Tesla is now Elon's, Xpeng goes AI, Rivian earnings, and more

We're going live in three, two, one, and we are alive when you're still on the electric

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

you doing today, Seth? I'm good. All right, I hope you're better than me because you

guys are going to excuse my performance during this podcast. It's 5 a.m. for me

right now in China. I just literally just woke up 15 minutes ago for this. I'm

still pretty much waking up and I'm feeling a little bit under the weather

because I've been running around all the week trying to get some good reporting

from you guys on these Chinese companies and Chinese technology that's coming

out. I was in Guangzhou for X-Bang earlier this week, and now I just arrive

in Shenzhen, which is a crazy cyberpunk city where a lot of avi automakers

are based out at, most famously obviously, DBYD. But a bunch of other things too,

like DGI, we're trying to get it to DGI and check it out. It's apparently it's like...

Oh, that'd be awesome.

Crazy as a quarter's ever. Yeah, yeah, get a little report from your own DJ.

Actually, if you want, I can talk to my PR people there.

Yeah, if you can, because we are looking at issues to get in. It's just

they are not... Well, I mean, it's because of the filming too. So for

people who don't know, there's a documentary crew also with me following

me around for this. And sometimes, like, especially in China, they are a

little bit wary of that stuff when there's a filming around. But it's mostly

when it comes to factories. So apparently, every Chinese companies have

to have government authorization to let people film inside factories.

So I mean, we skip that most of the time because it's just too

complicated to get. But when you're very good at corporate spying, you get

worried that other people are going to do it.

I was just thinking that exact thing.

All right, so what we're going to talk about this week on the podcast. And

again, I apologize for if my state of mind is not as sharp as it usually is.

We're going to talk about the Tesla meeting, shareholders meeting and the news

that came out of it. I'm going to talk to you guys about this expiring AI day

that I expung this day. It's the true pronunciation.

In China this week, while I was at, I'm going to give you my thoughts on that.

And then there was a revisions earnings, too, that we're going to touch

a little bit about. I haven't looked into them to be honest.

And then there was probably the biggest news of the week, at least

on the website it was, it was the rumor that, or a further rumor that Ford is

killing the electric F-150 Lightning. Then we have an updated BMW i4 and we

have Toyota teasing what some people think is their first electric pickup truck.

All right, the

shareholder meeting, so unsurprisingly, and I don't know why they had to

invest millions and millions of dollars into marketing, because you don't

got is a, you got this billion-dollar

trillion package. Trillion, trillion, you're right.

That was my first error from being, waking up. It's the trillion with the

teeth. Oh, it's, it's forgivable. Nobody would believe that.

Yeah, it's, it's, it doesn't make any sense. Like, we talked about it quite a bit,

like there's the shareholder dilemma, like in Elon trending to leave that

creates a situation where a lot of people feel stuck, they feel like

they're being blackmailed and that, if they don't give it, and, and Elon

is creating this whole situation, obviously, because he could have went

with a way more reasonable package, he could have went with a salary,

he could have went with anything else. But he is the one forcing this

all or nothing deal. So then you're like, all right, if you want him to get

paid, you kind of have to, to give him, to give him that. Otherwise, it's

like, he says, I'm getting nothing, and I'm not, I'm not staying here.

Obviously, there's the argument that he's been using, which has been

that it's about control. And then I want to create an AI army,

if our AI robot army, if I don't have control, but we also break that

that are broken down that are driven as being false, because there's plenty

of options to give them more control is already the biggest shareholders.

He already is, you know, I in the title of the podcast, I said that

this lays now in months and, and, you know, it already was is just now

it's it's sealed pending most likely a ton of other shareholder lawsuits

about about this, this other package.

Even though shareholder lawsuits have become more difficult, takes the move

into Texas and takes to the, you know, you need 6% of shareholders

to, to bend together to put a new lawsuit in, but considering that 75%

so that's the vote by the way, 75% of the messers

have voted for it that the, there's 25% that are against it.

So it's very much possible.

And yeah, the, the reelected also the three Sherwood, three directors

that were up for election, the approve and this, this is a craziest one.

And I posted that on Jamie made an article earlier this week on it

and I broke it down.

Sorry, a similar argument about it too.

After is since they're giving, you know, this giant stock

competition package, stock options, they need to approve

a list, adding new shares to the, to the flow.

And so the new stock reserve basically, and for Elon, it can go up

to 400 million shares, this, this package.

It's nuts.

But I mean, it's extremely long term if it happens, but there are

a bunch of goals that are much more short terms that could give

them a lot more shares sooner.

We discussed that we discussed like this, the cost of the

underperform the market and he still could get like up to 40,

50 billion dollars of stock.

But so for now, they are reserving an extra 200 million, 208

million shares for, for sure, for, for, for Elon specifically

for his new package.

Meanwhile, you know, all of their Tesla employees also getting

stock option.

It's one of the big way that they are rewarding employees.

They're compensating employees.

It's something that Elon has been, is a little pride about.

They said even like factory workers are getting stock options

based on performance, some, some not based on performance also.

But, but technically every stock option is based on performance

because you want to perform for the company to increase the

price of the stock.

So then when you get a stock option at a discounted price,

it's worth more.

It's that's so every stock option is performed.

And, and those reserve for all of their employees and a

quick reminder that Tesla has over 120,000 employees,

from maybe over 130,000 at this point, it's 66 million

stocks, 208 reserve for Elon, 66 reserve for all other employees

come back.

So basically, if you're voting for this and I mean, already

I voted for this, if you're just orders more like than

that, you are kind of saying that in on is the output is

more valuable than all other employees combine times three.

I am convinced that some singular employees at Tesla have a

higher output than Elon on the on the pure like bottom line

for Tesla.

I'm talking about, I'm talking about about reality here

about I'm not talking about stock market value for

stock market value.

No doubt Elon is worth more than any employee.

I don't think he's worth more than all of their employees

combine time three for a stock price.

But you know, there's it's harder to engage and it's

obviously disproportionate because a lot of this is value

is linked to his predictions and his lies to be honest

about this performance and future performance.

They also voted on the proposal versus the

mobility and child labor audit requirements because

yeah, that's the world living right now.

They are considering to limit shareholders ability to

all this like an able for breach of industry duty unless

the show their owns over 44 billion in stock.

Again, shareholders shooting themselves off the foot with

machine gun at this point.

And did they vote so devoted for the XCI proposal?

Well, shareholders did not vote to the board to bail

out mass property.

Oh, so that's there's some sense to this whole thing.

But anyway, I think it like one of the strongest

lawsuits against Tesla right now is the breach of

industry duty lawsuits in Delaware over the XCI stuff

between Elon and Tesla.

And they managed to squeeze it in right before

the move to Texas.

And and yeah, I think I think this is going to be

the cross cut that anyway.

I don't know Tesla investing in it.

Probably I honestly, I think if everything goes

follows the law, I'm pretty and I'm no lawyer.

And this is not legal advice.

I think Tesla might end up owning XCI quite

or at least owning Elon's stake in XCI.

I think that's where things are going now.

If you run is.

Yeah, now the thing is as crazy as it's

him, I don't think they have the

authority to remove Elon from Tesla.

So even now, only a majority of Tesla would

not a majority, but much higher stake in Tesla

wouldn't change much for it.

The SEC would need to then look at the

British fiduciary duty lawsuit and then look at

this if it's possible securities fraud and then

go after Elon to remove him from Tesla.

And that I have a lot less

owed for. I don't think I think it's much

less likely to happen than the Delaware

breach of industry lawsuit, finding that Elon

has been in breach of industry duty, doing

research, tunneling between his private

and public company and all that.

All right.

So yeah, now basically that seals the fate

for Tesla. They are on this what I just said

happened.

It's.

Elon is in full control as apparent by the

way that the shoulders loaded.

We were expecting and

and then now going forward,

Elon could receive if all goes well

for Tesla.

And not necessarily go well, but go like

average or not too poorly.

He will get at least tens of billions

more, potentially up to a trillion.

And be in full control of Tesla.

Because you need a two third majority

thing. And if he gets like even those are

like 20 percent shoulder control, share

control, he just needs like a few

friend like Larry Ellison or you know, even

like it's I'm sure I'm sure the board is

going to get rewarded heavily for pushing

that thing now.

Look for board compensation to go through

the roof again.

And and they they could help

him keep control easily.

Now.

All right. Now about the news that came

out of of the meeting.

Texting and driving.

So.

There is a.

The Elon repeated.

No, as recently.

Sorry, I'm still a little foggy as

recently as a few months ago.

Elon was still like talking about end

of the year. We're going to have unsupervised

self-driving and consumer vehicle.

End of the year, we're going to remove

the supervisor inside the Google taxi

in Austin and all that is not,

you know, now he's talking in a few

months. So it's he's already opening

the door to delaying past the end

of the year, which.

Shocking.

And but now this time he also

introduced this idea that confused

me and I want your take on it,

said I want I want people to take

on it too. If you guys are in the

comments right now, I would I would

like to get your take on this.

He and he talked a little bit about it

before, but now he put an actual

deadline on it and everything.

He said that the killer app is

texting and driving.

So if we allow texting and driving

inside the car on FSD, that's

when you know that it's

good enough now. And it's it's

it can it can actually like add

time. Even those testers already

think I can add time to your day

and everything.

So now he said that we will allow

texting and driving on FSD in a month

or two.

And that's confusing.

That's a confusing thing to say,

because what does that mean?

Because the law is pretty clear

that texting and driving

is not legal.

And it comes with heavy fines

and legal repercussion if you're

caught.

So so so it's not texting and

driving. It's texting while

FSD is driving.

But then who is responsible

then. So is it is it

to me, that means at least level

three. That means like in a Mercedes

Vans in some stretches of Iowa,

California and Nevada

and in Germany, you're allowed

to give the car

full control for a certain stretch

of highways.

And it's level three

officially Mercedes is

taking responsibility for the

system during that period of time.

And then you can text then

you can read your email or

whatever.

So is Tesla doing that?

And if so, I

I cannot see really Tesla doing

that because.

That comes with a lot of steps

that come with a lot of regulatory

steps and legal

and insurance steps

to put in place to make that

happen.

It would it would need to be

attached probably with the

Tesla insurance.

So it's would only be available

where Tesla is this insurance

because

so far as far as I can tell,

no one wants to underwrite

for Tesla insurance on

Rebel taxi. So it's very

similar.

So it's either that or Tesla launch

an actual level for unsupervised

self-driving

consumer, which is he doesn't seem

to be talking like that.

So he specifically said

we will allow texting and driving.

So the only other option I see,

which is this shadiest of option,

but to me now starting to look

the most likely one

is that they will simply

stop monitoring for

texting while you're

you know, the driver monitoring

system that looks at you with

cameras right now.

If you pull out your phone for

more than a few seconds, it will

tell you a look at the

rail, put your phone down.

You're not allowed to do that

when you're using it as the

and now it would just stop

doing that if you're if the

text that you're on your phone

he would let you do it,

which is I think within the

laws is fine

because there's no automakers

that can, you know, enforce

you to not be on your phone.

They can just, you know,

they can do things like not let

you use their ends free

ADS system, which is still what

FSD is.

So I think this look could

technically not enforce that

if they wanted to.

Now it opens a whole new

legal can of warms

because, you know, this has

already been found partly

responsible for level two ADS

crashes, just for the way

that they marketed and the

way they talked about it to

drivers overselling it,

basically.

And now imagine if someone gets

on a crash with

while on their phone on FSD

and they can

even though it probably

probably still was the alert

when you you started the FSD

that I please pay attention

you're in control all the time.

That's not responsible.

Now you can go to court and

say, Hey, wait a minute.

Elon was on stage telling me

we are allowed to text and to

text and drive.

They stop monitoring for texting

and driving.

And and it's

it changes everything basically

on that front. Like it makes it

a lot easier for to put blame

on Tesla at the legal level, I

think.

And

and beyond that, so that should

be like the legal treffer

Tesla. There's also the

responsibility of like people

most likely are going to die from

this and they should care

at least a little.

Yeah, Mike, Mike, the car geek

brings up the point that I was

thinking about.

And it's that people

with Apple's CarPlay,

Android Auto, they've been

texting.

Hands free for

years, like a long time.

Can't do that.

I mean, how to do

some text to come up on the

display with the Tesla.

But

and Rivian.

But it's not not nearly as

convenient.

And the fact that he calls it a

killer app

to me is like comical

because if that was

the killer app, then nobody would

buy a Tesla for the last 10

years.

Exactly.

Good point.

Yeah. So.

Yeah, to the point of the.

You know, like what levels is

it level three?

Like would it be

level three if you can text?

If you can, if there's a tax

responsibility while you're

testing, which was I think

so in my head, those are the two

options. So level three is like

the right way to do it.

Right. Or there's just stop

monitoring for

drivers.

Those are the options.

Yeah. So what we know from

Tesla is usually they take the

shadier.

Approach.

So.

Yeah.

I think it shows that Elon, it

shows that Elon, like for your

point that.

FSD, that

you think it's a killer app and

everything, it shows that he's

so disconnected for the rest of

the market right now, like he,

you know, barely

focused on Tesla between all these

other things. So how can he

even know what's out there?

Like he's he's he's been

in a car with a full car play

in the last five years.

Like I would bet not.

But it's.

So it's hard for him, I think,

to to to really

really gauge what's out there.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, we're

looking at the Cadillac

Escalade in

2027.

It's going to have.

Like basically you can

do everything but go to sleep.

And this is what

2026 that they're promising

to be able to text.

It seems like this is kind of

slipping away.

Yeah, yeah, promising to text.

And there's no clear mention of

unsupervised now.

Still talking about removing the

safety driver in a real taxi in a

few months. But even then

we, you know, the only hard

data that we have, we discussed

them a few weeks ago, is that

that's the this guy having a

crash of 62,000 miles

on the double taxi.

And that's with the safety

driver in there.

So preventing who

knows on any more crashes.

They clearly don't seem to be ready

for any kind of mainstream

rollout of a taxi or

Dan Oberstey has a

comment killer app

and capital killer.

Yeah, or fully

not, hopefully not.

All right, there was a little bit

of an update on the Roadster,

you know, he's been talking

about end of the year crazy

demo on most unforgettable

demo ever flying car

on the Jiro again. He was really,

really weird about it.

Joe was thing was trying to slide,

but he was just misleading

people to thinking this is going

to be a flying car.

And we see all of that.

I'm going to talk about a little

bit later with Xpong.

But the the the

term flying car is being

thrown around quite a bit these

days. And it's just it's just

not what people actually think

of when they think of a flying

car and Xpong actually

answering the on stage

presentation that admitted it

and the CEO was like, you know,

we call it a flying car, but

really it's a low altitude

EBTOL aircraft.

In this case, it's not even

that for you on is just

probably going to be a demo

of the Roadster hovering in

the in the air a few seconds

with some fan system,

which, you know, if a fan

is mostly for downforce

by sucking out air

underneath the vehicle,

create a vacuum.

But technically, if the system

is powerful enough, you can

reverse it and also make it

the car flow for a while.

No real purpose for it

other than showing up for a demo,

which is if you're listening

to him on carefully, it's all

he's talking about.

Then he's saying, obviously,

the Roadster is going to be

like the craziest car ever.

And I get James Bond, my car

and everything. Sure, that's

that's cool.

But now he's talking about this

being pro pushed to April

1st, which is concerning,

you know, April Fool's Day.

Yep. So it's been delayed a few

months and then from their

production in like 12 to 18

months, which would push

production to 2027, 2028

are good 10 years after the

Roadster was really unveiled,

which, you know, it's

I

it's done like what

when the Roadster was unveiled,

it was a hit.

People loved it.

It was a beautiful car.

Still is like you don't need to

update the design that much.

Still a beautiful car holding up

age well.

People love the 620 miles

of range, 1000 kilometers of

range, love the zero to

100 to 60

in miles per hour

in 1.9 seconds.

Love the design and everything.

Why don't you make that?

Like why delay it for years

and years and years for

a demo of it flying around

for a few seconds.

It's just it's silly.

It doesn't contribute to the

mission whatsoever.

It makes this little look

like what it is now

and it's a factory

for fell promises.

It was like.

So yeah, that thing.

He said the product on

the road for the Roadster, too,

which will be very different

than what we've shown

previously. Why?

It was great.

That demo even will be

on April 1st of next year.

So they want to I guess he's

being inspired by the X-Pen

stuff this week where, you know,

the unveil their new robot

and everyone thought that it

was like a human in a suit.

And it was like I saw that.

Yeah, we had to rip off

the leg to open up the skin

because it has a new skin,

the robot like you can just

put it in a suit, basically.

So it does look a lot like

a human inside in the

yeah, and then the gate

of the robot was

which was what was most

impressive, something that

no one has ever seen before,

even an optimist.

So

so the it created

a lot of talks on it feels like

I feel like Ian wants to do

an improve full so that,

you know, the car flies for

a few seconds and people are

like, oh, that's fake.

It's April Falls.

And then they do it the next

day with a different demo.

They're like, nah,

I'm not going to go full.

That's actually really cool.

Oh, genius marketing and all that.

But then he says.

Yeah, he says I have some

deniability because I can see

that I was just kidding.

But we are actually

tentatively aiming for April 1st.

Literally, like a month ago,

it was saying by the end of the year.

A month ago, it was saying

that in a year now, a month ago,

it was a week ago, like on Joe Rogan.

Yeah, on Joe Rogan,

he was being a little bit

more weird about the timeline.

But yeah, I think he did mention it,

probably, I think he said,

by the end of the year,

and then Joe Rogan was like,

are you sure it's two months away?

And he's like, well, you know,

maybe not the end of the year.

Yeah, exactly.

He is usual, like

keeping the door open

for missing the line.

But so he went from that

a week or two ago from.

But we are actually tentatively

aiming for April 1st,

which is four months later.

So no sense.

But what I think it will be

the most exciting,

whether it works or not,

demo of any product.

And then I guess production is

probably 12 to eight months

after the entire production

is about a year or so after that.

OK, kind of repeated himself, I guess.

Yeah, that's that's disappointing

a hell as hell.

So that's the roadster news

that came out of the

shoulder event.

So I'm going to do them.

Let's skip this one for now

because I display that

to my truck that I posted after

I made the post for the podcast.

There was a brief update

on the Tesla Samai.

They didn't talk about it too much,

but they did unveil this slide

and Tesla did say that

they have come up with a new version of it.

That is.

More efficient,

have an increased payload

and is now designed for autonomy.

So the design has been

quite updated here.

I did this little slider thing situation

if you're watching on YouTube or elsewhere,

but you can see like the

the shape of the roof,

the chassis itself has been

more rounded a little bit.

The wrap around windshield

has been cut down quite a bit.

Now it just goes

not even all the way through the door

instead of past the door.

And then the headlights

are now looking like

more like a cyber truck.

I'm a little three head lights.

It's hard to tell

because of the make it look like

the beam of lights we see all the way through.

But yeah, much difference in the previous one.

Also updated the front bumper

and the side skirts fender a little bit.

Yeah. And there's some things that are confusing.

They seem more efficient,

but they also list a deficiency

of 1.7 kilowatt hour per mile,

which is what they announced before.

So it's like, how is it more efficient then?

But to be fair, we did

we did see some real world testing

from some early customers

that achieve efficiency from 1.55 to 1.73 kilowatt hour per mile.

So there's a potential for more efficient,

but also different customers having different payload

result in different efficiencies, obviously.

So we don't know exactly what just closer.

Yeah, there was no,

in terms of the timeline,

they reiterated what they said just last month.

Earlier this year, back in April or May,

Electric did report that production

and deliveries were delayed into next year.

And Dan Priestly, the head of the program,

denied it on Twitter.

And then just last two weeks ago,

Tesla confirmed that it's delayed until next year

with production aimed for like second quarter

and the first quarter, early second quarter,

they aim to start the live build for the production version.

And then the second half of the year,

they're gonna do volume production with the deliveries.

But yeah, it's still exciting.

It's still one of the few programs that Tesla,

I'm really excited about.

And then though they've been so late now

that there's actually a lot of competition out there

in the electric world,

including like the Windrose Chinese,

there's a semi-clone which actually very similar performance.

So we're gonna have to see the price of that thing

because that's gonna make or break situation

because operation is obviously likely to be much lower,

but we know that the price has increased.

So we reported that Ryder said

that there was a dramatic price increase,

but obviously the price was announced in 2017

and it was $180,000 for the 500 mile version.

So is it $200, $250, $300, $300 and more would be pretty expensive.

All right, one more Tesla news

and then we jump to non-Tesla news

and that's coming from Tesla in Europe,

but hopefully it's gonna come to North America too.

It's Tesla's multi-pass for those that know

the great French film from what's this guy's name.

What's his guy's name?

Damn, the French director is escaping me

but the name of the French director,

but I was saying Vin Diesel, Jesus this morning,

I'm not going great.

What's the name of the Bruce Willis?

Bruce Willis and Mila Yuccavician.

That's not because it's too early for me,

it's because I can't pronounce her name.

The Fifth Ellen, great movie, very fun movie

and there's the feminist scene

where she's just starting to learn to speak English

and Bruce Willis ends her a pass to get on a spaceship

and she goes multi-pass

and Tesla is using the same name for their basically access

to third-party charging station

that you can use with your Tesla account

and pay with with your Tesla account.

So it's basically a way to simplify the managing

of multiple third-party charger account

to your third-party account

and they launched it a few months ago

in the Netherlands as a pilot program

and now it's expanding throughout Europe

and Germany, France and the UK have access to it.

Super simple, you go on your Tesla account,

you activate it and then after that

you can use your Tesla key card or your Tesla app

to begin a charge session at a third-party station,

the one that they're on boarded

which you have them in the app.

I hate to say this, but like,

you almost don't need one in the US, like.

Yeah, fair.

It's, I mean, they're just so far behind.

And for everyone that have the plug and play,

a plug and charge, it's better,

oh, slightly better than that, obviously.

But if you don't have that, that's a good option.

All right, expand.

So that's why I came to Guangzhou this week, Guangzhou.

It's to experience, expand AI Day

where the on-village, all the latest AI-related technology.

And so there's four things at the on-village, basically.

All right, I should say there's one main thing.

It's their new model, their new AI model

which is the X-Pank VLA 2.0, a Vision Center model,

which a lot of this is going over my head.

I'm not an AI expert, but I follow the space,

but I'm not an expert in it.

And but I see like, I look at the new papers

that come out on it and everything

that people that I respect things are significant.

And I saw that some of the Chinese,

like China is doing some great advancement

in AI models lately.

And one of the big events that they do

is they kind of tokenize the image into,

so they skip the language part

and the vision everything.

So instead of being vision plus language into action,

now they sort of combine vision and language

leading to action.

We've seen it on the LLMs

even that our language base.

So that's very recent advancement.

And it looks like X-Pank is going the same way basically

and using that for all their AI powered systems.

So they're self-driving in their EV lineup

and they announced new Rebel taxis.

So three new vehicles are gonna be dedicated

to Rebel taxis sort of like this cybercap,

but they're a little bit more smarter about that

instead of being a two-seater,

it's gonna be a five-seater,

a six-seater and a seven-seater.

And you manoeuvre the robots obviously

and then flying cars in quotes

because they're not really flying cars,

they are EVTOL aircraft,

even though one of them is coming out of a car

which they called LAN aircraft carrier.

So it's a combination of a vehicle and an EVTOL.

And yeah, so first off, obviously,

I did a little reporting on the vision language stuff.

I think you can read about it, very technical stuff.

But it's also linked to them.

So they have, in their cars,

their trims are mostly linked to the ADAS capacity.

So they have Max Ultra and now they're announcing Robo

which is level four self-driving, basically.

And it's basically you're just upgrading

the compute power inside your car.

So X-Pang has its own chips, just like Tesla has AI-4,

they're working on AI-5 and everything.

They have the Turing lineup of chip

and basically you can have like in the base one,

it's not their chip, it's the Orym chip from NVIDIA.

And then in the Ultra you have,

I don't know why I left it in Chinese,

it's not helping, my Chinese is not that good.

But I think if I understand it correctly,

the three there, it's three AI Turing chips for 2,250 tops.

And then you have four Turing chip in the Robo version

for 3,000 tops.

Yeah, so it's the 750 per.

And that will enable different level of autonomy.

So level two for Max.

And then they're not really talking about level three

for Ultra but it's more like FSD so it can do everything,

but they're not promising you to have unsupervised capability.

And then you have the Ford 1 robot

which is aiming for level four capability.

So that's the option for getting in the car.

And then they offer autonomous driving with that.

And I did test the latest version of it in Amona

which is the entry-level version of the X-Pans vehicle lineup.

And so what I tested is their latest one

based on the new model

and that's gonna start rolling out next month

and into next year throughout the lineup

depending on the options.

And it's basically FSD V13 in term of capability.

So it has door-to-door parking to parking capability.

You put where you wanna go in the navigation,

where you wanna be parking the navigation

and then it's gonna drive you completely autonomously there

under your supervision and you keep an M on the steering wheel.

So they have touch sensors on the steering wheel

and they have driver monitoring too

to make sure you're looking at the road

but you have to keep your hand on it

and the car does everything.

And I posted a full test drive on the electric this week,

20 minute test drive of it which was flawless and everything.

So yeah, to be clear,

what I'm saying is that it has the same capabilities

as the FSD V13.

So to use Eman term, it's feature complete in that sense.

I don't know with a 20 minute drive

if it's better than FSD V14, I cannot say that

but they did test it.

Let me go on this post real quick.

So during the presentation,

they compared it to FSD, I guess V13

because V14 is not available in China just yet

and the CEO, Chopin, did say that he's aiming

to go to the US soon to test against V14

but with V13.2.9, they did the exact same route

and FSD completed it in 44 minutes

while Expans completed it in 49 minutes

with zero intervention other than one compliance takeover

but Tesla's seven takeover,

but to be fair, five of them were about efficiency,

so I'm not sure what I mean.

One was about, oh, that's a tough one,

was about takeover with peace of mind

and then also one compliance takeover.

So we talked about it, but a few months ago

when Tesla started launching FSD in China,

there was some issues with Tesla doing things

that you're not supposed to do

and that can result in fines

and since a lot of this finding system

for road violation in China is automated,

a lot of people were finding themselves

with receiving a bunch of tickets from it,

so it looks like that's what they were talking about here.

But to be fair, apparently the Tesla FSD in China

is way worse than it is in the US

because they couldn't train on the same data,

local data than they did,

so they had to do with other videos,

but other than that, it's the same capacity

of the system as in the US.

So the term is driving front is these vehicles

and then there's these three,

that they haven't unveiled, they just announced them,

they said that they're gonna go into production next year,

three-ribble taxis.

I've seen them around,

I've seen the prototypes around the headquarters

and all wrapped up in camouflage

and they look like bigger SUVs

and one a little bit smaller, a five-seater

that's more like crossover, like G6,

just style size vehicle,

but probably gonna be modified inside for Rubotex-C

without the steering wheel and whatnot.

So those are gonna go into operation next year

and Xperia, unlike Tesla,

is more talking about working with partners,

so they wanna deploy these with partners.

So with the Rubotex-C,

they are deploying them with AMAP,

which is a giant navigation company in China and in Asia,

kind of a Google equivalent.

Google Map and for the,

so the FSD that Xperia has, they call it NGP,

I think it's navigation guided pilot.

So they have to be, Tesla doesn't call Tesla FSD in China,

by the way, they're not allowed to.

I don't remember what they called it, but some other word.

So for the NGP, they already have a partner too,

the Volkswagen is partnering with Xperia on that.

So they are licensing their FSD

before Tesla has been looking for,

trying to make that happen for years now.

You know what's interesting about Tesla's model?

So we know that Elon and Tesla have been touting FSD

for such a long time.

And the idea that they kind of put forward

is that Tesla will be the only company with FSD,

and that's why their cars will be worth

hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of.

So even if Tesla came out with FSD at the same time,

you know, these companies seem to be moving ahead,

even if they came out with the same time,

market forces are gonna push it down.

It's gonna be valuable, but it's not gonna be worth

nearly as much as it initially postulated.

That's the right they always said.

And thank you for reminding me,

because it's gonna be commoditized.

That's why I came out of the experience with it,

because you can get a Mona Ultra with FSD,

you know, equivalent capabilities,

I don't know in overall performance over time,

but in capabilities with FSD V14

for the equivalent of under $20,000 in China right now.

Cause that's, I think the Mona starts at $17,000

and the Mona 3, and then it goes up

to about $20,000 for the Ultra version

or a little bit less than that.

So there's no subscription fee after that on everything,

you just, you get FSD.

And so far as what I've seen,

it's worth pretty much as good as Tesla.

And it's the same thing across our lineup.

So if you want to go with the, you know,

higher end stuff like the P7, P7 plus,

the G6, they have the X9 right now.

So that's, he drove me from the airport

which was really nice, very smooth ride.

It's a nice MPV, fully equipped.

And yeah, you know, I came out of the experience

with what I explained thinking like,

I feel like that's what Tesla was supposed to be.

Like, obviously they're not,

they haven't reached the volume of Tesla quite yet.

But in term of vehicle lineup, I was looking at it,

like they had the G6, they had the G7 too now.

I think they were working on the G9 that I saw.

Let me take that back.

But they have the P7, P7 plus,

which is like their sedan,

which, you know, you could say it's comparable

to the higher end model three,

even like closer to model S for the P7 plus,

which is all the bigger and the X9, the MPV they have,

they are getting into everything in the segment.

The mono three is kind of, you know, a little bit smaller.

It probably gets some market share for the model three

or maybe more for the standard model three

whenever it comes out in China,

because it's a little bit less luxury inside,

but other than that, it's very similar to model three.

So they have a full lineup now,

like a more extensive lineup than Tesla,

and they just need to ramp up production,

be better known, and they would probably

outsell Tesla within the next few years, I think.

At least in China.

I talked to a lot of people this week,

you know, Chinese reporter, Chinese customers,

foreign reporters that live in China and talk about it.

For people, there's Mark Renford that I suggest

following a lot.

He's a British guy that lives in China now,

and he's been a negotiator for a long time,

and he reports on this stuff

as a very interesting YouTube channel on it.

And one point that he was saying is that

nowadays it's the older people that are still buying Tesla.

First of all, they are more expensive,

so there's better chances that they are

in the price range for them.

But also, it's because the older people

still remember a time where the Chinese brand

were much lower quality than they are now.

So for them, they're still a bit worried

about Chinese brands, so the foreign brands

are a little bit more appealing to them, including Tesla.

The younger people are way more interested in the Chinese brand

because they don't remember a time where BYD was kind of sucky,

to be honest.

And now, and I saw some of the older expangs on the road,

too, and I'm like, that's what they used to look like.

I guess now they are stick-looking compared to the first ones.

You know, the expang was kind of seen as like a Tesla copycat

at first, but now it's kind of going the other way around

with the Model Y refresh looking more like the G6

that they unveiled months ago, months before Tesla.

So it's kind of reversing the situation.

And another thing they were saying

is that they have some statistics

where the people in China that are buying Tesla

are just looking at Tesla.

They go to Tesla and they buy it.

The people were shopping around and trying different cars

from different companies they don't buy from Tesla,

which is telling you a lot when all the competition is

going out.

All right.

The other thing I want to talk about expang

was obviously the humanity robots.

That's another thing that you could say

that there was a copycat about,

like they are just copying Tesla again.

Actually not, not on this one.

This one you can't see.

Expang actually started their robot

and humanity robot programs before Tesla.

They've been doing a bunch of robots.

Before then they have a robotic division

making like quadruple, quadruped robots.

And then they had like a first generation

sort of humanity robots for demonstration,

year's prior to Tesla.

And then they had their second generation.

You might have a robot this one here, here,

that gave me like...

500, 300%.

It's for design craftsmanship.

So that robot is the previous generation.

So there's not the one that they unveiled this week,

but it's using the latest software.

And it gave us a little tour of the,

they have an experience center at the HQ.

And he gave us a little tour of it

and it was on Tether.

It was moving on its own

and no walking, not too bad,

a little bit better than what we've seen

from Optimus lately.

And I asked employees around that,

there was the employees that had the,

the Optimus, the iron shirt.

And I asked them, is it being teleoperated?

And yeah, sure to me it's not being teleoperated.

It's, they even said that it's not,

it's not even pre-programmed to walk around.

Like yeah, they have the location they need to get to,

but they can take different path

if there's something in their ways and everything.

So it's not pre-programmed in that sense.

Only the speech is giving us a little speech

about everything.

So speech is pre-programmed, that's about it.

But it was an impressive robot,

but that was nothing compared to what the unveil after.

So after the unveil, this one here,

which is the next generation one

that has a lot of upgrades,

especially the hands, the hands are brand new.

They have 22 additional degrees of freedom.

The, so the big innovation that they have,

which was on the on stage was the gate when walking

is like a catwalk type of gate.

And it's very impressive.

It's not something that we've never seen

in a new matter robot before.

And people even thought that it was a human inside

and they had to open it up to prove that it was not.

And they say that they achieved that

with a few specific innovation,

specifically the spine.

So they did a bionic spine for it.

So, you know, with these united robots,

you're not really recreating everything that a human is.

And they go step by step.

And they say, like, do you actually need this?

Do you, or can we do something else?

Can you do something to, you know, the shoulders?

Can we do like, we can go this way,

we can go that way, we can go that way.

But like, wow, Baldy can go like completely

on the other side of your head or something.

You can do more, you can do less.

And have, you know, the capabilities that you want.

They found out that a spine is actually very useful

for walking, for, you know,

engaging your torso into it and the hips.

So they did it and it made a big difference.

After the event, everything the next day.

So, I mean, I don't know what state it is at this point.

I'm so confused, but we had a little workshop

with the head of robotics at,

I'll expand LC, he's called, that's his nickname

for foreigners like us that can pronounce his real name.

And he's legit, he's like an NVIDIA,

like a 10 year NVIDIA veteran.

And he moved to Expang five years ago

to lead the robotic program.

And the thing with, he's very open about it,

about the challenges and what they are

aiming to do.

Same as the CEO, Sean Spang.

Unlike Tesla, that's, you know,

Elon was on stage yesterday telling people

that optimist is gonna end poverty.

Everyone's gonna have an optimist in their house

within the next few years.

And he said some wow things about,

you don't need prison anymore.

Optimist is gonna end prison

because instead of putting people in prison,

we're just gonna give them an optimist

that's gonna follow them around at all time

and prevent them from doing further crimes,

which is about the craziest thing I've ever heard

and only the third stupidest thing

that he said during that show Thursday.

But yeah, so they, and Expang, honestly,

even with the new version that they unveiled,

yesterday Tesla, the optimist,

looks to be ahead of Tesla on this,

which will make sense.

They started earlier and they're basically spending

as much money as Tesla.

And they are in China,

which has a way better supply chain

and feedback, close feedback loop,

close feedback supply chain for robotics.

They literally look ahead on this.

And you know, they have the software for it and everything,

they are being way less optimistic than Tesla on this.

So the CEO said that they are designing everything

for mass production, okay?

And they have the less version,

they are very confident about it

and they think they can bring into production next year.

But they don't want to go crazy

with making millions of them

because they just, they don't think

the technology is ready for that.

They tested it for a year inside their factory,

doing what they thought would be like the easiest thing

to do to replace a human,

which was to tighten screws with, you know,

you give them a drill

that the same human on the line was using.

I've talked about this before,

but the real value of a humanoid robot

is that it's the deployment cost is way lower

because you deploy them

in the same environment that is designed for human.

And that reduce your development cost

compared to a purpose-built robot

that you need to redesign things

around the production line to make it work.

But it's probably gonna be, you know,

more reliable, longer lasting, more efficient to do.

It's just that if it costs millions of dollars

to deploy versus a $20,000 robot

that you can just replace a human with,

you know, it's a much lower cost.

There's a big value in that.

I've already did that.

And what they found is like,

it's actually not more efficient than a human worker

because, you know, the way to do it with the robotics

is not as fast, is not as good.

And, but also the cost of it is not as good

because, you know, these ands specifically,

like you can design these crazy ands

that are as close as a human as possible.

It's still not as good as a human, but very close.

They are so complex

that something, it's easier to break.

And when something breaks, you need to replace it.

It's like, well, a human was something we were good at

is like, we charge your repeatability and all that.

And there's been a lot of invasive advancement

in ergonomics on production lines in the last few years.

So that humans are actually able to perform works

for a longer period of time and things like that.

So we found that like it's,

there's actually no value in deploying it like that

for now, they would need to have a lot of breakthroughs

in robotics and software to make the robots

more reliable, cheaper, and to take over those industrial tasks.

Same thing, especially on the software level

for in-home chores,

like adding your home like robot slave at home

to do your chores, you don't see that happening soon.

Like they think that the safety levels,

like you don't want the thing to step on your dog

or something like there's also just usefulness.

Like we've seen the X1 Neo on Ville a few weeks ago

that they said it's shipping next year to do that

to do your chores at home.

But turns out that it's actually remote people

people remotely controlling the robots

to do your task for you.

That's what it's gonna be at first

until the software catch up.

So that shows you that the software is just not there

yet to be actually useful on that front.

There's just a lot of advancement

that needs to be done on that front.

So for now, next year when we enter production

with that robot, what they think they wanna do with it first

is be some kind of tour guide inside the location,

some kind of sales people inside a location

where they can show you the feature of the car

and show you around, they can greet you at the stores.

They said that they can sell it to museums, for example,

and things like that they're gonna be useful for.

They're gonna be able to interact with people,

talk to people, bring up the facts,

bring them to locations and things like that.

This is pretty good, but it's quite limited

to compare to like for Iman's vision

of millions and millions of robots to work

he needs to work in an industrial situation

and he needs to work inside people's home

and we're still far from that.

Chopin, the CEO didn't even want to say

when and things that's gonna happen

at a press conference after that we went to,

when press like when really like, come on,

just do a guess, we won't hold you to it,

like just do a guess, he said five to 10 years

and the head of the program didn't even want to say that

he said like, look, we don't know what we don't know.

There's like, every time we come up with some things

that we make a great advancement

but something else is just not working

and so we just need to keep pushing

and that's what they're doing for now

and they're also exploring things to see how people react

like they made a female version of this one.

Seeing people got so upset by it,

I was like, what, why did you do that?

Like all the journalists, all they were talking about

like why a female?

And I'm like, why a male?

Like if you're gonna do a humanoid robot

like do one, like who cares?

And they didn't say they were doing it like very

for any specific reason other than like

they wanted to see people's reactions,

how they react to it and like test things out.

But yeah, it's, and also they were proud

of the catwalk type of thing,

which you know, looked a little bit more natural

in a female form than a male can do it.

I cannot do it, though I was trying to do it,

like it's actually like harder than it looks

like it's kind of the thing that they catch you,

the thing that you're being inebriated on the road

and they make you like walk like one foot

in front of the other.

It's, you can do it obviously,

but it doesn't look natural like a model

walking on the catwalk and do it.

Right.

So yeah, basically I came out of it thinking

there's gonna be a place for humanoid robots.

It's, there's some value to it,

but it's just not gonna be the scale

that Elon is talking about.

It's not gonna be as fast as people talking about.

Like everyone that I talked to that has,

you know, that is being realistic about robotics

and software was telling me,

you know, they're gonna sell

a few in the next few years for sure,

but for real like mainstream use,

it's, you know, five years away,

best case scenario, maybe 10 years away

for actual like scale for it.

And then the last thing was the flying cars.

Again, EVTOL, low altitude EVTOL more than anything.

There is the, oh, I didn't post the right video

on this one.

This is, okay, yeah, this thing here is the main one.

So this is the first product.

It's the Land Aircraft Carrier.

It's a six by six hybrid vehicle.

So it's electric and as an extended range

internal combustion engine in there.

And all the back here you have this thing

that folds and fits into it.

And this thing is like a two-seater

all electric EVTOL that has a range

of like 20 to 30 kilometers away.

They want to sell this thing for $280,000

starting next year.

And so there was not a ton of news.

Like I said, this is from a scooter article from 2014.

So it was not exactly, sorry,

but they want to bring it to production.

They say like, now they are getting ready for it.

They are actually building out the production line

and it's gonna be ready for 2026.

First delivery towards the second half of the year.

And for now the plan is mostly like,

people can buy it and in China

they are working on the regulations to make this work.

So there's gonna be location where you can actually use this.

It's purely like a hobby type of thing.

So there's not actually like a use case

other than fun for this.

So the idea is like,

since this thing is relatively short range

with the truck, you can move it to a location

like bring it into the desert

and use it in the desert, for example

and have fun with it.

Expand on its side is looking at what they call flying camps.

So they are starting to build those out this year

and they plan to have 200 of them in China next year

where they find like very cool locations

where they have these aircraft ready

and people can come and fly them around

in those specific area.

Yeah, it's, they're focusing obviously on redundancy

so that you can lose a couple propeller and still land.

They have a dual battery pack system in there.

So each battery pack can actually power the aircraft.

So if one system fails, the other takes over.

So there's a lot of redundancy being put in

and they think that thing that,

they have seven thousand reservation for that thing.

Yeah, I mean, they had that at the Shanghai Motor Show

like they were taking reservations then it's like

it's a thing that's happening, it's crazy.

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy.

But like I said, the use case is somewhat limited

and it's depending on the regulation obviously.

They are forcing all the executive that are,

so this is the A-Ridge division of X-Pang

so it's like a separate company with an X-Pang

and they are forcing all the executives to get 5,000

and 5,000 hours or 5,000 miles in them

in the aircraft to prove that it's reliable.

And yeah, it's coming next year.

The second product that they unveil for flying car

but it's very much not a flying car is this thing here

which is an EVTOL long range aircraft up to a thousand,

500 kilometers of range, five or six-seater people,

six-seater, 360 kilometers of speed.

So it's a tilted rotor system.

So you lift up like that and then the motor tilts,

the propellers tilts and then can fly faster horizontally.

And it's also an hybrid system.

It's not all electric.

They have an extended range system in there

but this is more for commuting longer distances

as a service.

So it's people are not gonna buy this

that they are a partner with companies to deploy these

but they have a division like working on these things

that they pretty much like it.

No, it's weird that the video changed back to this one.

That's a weird bug.

Never seen that.

All right, we're gonna try to move a little bit faster

because we're already moving off an hour

but Rivian at their earnings,

I didn't have time to look too much.

I just saw that they got gross margin positive

but I think mostly because of their software division.

So basically they're dealing with Volkswagen.

Yeah, so a revenue of 1.56 billion up 78% year-over-year.

Automative revenue 1.14 billion up 47%.

416 million for the softwares and services revenue.

So that's up 224%.

We assume mostly because of the Volkswagen deal.

Gross profit, 24 million in gross profit

up 416 million year-over-year

from the gets a gross profit

still negative on the automotive front.

So selling cars still not a profitable business for them

negative 130 but up 250 year-over-year.

So if they keep going like next year

they should be profitable on that.

Even though it's gonna be touch and go

because the R2 rollouts is also happening at the same time

and at the beginning the rollout is gonna be,

it's not gonna be good on the revenge and then show

but over time it's gonna be very good.

And profit 144 million on service and software.

So, almost making like 30, 40% gross margin

on the software stuff.

So that's really good.

Current outlook

441,500 to 43,500 deliveries for the year.

Carpenter expenditure between 1.8, 1.1 billion

and adjusted EBITDA minus 2.25, 2.225 billion.

And they decided that here to get another

spun out company spin off like there was also

that the E-Bigrand and now there's a AI company

Mine Robotics.

So let me read it here.

We believe they are synergies shared

between the development of autonomous driving

and physical AI in November.

We set up a new company Mine Robotics

and secured approximately 110 of external seat capital.

Mine Robotics will focus on the advancement

of initial AI to reshape our physical world businesses

operate and leverage ribbon operation data

as the foundation of robotic data.

Flywheel, robotic data Flywheel.

We believe AI-enabled robotics can support

a wide range of initial application.

Okay, so what they're doing here

if I'm not listening correctly is that

they were developing some good industrial AI product

for the production system and their logistics system

inside the operation.

And they were like, you know, we're a huge company

developing a lot of these products.

We might be able to spin that off

and sell that to smaller companies

that could use those products with something.

Yeah, and growing AI onto anything nowadays

is a couple billion bucks.

Yeah, but at least it's a spin off.

So I assume that like it's gonna be

like a close financial and everything.

So they're not trying to actually, you know,

and it's not like a consumer AI product too.

So it's not sexy.

So I give them points.

So like, I'm not sure if it's actually

like a stock market type of a move from them.

Oh yeah, the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup might be all dead.

So apparently this is a new report

from the Wall Street Journal.

So a few weeks ago, we reported that Ford announced

that they are pausing production of the phone Lightning

blaming it on the novelist plant supplier,

aluminum supplier, the fire.

But we did note at the time

that there's room to be worried about

because the timing is also obviously

the end of the tax credit,

which was a big part of making the program successful,

making it the best selling pickup truck.

So now, according to a new report

from the Wall Street Journal,

Ford's that you pick up maybe as good as dead,

but the exciting source is close to the matter

that Wall Street Journal's report claimed Ford

is not considering scrapping the F-150 Lightning altogether.

Then we'll come up for Ford's

that you equal process this program,

mole E lost another 1.4 billion in Q3.

So yeah.

But there's also, there's a next gen vehicle

that's coming probably next year.

So also they could,

they think that it's gonna be maybe too close

in term of vehicle program.

So they want to scrap this one

to make room on the other one, but we'll see.

Yeah. I mean, it makes sense

if they have a new vehicle coming,

like they're not gonna name it yet on 50,

if it's better than 50.

I don't know.

But at the same time, I think,

I think the new one is supposed to be

like a little bit smaller, a little bit cheaper.

So I think this probably would have been a room

for both of them.

All right. Quickly, a little bit of details.

And then we're gonna jump into the comment section

as fast as we can,

because we've been going on for a while.

The MWI-4 2026 has been unveiled.

It's been a boost of range.

So you now have 15 more miles

for the 18-inch version at 233 miles.

The 19-inch version gets 207 miles,

12 more miles than the 2025 version.

And there's also more power

with a new silicon carbide conductor

getting the M60 version to 510 horsepower

for the 41 more than the last one.

And then the M50?

No.

But 592, that's more.

The M60 should be more, no?

Maybe a little confusion here

in term of the horsepower.

But now the top of power is 492 horsepower.

The 2026 I-4 is gonna start at $58,000

for the E-Drive 40.

And the E-Drive 40 Grand Coupe Pay

is gonna start at $62,300.

And then you have the M60 at $77,000.

That's $70,700.

Those are like pretty notable improvements

over just for a year update.

Yeah, in a little year.

Normally it's like the battery

that I did just got some new batteries

from the suppliers and make a difference.

All right, the Toyota is teasing a new vehicle

and some say it's an electric truck.

So this is a teaser image here.

It's gonna be on Ville next week.

They refer to it as a major unveiling,

a big step for Toyota.

And there's this video here

coming from looks like Donita.

We don't have a great look at it

but it does look like a pickup truck.

Yeah.

But I don't think, yeah.

Then there's a lightning around everything

that is letting people know

that you think it's gonna be electric.

But yeah, I don't like that.

This is like in Indonesia.

So I don't know.

This is maybe like a world release.

Yeah, I don't know.

We don't get a lot of the same vehicles

that are driving around there.

Yeah.

All right, we'll see.

We'll see next week.

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

All right, Skeptic says

you can build out a major national highway

speed rail network for one trillion.

This pay package doesn't do much for the argument

that capitalism ensures an efficient allocation

of capital.

What's worse? Yeah, speak capitalism.

Yeah.

Well, you can go through that.

It's weird though, because the one trillion dollars,

you know, I sure mentioned it at the time,

Elon gets a hundred, sorry, one trillion dollars

by owning the stock

and the stock price going up that much.

So this is not a trillion dollars that he gets.

This is going for one trillion.

An extra a trillion is bananas.

All right.

I think also the lawsuits where Tesla says

it's driver hands on responsibility.

Yeah, that'll be a conundrum to figure out.

Yeah, I mean, look at all the lawsuits.

They are now with level two charging.

That's an idea system Tesla's saying to everyone

that you're the one responsible and everything.

They're flooded with lawsuits.

They lost their first jury trial about one

and were found 33% responsible.

And there's now dozens and dozens

of similar lawsuits happening.

Can you imagine if they actually moved

to level three, level four, level five too quickly?

It's gonna be a kiss of death for Tesla.

So I think what we're gonna see the next few months

is that, I mean, there might be the removal

of the driver monitoring system.

This one, I mean, I'm sure there's lawyers at Tesla

that are telling like, don't do that, that's crazy.

But especially after saying it,

like if they were just doing it like quietly

and just maybe it would be harder to argue in court.

But since Elon went on stages,

like we're gonna allow texting and driving,

like they are the police or something,

then you're screwed because of that.

But yeah, I think Tesla,

what I think is gonna happen in the future

is that the regulators are gonna become Tesla's best friend

or they're gonna be the scapegoat that's like,

oh yeah, I mean, we are basically ready.

On stages several times that autonomy is solved.

Or it's gonna be solved.

At first it was like it's solved

but then it was gonna be solved in the next few months.

So in the next few months, you're gonna hear Tesla's like,

yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, now it's solved

is just that we need to work with regulators

to roll it out and they're on, they're being slow

and all that.

So now we're entering that cycle of autonomy is solved.

Right, Joseph 3T9,

I really don't understand what the shareholders feel.

They would have lost if he had left.

Did they think that it would make the share price fall

and never recover?

It certainly would have fell.

If Elon left, but I think it would have recovered

at some point.

Man, I mean, not to these level.

I don't think that Tesla's business is worth like 1.5 trillion.

It might be worth that in the future

if it kept growing at the pace that it was growing

for years.

So to go back to that growth,

I think it was gonna take a long time.

So if you're a holder of Tesla, you wanna hold it

and you would see both Elon out and everything,

you would have taken a huge hit

probably for years and years and years before recovering.

And that's why it passed.

Yeah, for an investor, it's a terrible choice to me.

Yeah, there is no choice really.

I texted him all the time, it's always called CarPlay.

Yeah, we talked about that, but not integrated to Tesla.

Yeah, that CarPlay isn't killer app.

We talked about that.

Isn't it law to maintain hands on interaction,

on wheel to market sell any auto or self-driving?

Nope, it's not.

So if you have a drive monitoring,

you can keep their eyes on the road.

Actually, not even that.

It's not even specific about that.

So the laws are kind of loose in the US on that front,

allowing things like that.

So yeah, there's some room for it.

Tesla's voice to text works great.

I don't understand why people want physically text

while driving.

Yeah, I mean, it's not quite as useful as CarPlay's.

Yeah, for me, it's bad, but it's because of my accent.

My accent is not.

It will be a silly demo where it jumps a ramp

or something stupid, okay.

I think it could be technically able to just hover

for a few seconds like that.

I think it could.

If it's the fan system that I think it is,

down there, pull the thruster.

Right.

All right, why?

Because they're on the hook.

Yeah, we talked about that.

I work in auto.

The pushback means a full retool

or tools aren't even moving.

Phase one of that.

All right, we might have to skip some of these.

Yeah, I'm not sure what you're talking about.

The whole flying car thing will be a gimmick

until somebody totally automates ATC

and other airspace deconfliction tasks,

which require huge changes in aviation regulations

and technologies.

Yeah, I mean, that's for an airplane.

These cars are super heavy.

It's not even close.

It's not, that's just not a thing.

At the same time, I'm in Shenzhen right now.

I'm in the 21st floor of a skyscraper

and I see drones flying around all the time around here.

Like there's big drones, like lift drones too.

So it's-

With people?

No, not with people, but they're pretty huge.

So like if they fall, they fall, it's a big deal.

And they have, I think it's automated traffic control

because you see them sometimes like traffic,

like holding up, like staying for a while

and like letting other drone pass and everything.

Really?

Yeah.

That's wild.

Can I get some video of that?

Yeah.

From drone DJ account.

Yeah, I have some.

All right.

The first thing I saw here,

I came in my hotel and they sent me to the rooftop

to wait for my room and I arrived at the rooftop

and I see just shy and drones flying by.

Weird.

The flying car will never be a thing

because nobody should fly a vehicle

that is unattended in a Walmart parking lot.

Okay.

Got some phenomena.

Robots will replace retired volunteers.

Yes, at the first.

Imagine if there's already robots

specifically designed for tasks and functions

for weights and production plans.

Yeah.

Colin Krullin question, will the Bolts, Chevy Bolt

be the least expensive EV in the USA

who will undercut first Nissan Ford Slate?

I think it will be the least expensive,

although I don't know if there's still

some compliance cars running around.

Like I feel like the mini still has under 25 miles,

that might be low price.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, anyway, I don't know which will be the cheapest

but I think Bolt's pretty far up there.

Farley repeated his gripe that they're spending $30,000

for a single vehicle battery, assuming F-150,

that's still a massive amount for kilowatt hour.

Yeah, Ford doesn't seem to be building efficient EVs,

building EVs efficiently.

That seems to be a problem.

Maybe the new plants and stuff can help with that.

Mm-hmm.

Thoughts on the new Formula E Gen 4 line?

That would be a Jamie question.

He wrote a story about it.

I think it went on.

Yeah, I didn't have time to look at it, to be honest,

but I look at the images when they were released

and it looks cool.

It looks like big improvement in design.

But yeah, I didn't look at the specs or anything like that,

but Jamie wrote an article on it

and it's interesting.

That's it.

Yep, that's it.

All right, well, thank you everyone

for listening to Electric Podcast this week.

Again, I apologize if I was not.

I think the podcast got longer too

because I'm probably talking slower.

Just rambling.

Yeah, just rambling a little bit.

I mean, I might actually go back to sleep

because I have nothing planned for the next few hours

and it's still 6 a.m. here.

And yeah, I'm staying in China for,

in Shenzhen for the next few days.

I'm coming back on Wednesday, I think.

So I'm gonna be back in Canada for next week's podcast

and I'm checking out a few things,

Mom and Shenzhen, including DYD,

and just taking out the cyberpunk city and everything

so you can follow me on social media

if you wanna see some of that.

But we're gonna have a DYD report on the next track

and also a battery recycling thing.

If all goes well, that is pretty cool

because I think battery recycling is a critical part

of making sure that the electric future

is a sustainable one.

So yeah, you can stay tuned for that.

Then thanks a lot for listening

and we gonna see you same time, same place next week.

Bye-bye.

Tesla is now Elon's, Xpeng goes AI, Rivian earnings, and more

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