The latest episode dives into Tesla's Master Plan Part 4, which emphasizes AI but lacks concrete details, leaving hosts Fred and Seth skeptical about its feasibility. They also discuss Tesla's controversial new compensation package for Elon Musk, which could potentially make him a trillionaire. Other highlights include the unveiling of new electric vehicles from Volvo and BMW, Volkswagen's affordable ID Polo, and GM's production cuts due to anticipated demand drops. The episode wraps up with insights on wireless EV charging and a look at the future of electric vehicles.
Topics:tesla master planelon musk compensationaffordable vw evwireless chargingvolvo electric sedanbmw ix3gm production cutselectric vehicle market trends
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 Tesla Master Plan Part 4, a new affordable EV from VW, wireless EV charging, and more.
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Two, one, we are live for a new podcast. I'm Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winshaw. How are you doing, Seth?
I'm good.
All right. We have a lot to talk about today, and we're going to go pretty fast because I need to catch a plane.
But we just got the proxy statement from Tesla show to shareholders this morning, so we're going to have quite a bit to talk about regarding that.
But that actually followed the Master Plan Part 4 that was released earlier this week.
So we're going to start out with that because it kind of sets the stage for the proxy statement that was released this morning.
So Master Plan Part 4 has been teased for more than a year, and it comes not too long after Part 3,
that was kind of a flop, Elon himself said that it was hard to understand that people didn't really, I don't know, it's pretty straightforward.
It was about scaling all of Tesla's business. It just was nothing to precise about it.
But Part 4 is unsurprisingly the shift to AI. That's the focus of it.
But like I call it in the headline here, a smorgasbord of vague AI promises.
It's pretty much it. There's no concrete product roadmap in there.
It's nowhere near what Master Plan Part 1 and Part 2 were, which were clear step by step plan to achieve Tesla's mission to accelerate the advance of electric transport.
And then in Part 2, also renewable energy, and again, Part 2 is not even complete yet.
Elon himself said it. He thinks it's going to happen next year, but obviously we've heard that one before.
But the plan, honestly, I won't even like read it or quote it.
There's nothing like really concrete in there. What I can quote is the sustainable abundance.
That's the main thing that kept coming back.
It's buzzword, AI buzzwords after AI buzzword.
Honestly, it sounds like it's been written by an AI.
The whole post, the AI is right sometimes. It's like very flowery, but there's no meat to it.
I don't know how that makes sense, but it feels like that throughout the entire post here.
And it's all about the AI robots, about robotaxi, but without anything more concrete than we're going to make it happen.
And it's really disappointing because like I said, the first two plans were like clear.
We're going to release this type of vehicle that's going to be performing like that at this price range.
And then this is going to enable us to go there.
And then we're going to have like mass transit vehicles in the Master Plan Part 2.
We're going to combine that with energy storage and renewable energy generation.
And that dense, that's going to complete the mission to actually rate the advance of sustainable economy really.
Now it's about infinite growth, about abundance, about all this utopic kind of idea that AI is just going to save the world.
Which is, you know, a possibility in my mind, but I kind of want something more concrete.
I want to say, okay, if that's your vision, sure, how do we get there?
Because so far there's like zero evidence to get there.
Sure, everybody can see the usefulness of a humanoid robot that it's affordable and can perform useful tasks.
It's just that we don't see Tesla delivering that right now.
Every Tesla demonstration of the Optimus robot so far has been powered by humans remotely.
There was the incident at the Tesla Diner where it was serving popcorn for the first hour of the opening day.
And then it's been reportedly down since then.
It's been not working, or AKA the Tesla didn't pay an engineer to work the robot to serve popcorn full time.
That's probably more the explanation.
Yeah, I think it broke during the when there was an internet outage because the guy controlling the popcorn or the woman controlling the popcorn robot wasn't able to connect.
Yeah, so that was the first excuse they had and then they haven't worked the robot since then.
So like obviously we're so far from this and they're just selling us this utopic future where
there's going to be abundance for everyone.
And yeah, and then the abundance theme follows on the Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson book that's quite popular right now.
You know, written from a more liberal standpoint than this.
But you know, the same idea you can tell like a lot of if you've read the book, a lot of this idea is crib from that book.
So yeah, take that for what it's worth.
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people are buying into that right now and there's something to it.
Like, we want to strive for a better future and that sounds like a better future.
Is this the problem is like the way that this is approaching this now very vaguely sounds more like a stockpile than anything else.
Like when the company start talking about infinite growth, you're like, all right, red flag, red flag, exactly.
And and this this is what exactly sounds like.
And then you have to match that the master plan part for release with what just happened today this morning.
I wake up and I finally get the proxy statement for just a show other meeting where we get the proposal.
And obviously the headline grabbing proposal is the new compensation package.
So if you haven't been following the saga that has been Elon's compensation package, the original one from 2018.
That was like completed by 2022, 2023, something like that was rescinded by a judge
because the judge found that Elon was basically negotiating again or not negotiating at all against himself
because he had full control of the board.
So the package was rescinded and they tried to get it approved a second time
which they did by vote, but then they used the exact same proxy and they didn't correct any of the issues that the judge found.
So the judge was like, yeah, you cannot do that. That's not how it works.
So Tesla was like, all right, if it's not how it works, then last Monday just gave
you on a $26 billion package as a sort of like sorry for not being able to give you more money than the company has earned since its inception.
So instead, we're going to just give you roughly that same amount of money, $26 billion.
And later they signal that later they're going to release a new, bigger, longer term package.
That's going to be this time submitted for shareholder approval because the $26 billion wasn't.
It was like straight up approved by the board.
And now we have it here and it's worth a trillion dollars for Elon.
It's a nice trillion dollars in stock option if he achieves a few milestone,
including increasing the market cap to 8.5 trillion.
So basically an 8.5 increase from from where it is right now.
And then also putting a million rubble tax into operation, which as we know now doesn't mean much
because we know what this calls a rubble tax, you know, that Austin has been deployed and delivering a million robots.
So they need to put a million optimists on the ground, which is probably the most difficult of those milestones.
But at the same time, they don't they don't need to be super useful or they can serve popcorn.
Yeah, they could exactly.
They could do that.
They could do very minimal work and and Elon would still get his package.
So basically, you know, as you pump the stock 8.5 times and he becomes a trillionaire,
which by the way, probably would already become a trillionaire without that package.
If he is, here's the main thing.
You know, it's going to be a multi-millionaire.
Already the biggest shareholder.
He's already the single person that benefits the most from Tesla stock increasing.
There's actually no need to to give him more money.
I retweeted last week a quote from Jeff Bezos that I really liked where he was asked by, I think, Sorkin.
Like to your entire tenure as the CEO of Amazon, you you've never taken any more equity in the stock option in the company.
And then he explained, like, yeah, didn't make sense to me because I already benefited a lot from Amazon just by going up.
So I took my think it took like a regular salary for being CEO, like $100,000 or whatever.
And then the rest was like, the stock goes up, I become rich and he became one of the richest man in the world.
Like, that was kind of a good deal.
And I did very like his other responses like, yeah, maybe I'm not the richest man in the world anymore because Elon, but we shouldn't be a list of people that are the richest people in the world.
We should be a list of people that created the most equity for the world.
And in that case, he created a lot more than Elon and that's fair because Elon is better at getting a higher percentage
of the equity that he creates.
And also there's question about, you know, how legit the equity that he's creating is because a lot of Tesla's Tesla has quite frankly become a mean stock now.
So it's it's more pumped than actual value.
But yeah, this thing is going to be up to about November 6.
And I do like the timing.
That's the smart with the timing here because Tesla is going to have a great Q3.
We know why a lot of the men being pulled forward into Q3 due to the tax credit.
So this is going to have a banger Q3.
This is going to release the result October 2, October 3 for a delivery going to be quite well.
Then a few weeks later, end of October, they're going to have the earnings going to be a very good earnings.
The last one for probably a few quarters and and then they're going to have to share all the meeting.
Just perfect timing.
They timed that perfectly for a shareholder to gobble this up and it's going to pass easily.
And and yeah, then then the shareholders are going to be completely bound to Elon pumping the stock for the next 10 years.
Which, you know, he's done a good job of pumping the stock clearly.
Oh, yeah, pumping stock, raising money is two of his greatest kills.
And one of the latest pump is RoboTaxi.
RoboTaxi is now testing on Iways, but it has a driver's safety monitor has been moved to the driver's seat is the headline here.
So which I approve, by the way, people are going to say, Hey, where are you aiding?
I'm not aiding.
I think this should have been the case since the beginning.
I think I think that moving the the safety monitor to the passenger seat was a move made for optics because Tesla thinks
it looks better, but in terms of safety, having a finger on the kill switch to stop the vehicle is not as safe as having more controls to the steering wheels, obviously, and the brakes.
So I prefer that Tesla is saying that it's because of the move to highway.
So obviously, highways, higher speed makes more sense than that, which, you know, right there, it should be concerning for people.
Like, oh, well, yeah, we are we are moving them to the safe to the driver's seat because it's more dangerous at higher speed.
So they're saying that there's still plenty of errors at lower speed is that we can catch them easier because they're at lower speed.
People should be worried about that stuff.
But I think the main issue here is also the new law that's been like the timing of it is perfect.
This says that it's because of they're starting to test on highway.
But at the same time, they did it exactly when the new Texas law, the SB two eight zero seven as as coming to effect September first.
And it has it has a lot of stricter oversight of autonomous driving system.
So basically, to be considered autonomous driving system, you need to prove to be level four or five, which Tesla, which requires absolutely no human oversight.
And this obviously doesn't have that.
So I think that's actually is required, even though like they're agreeing that they are not to have someone in the driver's seat because it's off.
It's officially not a level four system.
And that's what you need to be operating a commercial taxi service in Texas as of Monday, I think.
All right.
That's it for our Tesla news this week.
I'm going to have a lot more to talk about next week, because I'm going to have to go through all the filings today.
But then we have a couple of Volvo news, we have some Volkswagen news.
We have the BMW X3 that's been unveiled, a new design language from Audi, some wireless charging and GM cutting production.
And we're going to get through as fast as we can.
If we can get to that fast enough, we're going to have sometimes to take some comments and questions.
But it has to be quick.
I see that the speaking lawyer is already in the chat.
We have calls already in the chat.
So if you have questions, get put in the comment section.
We're going to try to get to them in about 30 minutes or so.
But we'll see.
We have a new Volvo electric sedan being released, the ES90.
So completing Volvo has been mostly focused on SUV as most automakers have.
But they're now expending into the electric sedan world with this full size sedan
on an 800 volt platform, getting 435 miles of range, 700 kilometers.
But that's on the WLTP.
350 kilowatt top charging rate, hiding 300 kilometers of range,
186 miles in just 10 minutes.
That's very good.
It's using an 800 volt platform.
What else is interesting about that thing?
Powered, that range is achieved to 102 kilowatt hour battery pack.
It has an NVIDIA or an computer in it for powering its ADAS system.
Oh, I like the mom in the interior of Volvo.
Always solid.
Yeah.
Starting price is going to be 72,000 euros, which is equivalent to $84,000.
But that's with that and the IRS trim option is going to go for 95,000 euros.
Do we think this is coming to North America?
I have my doubts that everything that's not an SUV, this is so well.
So especially in that price range.
Yeah.
But this is this is pretty good.
Like this is going to be a little ass competitor, a lucid air competitor.
Yeah.
It's but again, these vehicles, these vehicles don't sell too much in the US.
So is it work really launching there?
I mean, it looks a little bit, it looks a little bit like an SUV, a little bit
like a full start to ish kind of.
Yeah, yeah, it's a fastback.
So yeah, yeah.
But people like to be tall, people like to have a big trunk.
Yeah.
And then we have some details set on the X 60, a little smaller SUV.
Yeah, Volvo's going to announce that January 21st.
It'll be in production later next year.
The X 60, you know, that's 60 represents
Volvo's kind of like midsize platform.
So it's kind of Model S, sorry, Model Y size.
Just the very, you know, generic middle sized SUV, which is also the,
I think the highest grossing segment in the car world by far.
So this will be a big vehicle for them.
It'll be built in Gothenburg.
So, you know, for US folks, it won't get the Chinese tax that some of
Wolvos, I mean, some of Wolvos, Geely built vehicles have like the EX 30.
So you don't have to worry about that or I mean, they'll get their
normal tariffs, whatever those are at the time.
Volvo also says that it's going to be its longest range EV ever.
Which depending on if you take the ES 90 into consideration means it's going to have.
You know, I would say pretty close to 350 miles EPA, which is huge.
Probably going to have the same over 100 kilowatt hour battery, which is nice.
And I think probably the biggest deal is it's built on the SPA three platform.
But it's got that the battery is is the part of the car build.
So it's not you don't need to have a battery separate from the frame of the car.
And that'll save space, save production time, money, et cetera, et cetera.
So they're really doing the same thing that Tesla and I guess Ford now is doing
or will soon do and a lot of the Chinese automakers are doing.
Yeah, Gilly is bringing a lot of the Chinese automakers are doing.
Yeah, but when they're approached, they're they're learning from every angle.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, we add a little bit more details, a little bit more on dealing
on the what is now called the ID Polo.
So we knew it as the ID two for a while.
So it's the it's going to be the cheapest as of now of Volkswagen's
electric vehicle lineup.
It's not going to be the ID one or ID life, which is going to be even cheaper.
That's going to be the twenty five thousand dollar one.
But this is the twenty five thousand euro, twenty nine thousand dollar.
Evie. So it's it's going from the ID to the ID Polo.
And we have some new pictures with some heavy camouflage, obviously.
But we have a nice little cheap electric
adge back coming, which is very exciting, starting next year.
And it's going to have the Polo adging on it.
And they confirm they're going to have a GTI version.
I don't think they've said it's going to be all well drive,
but it's going to be like a nice little hot hatch all electric, which is really exciting.
I think I really like the Volkswagen is doing that now.
Like you've been a lot of people have been talking about this,
like one point like Renault was going to do it.
We tried for years, especially you said, trying to get GM to do something like that
with the bull TV, even though I think the bull TV is a little bit bigger than this.
So I would think it's yeah.
Yeah. So maybe they do with the new one.
But I think I think this is going to be the first like really like affordable
electric hatch and then on top of it, we're going to use the same platform
that Volkswagen is saying that they're going to use the same platform
to have a GTI version, which is going to be very exciting.
This is all launching next year, but you can see it next week.
Also at the Munich Motor Show.
Yeah. Yeah, it's yeah.
OK. And.
Are these coming to the US?
Do you think? Oh, no, no.
I mean, maybe maybe maybe at some point, I feel like I feel like
we got to get one to the US and they're calling it the polo
because of Volkswagen's idea to stop, you know, coming up with just numbers.
ID one, ID two, ID three.
They're trying to make it more like regular cars.
Yeah. And they want to keep some of their lineup alive.
So they also confirm that the T cross is going to have an electric version.
Probably going to be called ID cross.
So a lot of their new affordable mass market
electric vehicles are going to reuse the same badging as their existing lineup.
All right, we just got the unveiling of the IX3 that just came out
through when I was sleeping, so I haven't had time to to check it out.
But this is the new version of the IX3, a whole new generation.
And it's a new platform.
Everything is new, basically.
And I think BMW is getting big on this as like.
As there are to sort of catch up the competition in the
premium lower luxury segment with an electric SUV, mid-sized,
that is capable of achieving higher volume, let's say.
So it's a sixth generation platform.
They are talking about achieving a WLTP range of 500 miles, 800 kilometers.
That's the big line.
Obviously, on the EPA scale, it should be closer to 400 miles,
which is still very good, obviously.
800 volt platform, 400 kilowatt peak charging.
Wow, that's good.
Two hundred and thirty miles, 270 kilometers in just 10 minutes.
So very similar to what we just talked about with the ES90 from Volvo.
It's going to have its new operating system X
that's going to run on 17.9 infotainment this late.
Oh, wow, this is just like the Xiaomi Y7.
Yeah.
The heads up display that's actually a string and then deep in the dash.
It looks exactly like the Y7.
They call it the.
Panoramic I drive system.
This this was actually like really good to in the Y7.
At first, I was a little bit skeptical.
I was like, I think I prefer just a regular ads of display.
But after a while, I kind of enjoyed it.
And it's something that everyone in the car can enjoy rather than just the driver too.
So it's pretty good.
It's about the same size as the Porsche Macan.
There's a new computer in there.
It's a 20 time faster than the current version in the X3 production.
We started later this year at the new plan in the brick and I don't know that one.
Delivery start in Europe early 2026.
And then in the summer, it's going to be in the US.
So actually, one car is going to be in the US starting price of 68
on basically 69,000 euros, 81,000 US.
But again, that's with the the VAT.
So I would assume that the US pricing
come down to probably closer to 60, so I would say,
starting price and then going up into the 80s with different models.
Oh, no, 55, they say, actually, in the US.
OK, so so this price is probably just for the
OK, if EX 30 ex 50 extra, OK, so that's the new version.
Again, I'm learning this at the same time as you guys.
Because I what do you think of that grill design?
It looks strange, doesn't it?
Yeah, the beaver teeth.
Yeah, they went in a weird direction with that.
Yeah, I mean, that's the they call it the liver grill BMW use.
I'm calling the beaver teeth.
They are I think they are a little bit thinner than they used to.
So even more pronounced.
Just maybe I don't mind it.
I don't know.
I can't. But let me let me see here for the US
because it's so the new IX three will be available in the summer.
Twenty six, OK, starting at around $60,000 with an estimated range of four and a
mile in early twenty to seven.
They will will launch the IX three 40 as drive in IX
three for for for the X drive.
So I think that's the smaller battery pack
real drive and then all will drive at a starting price of around
under $55,000 was slightly over 300 miles.
Well, that's that's really good.
So the base version basically is going to compete with the Model Y
and probably like a Model Y L kind of competitor and then go up from there.
And it's the birth you're going to launch around the same time.
So.
The speculator says the kidney is real, not livered.
Really, you're right.
I'm still working on it.
Absolutely.
Um, Audi Concept C.
So BMW came to Munich with an actual vehicle.
Audi came with a concept which, you know, we don't get too excited
about the electric when it's a concept vehicle.
However, there's some interesting things about this one, at least according to AutoCars.
This concept reportedly previews a potential electric
TT replacement sports car that is aimed for production as soon as 2027.
So this this concept called Concept C is is is also this also.
So that's AutoCars saying that this might be basically the upcoming TT
and based on the AutoCars information.
This the concept is pretty close to what they aim to bring to production.
Which is a nice little hard top sports coupé, you know, like the TT.
But that the overall design language, even Audi says that this is actually
where they're going right now.
So this Concept C, which kind of a bold, minimalist, that kind of ritual looking,
but also futuristic at the same time, which is always a good one.
You can when you can mix those both, like you can see like the the
retro influence on it while still look at it as like, oh, this is like a vehicle
of the future.
This is generally a good a good vibe that you want to have on a concept vehicle.
This might actually be what what future all these are going to look like.
I I particularly like the interior set.
Look at the interior here.
Some analog stuff, the screens are you can item, they're foldable
so you can get some kind of like real fully old school analog look to it.
While still enjoying the user interface that comes with touch screen
and screens in general.
But look, look at the door handle here.
Kind of like a June June vibe a little bit, I like it.
Yeah, and they say that this vision is like going to be their new
corporate and density as well.
So they are kind of they kind of try to embody and design their
corporate and density that's going to focus on clarity.
So and I kind of see it because the I like the other concept.
The concept is minimalist flair as some some soul to it.
But at the same time is just no thrill and the strong the the front end
is very strong, very aggressive, very grounded.
Yeah, I really enjoy it.
I hope they're actually going to make this too, because not just the
overall design getting into the Audi lineup, but the electric
sports car slash TT replacement itself, because there's not a lot of sports car
EVs.
I mean, there's some super cars and all that, but not not in the
TT price range.
And then also at the IA, Porsche on the field, induction charging that's
going to be released on the Cayenne set.
Yeah, so we've seen inductive chargers before.
This is probably one of those.
I can't really identify which one, but 11 kilowatts.
It's pretty fast.
It's a $5,000 option for the upcoming Cayenne.
And I think it's a $2,000 for the actual mat itself.
So 7000, sorry, 7000 euros total to get this capability.
One thing I, you know, I think about on these things is like, how
much loss is there?
And this they say it's 90% efficient.
So we're looking at, you know, like, I don't know, 12 point, whatever
kilowatts are going into this and 11 kilowatts are being actually
sent to the batteries.
So you're losing a little bit of energy, which is, you know, one
point, whatever kilowatts is not nothing.
That's a lot of juice, you know, for the convenience of not having
to, you know, you have to pull into the garage in the exact spot.
I assume the car is going to help you for that.
Yeah, they have this, you know, it's almost like a video game
heads up display.
If you scroll down a little bit, you can see the interface there.
Just a little bit further, you'll see it.
And it's yeah, it's not great, but there's a gallery at the
bottom. If you scroll down, you can see it.
Yeah, actually like, yeah, so not super, super easy or super
whatever. I mean, like, is plugging in a car that hard?
I don't know.
Maybe, you know, working on like a hanging car charger that
hangs over your carport or something would be a little bit
easier. I don't know.
A lot cheaper too.
And a little bit more efficient.
Not not cable charging is also not 100% efficient, but it's
closer to like 95 than 90 and that and that 5% difference,
like you said, at a pretty decent charge rate, like 11
kilowatts is significant.
You cannot, you have to take it into account.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I as an option, it's an option.
Yep.
Yeah, maybe you have accessibility issues.
Maybe that makes more sense for somebody like that.
Or, you know, maybe you have a fleet and you want to
grow, I don't know, I don't know if you have a fleet of
Cayans, you've got, you could just hire somebody to.
You can have a full-time attendant for your charge for it.
No, I agree.
Like, I do, I think it's good that it's an option and it's
going to probably, this is one of the first generation in an
actual production vehicle.
There was some third party, like aftermarket that you
can, you could install for a while.
I don't think it was really successful.
But to have it in production, on a production vehicle,
probably it's going to improve over time.
So that's good.
But right now, yeah, for 7,000 euros, it's very
expensive for not a ton of value added.
That's, that's how I see it.
All right.
So we're going to have a little bit of time to take
some questions.
I'm going to have to leave for the airport pretty soon.
But we just want to talk real quick about GM already
signaling that they're going to slow down production of
their electric vehicles in the US by quite a bit.
And that's obviously due because they know that the
tax credit is going away.
They know that demand is going to go down.
Even though EVs have been great for them this year,
they've been a good ramp up.
They say that according to an internal memo obtained by
routers, they're going to outproduction for two
Cadillac EVs, the Lyric and the Vistik during the
first five months of 2026, basically to reduce
inventory and then the plans to also suspends one of
its two shifts at the facility.
So there's going to be some, some layoffs,
unfortunately.
Then there's also the Kinza city, Fairfax assembly
plant, where they're going to produce the new bolt.
So the new bolts, so that's also a second shift.
Yeah, that's also the second shift going away there.
So before they even launched, the new bolt is
losing its second shift.
It's not, it's not a great look.
Yeah, I mean, obviously they see the men slowing down
with the tax rate going away and they want to get ahead
of that and not have it, you know, just not just
start building crazy inventory with very little
demand.
I do, like we've talked about this a lot, about
the impact of the tax rate that we do anticipate
quite a slowdown, especially in Q4, especially in
Q1, but I see EVs recovering in the U.S.
in the second half of 2026, even with Trump.
But it's going to take some effort.
So I do, I do like to see GM say, OK, we're just
doing that for the first half of 2026, then we're
going to reevaluate on a setting that that's a
fair and reasonable approach for them.
But I hope they are ready to turn it back up,
turn the faucet back up, you know, strongly.
Yeah, you know, Cadillac, when I visited them
for the Lyric drive, they were, they didn't
seem to think that the the tax credit going away
would be a huge burden for that particular brand
because a lot of their customers were making
more money than the tax credit would get anyway.
But here we are there.
Was that before the OPTIQ, though?
The OPTIQ is still pretty.
Yeah, the optics a little bit lower cost.
So yeah, I guess, you know, I don't think
escalate IQ buyers are going to be
you know, change, change their mm-hmm.
But yeah, the bolt thing is sad.
You know, obviously, I have a thing for the bolt
and I hope I hope that thing sells well,
even without the $7,500 tax credit.
Well, we need to see it first.
We need to see the specs, price and all that.
All right, let's go to the questions.
Porsche just announced supercharger access
for their customers.
I assume this includes the rest of the Volkswagen
auto group, too, is the last one.
So everyone is on board with Naxx.
I don't think that's everybody.
Audi announced today.
So Porsche and Audi, but I don't think
I've seen VW just yet.
Yeah, their software guys are a little bit slower
than the rest, I think, to be generous.
Hopefully it's software and not anything else.
Is it the last one?
I think pretty much, yeah.
Yeah, the big ones.
Another question.
Hyundai battery manufacturing plant in Georgia
just got raided by ICE.
Geez, that's was this retribution two for by the
Trump regime going after both EVs and immigrants?
I guess that is a two birds one stone move.
Basically sounds like it.
I mean, are they hiring?
You know, at the same time, ice is going
after everyone and everything.
They just they want numbers.
That's all they care about.
There's no human factor into it.
It's I don't think they would be surprised
if they were like, oh, nice, we're raiding
a battery factory screw EVs.
Like it's just they want to get they want
to get the brown people out.
All right.
Abundance is a ruse from people who can't do
emissions math is lazy analysis that ignores
all the massive challenges of achieving zero carbon,
which will include massive necessary austerity.
You cannot sell that.
The Fed doesn't sell.
Yeah, and I and I kind of feel like, you know,
we're at a point where adding additional energy,
clean energy in the form of nuclear
and solar and wind is just as inexpensive,
if not way less expensive than coal
or natural gas.
So, you know, from that standpoint,
I don't quite see the, you know, the massive challenge.
I think it's almost inherent
without our current administration.
Snow Mark says, so Mark Carney just put a permanent pause
on the EV mandate.
That's your I didn't see that go through.
But I mean, there's not the EV mandates
don't really matter anyway.
Like this idea like, are we going to stop
non-EV cells at a specific point?
Yeah.
You need to incentivize EV adoption,
but I've never been a big fan of mandates.
Anyway, yeah, I mean, there's been a giant slowdown
in EV cells in Canada because of the tariffs
on both sides on both the Chinese and the Americans.
So it's not feasible either
because we're not producing much EVs here in Canada.
So there needs to be a change of the approach.
Something has to break for EVs to pick back up again.
All right, Strong Finkel says,
wonder when these are everywhere.
Nice truck charging hub with 1.2 megawatt charging.
Today charged a truck at 728 kilowatts
and has 1.2 megawatt batteries.
Wow, what truck are we talking about here?
That's a pretty fast charge.
Although that would take what an hour and a half,
two hours to charge a 1.2 megawatt battery.
All right, Renault 5 Alpine A290 already beat VW
to the affordable and more sustainable EV punch.
Our bar two, two bad manufacturers suck
and won't focus on small in the USA.
Yeah, I think we're beating this drum
almost every week, Carl.
Like we would like to see smaller vehicles in the USA.
Unfortunately, I think we're in the minority,
but maybe somebody probably Chinese
or somebody not US will build a compelling small vehicle
that everybody wants.
The R5 is a VC.
We need to check it out.
We haven't been to Europe in a minute to check it out.
Oh, I'm going though.
By the way, that's it.
I'm not gonna say which one is,
but I'm going to Europe to check out a Kulivi next month.
I'm going to let you figure out which one it is,
but it's on the other side of the spectrum
from the price range wise as the R5,
but it's going to be pretty impressive.
Yeah, Volkswagen could make an effort
and like, let's put some money behind it
and just try to see if we can say,
not even the ID one life, whatever it's going to be called,
let's try to do the ID two Polo now in the US,
see if we can, because the US had a decent size
adgeback segment for a while,
so it could make a comeback.
I could see it make a comeback, I just don't know.
Yeah, and finally, yet another tech
that has the teased others deliver,
we're talking about the wireless charging
or induction charging.
Yeah, I almost forgot about that.
They said that we're going to do it
like two years ago, and then they never did.
It's all part of the pump and,
there's got to be a better word for it,
pump and forget about it or something.
All right, well, we did this pretty fast.
Sorry if it's not a long episode this week,
I need to go catch a plane and get to the airport
and try to be the traffic a little bit.
So next week, I should be back,
yeah, I'm traveling again next week,
but it's going to be in the first half of the week,
I'm going to go test out in electric ETV
in Wyoming and all places.
It should be fun, but I should be back home by Friday
to do the podcast regular time next week.
So thank you for tuning in and listening.
If you did enjoy the episode,
please give us a thumbs up, a like, a subscribe.
All those things are free to do
and they help the show more than you think.
And we're going to see you next week.
Have a good one, bye-bye.
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