Tesla is now Elon's, Xpeng goes AI, Rivian earnings, and more
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Brand
BMW
BMW is a car company from Germany that makes luxury cars and has started making electric vehicles as well.
Car
i4
The i4 is an electric car made by BMW that looks like a sporty coupe and is designed for both style and performance.
Brand
Toyota
Toyota is a well-known car company from Japan that makes many different types of vehicles, including hybrids and electric cars.
Term
FSD
FSD means Full Self-Driving, which is a technology that lets a car drive on its own in some situations. It's designed to help reduce the need for a driver to control the car all the time.
Brand
Mercedes
Mercedes is a well-known car brand from Germany that makes luxury cars. They are famous for their high-quality vehicles and advanced technology.
Term
level three
Level three means the car can drive itself in some situations, like on highways, but you still need to be ready to take over if something goes wrong.
Car
Cadillac Escalade
The Cadillac Escalade is a large, fancy SUV that offers a lot of space and comfort. The 2027 version is expected to have many high-tech features to make driving easier and more enjoyable.
Term
eVTOL aircraft
eVTOL aircraft are a new type of flying vehicle that can take off and land straight up and down. They use electricity to fly, which can make them quieter and better for the environment than traditional helicopters.
Car
Lucid Air
The Lucid Air is a high-end electric car that looks like a fancy sedan. It's known for being very fast and having a long range, which means it can go far on a single charge. People mention it when talking about new luxury electric cars that are trying to compete with well-known brands.
Term
range
Range is how far a car can go before it needs to be charged again. For electric cars, a longer range means you can drive further without stopping to recharge.
Term
0-60 time
0-60 time is how fast a car can go from stopped to 60 miles per hour. It's a way to measure how quickly a car can speed up.
Term
Tesla key card
A Tesla key card is like a special card that lets you unlock and start your Tesla car without using a regular key. You just tap it on the car to get in and drive.
Term
ADAS
ADAS means systems in cars that help drivers by making driving safer and easier. They can do things like help you stay in your lane or slow down if there's an obstacle ahead.
Company
X-Pang
X-Pang is a car company from China that makes electric vehicles. They focus on making cars that are smart and can drive themselves.
Term
level four
Level four means the car can drive itself completely in certain places, but it might not work everywhere.
Term
autonomous driving
Autonomous driving is when a car can drive itself without anyone controlling it, using technology to see and understand its surroundings.
Term
NGP
NGP stands for Navigation Guided Pilot, which helps drivers by guiding them on where to go while driving. It's part of the technology that makes driving easier.
Brand
Volkswagen
Volkswagen is a well-known car company that makes many different types of vehicles. They are also working with other companies to create new driving technologies.
Car
Teslas Model
The Tesla Model Y is a type of electric car that looks like a small SUV. It's known for being roomy and having cool tech features, like the ability to drive itself in some situations. People talk about it because it's a popular choice for those wanting to switch to electric vehicles.
Term
subscription fee
A subscription fee is a regular payment you make to use a service. For cars, it could mean paying every month to use special features like navigation or self-driving options.
Car
Model 3
The Model 3 is a popular electric car made by Tesla. It's known for being more affordable than other Tesla models while still offering great performance and technology.
Car
Tesla Model S
The Tesla Model S is a fancy electric car that looks like a regular sedan but is known for being very fast and having a long driving range. It's important because it helped show that electric cars can be just as good, if not better, than traditional gas-powered cars. People mention it when talking about high-end electric vehicles.
Brand
BYD
BYD is a car company from China that makes electric cars. They used to have a bad reputation, but they have improved a lot recently.
Car
Land Aircraft Carrier
The Land Aircraft Carrier is a special kind of vehicle that has six wheels and uses both electricity and gas to run. It's made to be able to drive on different types of land.
Term
hybrid vehicle
A hybrid vehicle is a car that can use both electricity and gas to drive. This helps it save fuel and be better for the environment.
Car
Ford F150 Lightning
The Ford F-150 Lightning is an electric version of Ford's popular pickup truck, the F-150. It’s important because it shows that trucks can also be electric and still do tough jobs, like towing and hauling. People talk about it to see how well it competes with other electric vehicles.
Brand
Nissan
Nissan is a car company that makes many types of vehicles, including electric cars. They are known for creating reliable and affordable options.
Car
Mini
Mini makes small cars that are fun to drive and look different from most other cars. They're known for being cute and easy to park.
Concept
Formula E Gen 4
Formula E is a racing series for electric cars. The Gen 4 version is the latest update, bringing new technology and improvements to how these cars race.
LIVE
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.
About this episode
Elon Musk's control over Tesla is solidified following a controversial shareholders meeting, where a massive stock compensation package was approved. The episode dives into the implications of this decision and discusses the latest developments from Rivian and Xpeng, including Rivian's positive earnings report and Xpeng's advancements in AI and autonomous vehicles. The hosts also debate the future of the Ford F-150 Lightning and Toyota's upcoming electric truck. With insights from the electric vehicle market and the latest tech trends, this episode offers a comprehensive look at the evolving landscape of electric mobility.
Original notes
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss how Tesla is now Elon's after the shareholders' meeting, Xpeng going all-in on AI, Rivian's earnings, and more.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Tesla (TSLA) shareholders shoot selves in foot, approve Musk $1 trillion payday
- Elon Musk says Tesla FSD will allow ‘texting and driving’ in ‘a month or two’
- Tesla delays ‘flying’ Roadster demo to April Fools’ Day, production to 2027/28
- Tesla launches ‘Multipass’ in more markets for frictionless third-party charging
- Tesla updates its electric semi truck design
- Xpeng AI Day: new AI model powering robots, robotaxis, and flying cars
- Rivian (RIVN) Q3 2025 report: Revenues and deliveries rise, R2 closer than ever, plus a new AI co.
- Ford’s electric F-150 Lightning pickup may be all but dead
- BMW updates its best-selling EV with more range and power
- Toyota teases a new vehicle and it sure looks like an electric truck
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
https://www.youtube.com/live/by3S0W0PWbA
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