the whole weekend few days later.

I think on Wednesday, Elon retweeted

someone saying that it is a Democrat oaks.

So in four days, he went from I couldn't have done anything wrong

because I was pushing for the files more than anyone to, you know what?

This whole files thing, it's a Democrat oaks.

It's just nuts.

All right.

Moving on.

Yeah.

Tesla, one one thing that's could affect Tesla.

When it comes to that, it's the demand issue.

Like it's not going to help the man issue.

No one wants to buy cars from people affiliated with the abstinence.

And in Europe, it's been it's been the thing going on for a little bit.

But a lot of people are really trying to call the bottom on Tesla in Europe.

And a lot of people thought it did happen last year

because it was it was pretty rough for this in Europe.

But no, not even close.

The first

the first information coming in from Europe in January, Tesla was down.

Well, from here, we'd added 43 percent.

There was a little bit more markets that trickled in over the last few days.

It's opposed to this.

It looks like this lays down so far,

roughly 30 percent in Europe in January 2026 versus January 2025.

And why this is important?

Because it was obviously just one month so far this year of data.

It's not, you know, super deep information.

But you have to remember that in January 2025,

Tesla was super down and people were like,

it's no big deal because there's the model why change over.

And that's what's affecting sales.

Now, a year later, the model why change over is is done for a while now.

And it's still below that.

So it's pretty bad.

The worst one is obviously Norway went from

six hundred and eighty nine units to just eighty three.

Norway is Tesla's second biggest market in Europe after UK.

The UK is also down, by the way, we got the information since then.

Norway was a lot of the men being pulled forward into Q4 because of

a change in the even incentive that

made vehicles over a certain price ineligible, which included most of Tesla's vehicle.

So.

That hurt Tesla quite a bit.

Friends also down 42 percent.

The silver lining is really Sweden up 26.

But at the same time, it's on four hundred and five units.

It's just it's not a big market for Tesla.

And it's quite a volatile market, especially these days with

the sleigh still like in rural in the big strike situation in Sweden

because they just don't want to support the unionization at all.

But yeah, we're going to be monitoring that.

You know, obviously,

this is always a big ramp up in the last month of a quarter

to see how February and March looks like.

But I wouldn't be surprised if we do see an actual bottom for Tesla in Q1

or Q2 2026 in Europe.

But the big question now is like how low is it going to be if Tesla falls from,

you know, over 300,000 units in 2023

to to to now last year was closer to 230,000 units.

It falls below 200,000 units a year and you're up.

You have.

You should network.

You have to look at the factory Berlin

and see really how

how useful these these assets are for Tesla.

There's a good lunch and you get set.

Did you have something to say?

Can you imagine Tesla pulling out of any countries that, you know,

with Norway being in just double digits of sales, you have to imagine there

might be a place that Tesla just finds it not worth doing business in.

Yeah, I don't think Norway,

not like Norway right now is was very hard in January.

I think I think the old quarter was going to be way down compared to Q1 last

year.

But I think it's going to pick back up a little bit after some of the demand being

pulling forward, just ease back into into new demand, even though much lower new

demand because again of the incentive situation and Tesla's demand issue in

Europe in general.

But yeah, could they pull out distribution?

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Or at least, you know, reduce the number of stores like

the expansion that they had in France and Norway in Germany, for example,

like they have significant infrastructure deploy there.

And maybe it's not sustainable at the current levels of sales that they are,

which are down like no joke, they're down like 80 percent from their peak.

And Tesla at their peak, Tesla thought that was it was going to continue to

grow is just not what happened.

So that

but but Berlin, I don't know, Berlin, I think I think we're going to see

what happens with the union with IG metals with the workers console,

which I think is coming up in a few weeks.

I think it's early March.

That's going to have a big effect, I think.

But

the

the strategy for Elon is obviously autonomy.

So he thinks as soon as Tesla solves autonomy,

like they're going to have infinite demand for their vehicles.

So I don't think he pulls the plug right away.

But

it's something to watch for, obviously, because

even even as much as Elon wants to dream about autonomy and then

human robots and everything, if you have

productive asset that

costs billions of dollars to run and you just have no demand for the products

coming out of it, it's it's a shy and drain on your financials that you have

to pull the plug at one point or the other.

So I think the job security at you get to Berlin is not great.

I know that they are planning to do things like battery production for energy

storage and Tesla Semi production, which those are, I think, a little bit more

secure, but

I think I think the Tesla's problem and as a whole, the demand with the brand,

you know, all the all the metrics regarding the brand is going or going down

or crashing like crazy.

And that's before what happened with Epstein last weekend.

I think people are, you know, especially investors looking at the stocks are

completely underestimating how big of an impact that is because

what you saw in Europe with all the Nazi stuff, all the white supremacy stuff,

having a way bigger impact on Europe than than the US.

I think you're going to have a similar impact on the US because the Epstein

story, if anything, has been growing in the last few months rather than

subsidizing with all the effort to look at something else.

And and Elon just lost all credibility on that with everyone, except is more

our core fan base, which is now kind of an echo chamber that just talked to itself.

So for the broader public,

like I had so many people that just don't talk to me about cars or don't

talk to me about Tesla and Elon in the last few weeks there.

And they're like, hey, man, have you seen that?

Things like Elon is like all over the Epstein files.

This is this is this is going to keep

stay around for a while and it's going to affect this as the men as a whole.

Yeah, I mean, I wonder

two, I wonder two things like one is like our people like that were hardcore

Tesla fans offended by his petafile, you know, connections to pedophile stuff.

Is that like enough to to kind of whittle down the hardcore a little bit

or split the hardcore a little bit?

And then two,

you know, when you have the stickers about you get a sticker about the Nazi or do you

get a sticker about that? I do not endorse a whole new market.

You just you love just opened up a whole new market for stickers.

You just I'm not a Nazi or a pedophile.

Yeah, you slap it next to the that's the one you're like, I bought this car

before and you even love to defend pedos.

But yeah, it's it's about such a far for your first question, though.

I honestly have not seen any of the hardcore people.

I've seen even like people like a whole Mars blog like Omar, like defending this stuff,

which, you know, that is begin the biggest like propagandists on Twitter,

like Sawyer Merritt and Omar Quasi,

Walmart's Walmart's blog, I think he's his handle.

So that and Sawyer, of course, like ignore the whole thing.

It's like it didn't happen, you know, it just there's a great company

that sells cars and Elon is perfection incarnated.

But Omar, you know, is a little bit crazier in the head even then.

And he went pretty, pretty nuts, like defending people,

defending Elon's response to it and everything.

It's just it's sad to see.

It's sad to see that, like what people will do for a few bucks.

Desperation, you think they believe or do you think they just want the money?

I think they, well, for for them,

their entire entity is like revolves around Tesla.

So obviously, if you tarnish the brand that much, it's like it's like you don't

just tarnish Tesla, you tarnish me because I'm been defending them for so long.

And if I was wrong, then what am I like that's that stuff is hard for them.

That's that's definitely a problem.

Like with the brand itself, with the cult of personality being so strong.

But I think obviously no one can defend this.

Like everyone that I've seen defending like he didn't go is like, OK,

maybe he didn't go, maybe he did.

But that is that's not really the issue.

He's still asked to go to the Wildest Party of a famous pedo

that that no one can deny.

And that probably eats at them a little bit.

I would hope unless the others like no soul left whatsoever.

All right, on the good side for Tesla this week,

they launched what is probably the most value car in the lineup.

Like the lineup of the Model Y is going like crazy.

In the Model 3, too, we discussed that like a few weeks ago,

like we've never seen so many different variants of the of a Tesla vehicle before.

But the Model Y is also catching up now with the Model Y all will drive.

And I would say standard all will drive for clarity.

But Tesla wants to drop the standard.

So standard is the decontented base version of the Model Y that launched.

So we have a new comment from from X.

He didn't go hit the targets that went like, OK, yeah, I agree.

I agree with you on that.

Everyone that went should be investigated and everything.

But that doesn't excuse the fact that you wanted to go to the Wildest

Parties of a convicted pedo.

I think that's pretty straightforward.

And if you want it like we don't report on like people are like going after me.

It's like, why are you not going after a read off?

Well, I don't really use LinkedIn and I don't I don't report on LinkedIn or read

off and I report on Tesla and Elon Musk.

So of course, I'm going to talk about that.

And so it's more telling that you don't want to talk about it than we are

talking about it, if that makes sense.

But going back to the Model Y all will drive.

This decontent version starts at just forty two thousand dollars.

And it's just two thousand more, really, than the

decontented rear wheel drive version.

So it's the closest that the lineup has been to get the dual motor version.

And it still gets a decent two hundred and ninety four miles of range.

So a decent almost 30 miles drop versus

versus the the rear wheel drive.

But you know what's interesting?

It's four point six second zero to sixty, which is actually faster than the premium

all will drive. So I I don't know where all that I would assume it's the weight.

Well, it's the weight and the battery is supposed to be different a little bit too.

But, you know, it's not supposed to be better.

So that's so I would assume that most of the performance gain would be less

weight, but what is less heavy in that standard like a light bar?

Obviously, there's a light bar weight.

The glass roof is still there, even though I know it's not the same glass.

I don't know if the glass is lighter.

I don't know really what's what's so heavy in that.

But yeah, I still think like the rear wheel drive at forty thousand dollars.

I'm not not a fan of all the content that they remove for it, especially the good ones.

And but so it's two thousand dollar more.

So, you know, you would think that

the value offer here is not a great difference.

But then you look at the price of the premium

removal drive versus the premium all will drive here, which is a four thousand

dollar difference just for the dual motor.

So in that sense, being just two thousand

dollar more to get the dual motor because you get everything else is the same.

Now you get like a two thousand dollar extra value that kind of compensate

for, I think, what is too too much removed for the price of the standard wheel drive.

So standard all will drive.

I think it's a rare win for Tesla these days.

I think it's it's going to be popular in Canada, for example.

Yes and no, I think I just I just checked.

It actually doesn't it might not be eligible for the five thousand dollars

federal rebate. So if that's not the case, then yeah, that could be a little

bit harder for Tesla, but it's just huffed by like a smidge.

So maybe they adjust the price.

Maybe like, you know, they do, you know, what they used to do in Canada.

They would like reduce the rate, the range via software and then

and then charge.

You can just buy it after the fact.

But now they change the rule actually in Canada, where the it's the total

price that you're paying rather than the base price of the car.

So when you had options onto it, it does

count towards the eligible price, which I think is fifty thousand dollars now.

And but not not software that you buy after the fact.

So Tesla could still, you know, do its thing.

I've seen that launch in US and Canada this week when it launched.

I don't know if it launched in

in Europe yet, maybe the comments could let me know if at lunch in your country.

All right, one more Tesla news and then we have a couple of Chinese EVs

that we want to talk about.

And then we're going to have some times to take you guys questions.

So if you have any question for us about any of the topics that we discussed

today or any other topics in the EV world that you want to take on,

you can put it in the comments section below and we're going to get to it

in just a few minutes.

But last thing on Tesla is the roadster.

Tesla filed for a new roadster trademark.

Oh, so it's still alive.

There's still some live some there's still some life in the roadster program.

It's not fully dead.

You know, Elon has been talking about an unveiling

in April or in Q2.

And but he's been saying that he said that a bunch of time.

It never happened.

So I don't I don't put any weight now on what Elon says anyway.

But the roadster is a little bit interesting, the trademark,

because we talked about Tesla just dropping the ball when it comes to

trademark lately, we talked about the

the cyber cab and then then that's like last minute filing for a cyber car,

cyber vehicle and all that is just not being doing great on the trademark front.

So it looks like they want to get ahead a little bit here.

So there's this new, you know, font that they're using for the roadster name,

which is like classic Tesla, but in Italy, it looks like we're just, you know,

we don't care that much about that.

What we care more about is this little silhouette,

line silhouette of three lines that was also filed with the trademarks.

And that sort of give us maybe a look at the potential

updated version of the roadster, because I do I need to remind you that the

roadster was on the almost 10 years ago at this point.

So the new roadster is not only expected to have different capacity,

different features and all that, it also expected to look different,

at least awful, even though I do think that, well, that's actually an AI version.

I do think that it didn't age badly.

I think, you know, 10 years later, it still looks pretty sharp.

But it needs to look a little bit different.

Like Tesla could not be sitting on their hands on the design of the roadster

for 10 years and expected to go smoothly after that,

especially with the demand issues that you already have.

I think they probably have less demand issues at the

you know, income bracket of the people like that for the roadster.

But that's another thing.

So yeah, I did I did try to use these

line and felt it to AI to try to like see if because it does look if you look.

So this is the non.

This is the regular version.

You look at this line of the roof here and it's a lot smoother,

a lot longer than this sharper edge here.

Like you see a sharper edge at the top,

looks more super car like, more like Lamborghini like.

More aggressive a little bit.

So I just I just use the exact same,

but give it a little the sharper turn at the top here.

Like you just go up and then slopes down longer, but quicker from the front.

And if that makes sense, you know, it's just sharp.

But even the silhouette is probably exaggerated in itself because.

This is this, you know, assuming this is the fender line,

you don't you don't have this much like windshield slash roof like from the fender.

Like you look at the proportion of a car normally on the side and, you know,

even even an aggressive like sports car, super car light, and you still about

from the apex of the roof to the fender line, you know,

normally you double the size or almost double the size depending on the rear

well, in this case, obviously I have big wheels, but

you know what I mean?

This is this is exaggerated a little bit.

Are you, you know, you have,

technically you have a couple of roadster for a free set.

Are you a are you allowing yourself to get a little bit excited by that?

Or is just no, no, no, I'd get more excited about a lawsuit that would like try to.

And actually, we can do that now.

Because I'm I'm now free and clear of, you know, obligations.

Other legal familial.

Yeah, you're not you're not tired of talking to your lawyers.

You are you found a good one that could get involved.

I've got a pretty good lawyer, I have to say.

Yeah.

I mean, it's something that we can talk about.

But I'm the ones that I talked to so far said, yeah, I mean, they never said when

they're going to deliver.

So you kind of screw that.

But at the same time, there's like a reasonable amount of time.

There's a reasonable amount of time.

And you at some point you can just assume that Tesla is just like pulling

your chain and it's just never going to release that thing.

And I think this is probably their last shot at Tesla with this,

because now we are so we're February 6th and April is just like two months away,

less than two months away.

So if they don't they don't deliver on that within two months, you can assume

that they are just like playing with you and you know, they have to deliver on

this because we deliver on our hand.

You know, I am and those were the days when Tesla was not controversial.

Well, and it was controversial only to petrol heads.

We were we were just fighting against shorts and petrol helds.

Now we're fighting against a cult of Elon Musk and Tesla stocks.

It's nonsensical.

And all of that just to get more

Moides on the road, really, because that's the biggest thing that hurt me.

Tesla could be like setting three, four

millions equal a year right now if it didn't if it didn't

change course like it did a few a few a few years ago.

All right, but one company that is doing what Tesla

should have done is expending its lineup into all different segments.

That's X-PENG and X-PENG.

It's coming out now with its three row SUV that's coming.

That's, you know, when we talk about Chinese EVs most of the time.

Oh, I have a screenshot here.

We talk about most of the look.

They remind you of something every, every time.

Does that this car reminds you of something set?

I would say Hyundai Ioniq 9 or

Ari, I mean, you're not wrong, actually.

It kind of kind of looked like that.

I was going to say Range Rover, personally.

Range Rover, yeah.

But at the same time, now that you say

the Hyundai Ioniq 9 kind of has a little bit of a range over by.

But I think you forget the back of the Ioniq 9 because the back is

yeah, quite unique, but you're right on the profile, though,

and the front end that you're right about.

But on this angle here, I think it's cream Range Rover, big, big Range Rover.

Obviously, I don't know the different like variant of the.

Yeah, and actually like that, what Zeekr

SUV as well looks a little bit like that one.

I mean, yeah.

But that's going to be a competitor to the Zeekr three row.

So X-Pang is it's for the first for them to go that big with an SUV.

But it's not a giant market in China.

It's getting bigger.

But the, you know, you know, they are a core company and they are

they try to compete in every segment.

The thing they have like a technology to compete in the launching it.

And they're doing they're doing some interesting thing with this one.

Steer by wire.

So that's that's really good.

We we loved it on the Cybertruck.

We think more motor trucks should should get it.

So rear wheel steering also in that segment important AI powered chassis.

OK, that sounds a little bit gimmicky.

But, you know, it did drove a little bit the X-Pang.

And I thought it was a very dynamic chassis.

I don't know what AI has to do with it, but five C battery charging.

And that's almost becoming standard in China.

I wish you would hear 1000 kilometer range with the R EV.

So they are being right now in China with extended range.

And, you know, we were a bit for a while electric.

We were poo pooing a little bit that segment.

But in China at this point, it makes a lot of sense because they are

really just building them easy first or electric first and then add an extended

range option for markets, especially that loves it.

So depending in China, if you're like in a big city with good even infrastructure,

they don't mean care that much about it and they all electric and they all have

because they are easy first, they all have a very decent several hundred

kilometers of range and then the extent range after that for, you know,

China is a big country and then when you have to go further out,

if the infrastructure is not quite there, it does make sense.

Speaking of next week, I should test one of those vehicle.

If all goes well, because they told me it's it's set.

It's a done deal. I just got done.

Deal. They told me it's a done deal.

OK, the idea that is.

But then I was that was BID China and then I was trying to talk to like put me

in contact with the local people so that I can, you know, get the car because,

you know, the logistics of the car.

So I'm going to Mexico next week and I was supposed to test that test

the BID shark.

So they told me it's you're going to have a car and everything,

but they cannot put me in contact with the Mexican people to to to arrange it.

So I don't know I'm going there Sunday and I'm just praying that there's

going to be a car somewhere for me.

Because the BID shark is very, very important to make

in that in that segment, the ERV, where you get over 100 kilometers of range.

So you can do your day to day commute and everything all electric.

And then if you need to, you know,

tow, if you need to get longer distance, everything, you have your extended range.

They also have

AR augmented reality as a display.

And no roof mounted later.

OK.

We don't have a price on this just yet.

It's expected to be between 400 and 500,000 Yen.

So about 58 to $72,000.

And it's going to it's going to compete with the Z Kerr 9X, the Lioto L9,

the Aito M9, the Denso M9.

The, you know, Model YL maybe, but I think that's a little bit lower end in this.

And then we have Xiaomi that unveiled a new YU7.

They didn't unveil it, but they

it showed up in the filings with the Chinese authorities, the YU7 GT.

So what we think this is, this is like the

Ultra, the Su7 Ultra for the YU7,

unless there's also an ultra version planned for this, because it's not quite ultra.

It doesn't have the same powertrain as the Ultra, but it still has a pretty

crazy powertrain, almost a thousand horsepower, thanks to.

Two hundred and eighty eight kilowatts

motor in the front and four hundred and fifty kilowatt motor in the rear.

So that's seven hundred and thirty eight kilowatts, nine hundred and ninety

horsepower to be like a fifty, five, sixty thousand dollar car.

That's one.

Yep.

Crazy stuff.

I mean, that's faster.

What is the top Taycan right now?

I guess I mean, I think you have Taycans similar over a thousand maybe.

Right.

So, I mean, and that is like a two hundred thousand dollar car.

This is looks like it and like a quarter of the price.

Yeah, there's a lot of alteration to you have like a little wider body going on.

You have this one is like all black and it's sexy as hell.

Like it's the best looking.

I got caught this morning.

So when I was writing this article,

I literally like blurred out, damn, that's sexy.

And then my girlfriend heard me.

It's like, what are you talking about?

And then she comes to me.

She's like, I'm talking about a car.

I'm like, is that car sexier than me?

I'm like, no, I had to lie to her and tell her like, no, you know,

oh, no, she doesn't listen to the podcast.

OK, Jesus, I'm sorry in advance.

I'm just kidding, guys.

You're a new rear diffuser that we can see it a little bit.

You know, we have a little view of the rear diffuser with all black.

It's tough to say, but it looks pretty good.

You have a bunch of wheel options with this bigger wheels, obviously.

And it's using the CATL to now relate some batteries.

So that's the one that you you find in the higher hand versions of.

I think it's also in the max.

We don't have we don't have range yet.

We don't have pricing yet.

But yeah, it's looks like quite a beast.

And it adds to the Su7 L that's launching this year for Xiaomi.

That's the longer version of the Su7,

which also launches as a new.

There's a little mid-cycle refresh for the Su7.

That's kind of significant.

And then you have the YU9, which is the competitor to the GX from X-Peng.

We just saw in all the other three

OSU visas launching in China.

So busy year for for Xiaomi.

And I hope that they can become.

And then one quick Chinese if you want to talk about real quick.

Real quick, you're a mic switch.

Trick for what just happened?

I heard that some feedback from myself.

Yeah, your mic switch from the shore to the other one to the.

That's strange.

I mean, what did I do?

No.

All right, well, we're we're almost down.

We can.

I don't think you're.

Yeah, I think you're right.

OK, you hear me? OK.

OK, all right.

Yeah, so CTL with

Chang Chang, Nivo 806 is the first

production production card that's using the sodium batteries from CTL.

So so now I'm basically think of it more like the LFP,

like an evolution over LFP cells.

So all the same like safety benefits, cold weather benefits,

the life cycles benefit, but with a little higher energy density.

So what that means, that means even either lower

overall weight for the car or less batteries for getting longer range.

So you see in this one here, they have only a 45 kilowatt hour battery pack,

getting what they claim is over 400 kilometers of range.

So that means like the car is not as heavy and can achieve more.

Like I said, great performance at minus 30 Celsius.

They say minus 40 Celsius, which is also minus 40 Fahrenheit.

They retain 90 percent of the usability.

Wow.

I need to see it to believe it, though.

But if that's true, that's that's a game changer for all the cold climates,

because everyone has been used to getting like 30, 40 percent drop in range

for a place like Quebec.

That's like four months of the year that you get a lot less range.

So you have to plan that with your car purchase.

So if that doesn't

no significant drum from it, it's a game changer.

All right, let's jump into the comments section.

All right.

Colin San Diego, what's next?

I bought this before Elon and Kimball met with Epstein stickers.

Yeah, OK.

Let's get that on the electric store as soon as possible.

Oh, my.

Thing is not working.

I might have to go here again.

All right, go and then our two reviews are on Tuesday.

We'll have to see about that.

I would have talked to Scooter about it.

He's a Rivian guy now.

Yeah, sadly, I doubt this matters.

Bad behavior isn't punished in the US anymore.

The only thing that all hurt musk is if the stock goes down.

Yeah, probably the SpaceX XAI merger only makes it more imperative for the Fed

to nationalize all of SpaceX or be shred of SpaceX contracts and demand all the money

back from the unfulfilled Artemis contracts.

Yeah, for those for those that have been following,

the merger has been official this week.

SpaceX bought XAI in the All-Star deal.

Valuing XAI at around 250 billion and SpaceX at 1.25, I think.

So you combine 1.5, so basically the same value as Tesla.

And and yeah, a lot of people are worried about this because like I said,

I don't know if I said it on the podcast last week, but we're talking about this for a while.

This is this is just a way for Elon to make sure that he doesn't lose any money

for his investors because XAI has been having issues competing with the frontier

or the other frontier models and the competition is getting crazier and crazier

every day and now with the Super Bowl, like everyone is buying hats and everything.

It's just and XAI is not even close in term of users and paid users

and enterprise users and all the thing that counts really.

So they're losing about and expected nine to ten billion dollars a year as of now.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is believed to be clearing

after costs around around five billion dollars a year between two and five.

It's not clear.

So what's that?

What's the PE area show like 600?

That's closer to 300, easy, similar to Tesla.

So the goal is basically to absorb XAI, bring SpaceX public to a high PO,

enable all his shareholders on XAI that invested a few billion dollars

within when they bought Twitter and then when XAI bought Twitter and so on.

So it gives them an exit through SpaceX and they're going to dump that on the market.

I reach we did a guy this week that had a great explanation.

Like there's a real chance that the SpaceX IPO just crashes the whole market

because if they launch at like one point five and then it pumps up like two

trillion dollars in the space of a week or whatever,

it's just not sustainable just just based on what because you need to hide behind it.

And the Mars hype is not.

It doesn't.

I don't think it cast a wide web as some people are very into it.

I was thinking like so you don't have SpaceX is kind of under all the scrutiny

about like space, like confidential stuff.

Like like GROC is going to fit into that same like is GROC going to be

like subject to all those same or the XAI is going to be like government

you know, regulated as as much as SpaceX.

Are they going to keep it separate with a subsidiary?

Had they say apparently they did the merger with a very clear

like subsidiary issue where for tax benefits, but also to protect SpaceX

from any possible liability that comes with XAI and GROC.

So we covered that now.

You're right, though, that the the threshold for the scrutiny around SpaceX

is much higher due to ITAR and because it's a defense company, basically.

Right.

So a lot of people are like, OK, now the next logical step is going to be

Tesla merging with SpaceX.

The problem with that is, yes, they can do the same thing as a

subsidiary of SpaceX, whatever, and have it set up like that, which might be good

for the US, but the problem with that is I think it won't work with Europe

and certainly won't work with China.

China will not.

I don't think China will let that happen.

Or I mean, they will tell Tesla like, all right, just you have to give up

all your Chinese asset, you have to sell your Chinese asset.

If you if you want Tesla to be a defense

contractor, subsidiary of SpaceX.

So yeah, I don't see really the Tesla SpaceX merger happening.

I think Elon is pushing hard for a high PO.

And I think that's that's going to be it.

Yeah, I think I think it's going to be a big mess.

I think I think that plus, you know, all of the AI company this year rushing

to IPO and down their

crazy death and spending on the public market, I think it's going to be

a shit show.

And another thing is that the mass that have

doge stealing, so security, personal information, that's also kind of a mass.

Yeah, apparently, Elon is going to be forced to testify over that.

Yeah, I'm sure he's going to plead a fifth all the way through.

But you know, right, at least he's going to have to do it publicly.

Elon's sick behavior propositioning women to have his children tracks with Epstein

Psycho Supreme eugenics theories.

I'm not even familiar with that.

Second part question.

Do you think the optimist rollout will be similar to FSD, where it takes years

for it to actually work as described by Elon?

I can imagine having this robot that can just serve popcorn.

You know, and it's like, oh, it's like the updates come in.

It's going to be like it's going to carry me to my bed or whatever.

Yeah, all the people on Twitter that looks for the next update and I just got the

next update, let me see how it works.

I'm like, oh, it didn't kill my cat today.

That's good.

No, I mean, I think there's there's going to be

similar things in the rollout.

But obviously, there's a lot less usability than you can drive your car

if death is if you don't like FSD, you don't have the same

option with the human robot, even though there's probably like limited use cases

you can have that they work.

I don't think I don't think they're going to deliver any of them until they have

some decent usability.

Well, nobody's going to buy it unless.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

All right, let's move through these here.

Great reporting and organizing those files, Fred.

I do appreciate you saying that because it's not fun.

Going to thousands of emails of a convicted bit of it's just it's just not

something that I want to do on a Friday night like I did last week.

And Electric was in the Epstein files as well.

It wasn't nefarious.

I think just somebody was sending him a link.

What we were we were there three times, three or four times in the files.

One of them was someone sending one of our articles.

I think a teardown article that we did.

Model three.

Send them to Epstein.

And then all the other times was just like we were some part of newsletter that he

was yeah, thinking gadget or something quoted us.

All right, question with Tesla and I'm making any new EVs.

Is it even worth it for Tesla to build the Roadster?

They should build at least, you know, 100.

Just just the ones that he gave us.

The narrative right now from Tesla, you know, coming straight from Elon.

So take up the grand install is like they want to be the Roadster to be

the last driving car and then everything else is autonomy.

But sure.

Sure.

If only there was honest people at Tesla to explain that there's no Roadster program

and that is never coming.

I blame Tesla employees at this point for continuing to work there.

The Model S Plaid has been Tesla's performance Halo car for years now.

They desperately need to make the new Roadster real to maintain the image

that Tesla is still a leader in building super fast EVs.

Yeah, I don't even know if the Roadster is going to be faster than the

the Yang Wang U9 at this point, but it's just getting so silly.

I think we can get it a little bit a little bit like the, you know,

that's 200.

They didn't write your idea what they did, but they did it with LFP cells.

That's that's the nuts thing.

They did a super car with LFP.

It's it's not so.

I think, you know, the the BID limited itself with that because they're like,

yeah, we are very serious about just making it, I think, with LFP for safety reasons,

for cost reasons also, obviously.

So I respect them for that.

But it's the it's not like the set out to make the best supercar ever.

I think I think you can you can beat that.

Yikes, that X-Ping truck looks like a Cybertruck specs.

All the things that meet Cybertruck Tesla fail at profitability, except.

They have a gas engine and also they can make them much less expensive.

And it looks like I don't see a lot of Cybertruck comparison there

other than the steer by wire and the rear wheel steering.

But those both of those things are also in other cars.

A question, could we treat from car manufacturing but be strategic forward?

And apparently Tesla are convinced that they they can't compete against China.

When will Tesla they have start and how bad?

And we've heard actually rumblings of like Tesla wanting to get out of car

manufacturing and just building software.

But the thing the thing is is like must ideal is always

at one point we're going to sell FSD to other car manufacturer.

They're going to make the car.

We're just going to make the FSD that just never happened.

Like just no one wants the FSD.

So if Tesla wants to be in the autonomous car business, they have to build a car too.

So I don't think we see Tesla pulling out of that anytime soon.

I just think that the the logic and the timing of it all was was done to

to let the car business slow down so much while you're not ready.

Autonomy still doesn't contribute enough to compensate for you lifting up the gas

or the accelerator on your car business.

They could have been Tesla could have managed that a little bit smoother, let's say.

Having sodium ion batteries and affordable new EVs provides real competition

against NCM and LFP batteries, keeping prices, capabilities and products competitive,

even if they are only in China now.

Yeah. GM's got a magnesium

battery that's also kind of interesting.

So it's good to have some variety there.

Yeah, battery prices have been going down like crazy.

And lithium price for funny enough, I've been like skyrocketing.

I think they've calmed down in the last week or so.

But they are like way up over the last year.

And it doesn't have a big impact on batteries.

I know there's not that much lithium and lithium batteries anyway.

But, you know, it was a problem at some point, but that's the good thing now

with the diversity of chemistry and materials in those chemistry.

You you just it helps, you know,

maintaining, stabilizing and keep truly working and getting the prices down.

So I think that's good.

All right. Hi from Paris.

And the last comment is plus there is a future

possibility of a ten ten dollar per kilowatt hour for the next sodium ion batteries.

That would be insane.

That would mean like a hundred kilowatt hour

battery would cost a thousand dollars, which would make it much cheaper than a gas vehicle.

I can't believe that because I'm looking.

We we're working like on our electric tractors that we got in Quebec.

We're looking to make LFP or LMF that you pack in there to just boost the capacity

because right now it's just like lead acid batteries, which is not great.

But we were looking at the prices for like just a little we're a little shop.

It's my whole company's in my garage really.

And so we cannot like get like high volume of battery cells.

And the price are just not bad.

Like you can get low volume below a hundred

dollar per kilowatt hour for low volume and you can get lower than that for a higher volume.

And I'm not talking about to make her volume either.

I'm talking about like just if you want to make like a few dozen units a year or

something like that. So it's yeah, that the price of the battery prices.

Story is like it's keep going down, which is we already very much competitive

with internal combustion engine and it's just going to keep getting better.

Ten dollars is a bit crazy though, but you know, we never know.

All right. And the last one, guys, the pack assembly isn't free.

Yes, yeah, at the pack level, the cost goes up quite a bit.

Depends on what you're doing.

For example, what we're doing right now with the tractors,

we you can you can pick cells that are good enough like they're they're

working range in terms of temperature is good enough that you don't really

need to have climate control, you know, cooling or even on the battery pack.

And that makes your battery a lot a lot cheaper.

Your battery pack, I mean, a lot cheaper.

So, you know, there's there's way to do it.

Like if you have a cell that just doesn't need climate control cuts,

your cost like crazy, obviously depends on what you do.

If you do like a lot of work with it, like, you know, if you're super

car that draws a thousand kilowatts, you need you need those kind of things.

But if you're, you know, doing a little like city car at one point,

there was no climate control, battery control and the temperature control,

the leaf for all things.

So it's you can technically go back to that for for second vehicles.

It's not impossible with the sodium battery, especially if you're working

on minus 40, it's it's decent enough.

All right, well, that's it for us for the electric podcast this week.

I'll see you guys in Mexico next week.

Hopefully behind the wheel of a BYD shark.

And if you did enjoy the podcast, please give us a like,

a thumbs up, a subscribe, and that helps the show more than you think.

It's free to do.

And we'll see you same time, same place next week.

Have another one.

Bye bye.

0:00

61:29

Tesla hit by Epstein files, Roadster still lives, new Chinese EVs, and more

Tesla Semi

Tesla Model Y

Tesla Model 3

zero to sixty

Tesla Roadster

X-PENG

Hyundai Ioniq

Hyundai Ioniq 9

Land Rover Range Rover

Zeekr

Zeekr 3

steer by wire

Tesla Cybertruck

rear wheel steering

ERV

augmented reality

powertrain

kilowatt

horsepower

Porsche Taycan

two hundred thousand dollar car

rear diffuser

CATL

sodium batteries

LFP cells

energy density

Tesla Model S

gas engine

FSD

autonomous car

About this episode

Original notes