Tesla Robotaxi grift, Volvo EX60 is a beast, Aptera in danger, and more

And we are live for an episode of the Electric Podcast. I am Fred, member of your host. And as

usual, I'm joined by Seth Wendrom. Are you doing this cold Friday, Seth? It's gonna be colder. I'm

doing well. Yes, for everyone that's listening right now, if you're listening live or if you're

listening after the fact this weekend, I hope you're safe out there. I hope you're staying warm.

And if you're brave enough to go outside, do it well equipped. It's gonna be a good one. It's

gonna be a fun one, a lot of snow. I mean, it's a fun one, but it's always fun here when you're in

Quebec and in Canada or even like you in the northern part of the US where you're, you know,

the government and the local municipalities and everything are well prepared for these events

because they happen often. But then when you see like Texas and like the Carolinas and places

like that, they get snow that they're not used to to see them freak out. It's a little bit funny,

even though it's not too funny because this one might be like a big enough one that some people

might actually die from this, unfortunately. What usually happens is weird stuff like people

start generators in their garage and then they kill themselves or they're in their car in their

garage trying to stay warm. Yeah, it's, uh, yeah, it's going to be crazy. Like minus 20 minus 30

stuff is coming. Like I'm Celsius, but when you get minus 20 or something, I think the

Fahrenheit's in Celsius gets closed. Like negative 14 or something.

That's anyway, all right, plenty to talk about this week on the electric podcast. We're going to

talk a bit about the little robot taxi updates and again is going on this week. There was a lot

of that going on, the autopilot being killed in the US and Canada just earlier today. We're going

to talk about the full unveil of the Volvo EX60. It's just a beast of an SUV from Volvo and Porsche

getting the plug in charge at Tesla Supercharger. We're going to talk about like EV Camper. That's

one thing and we're going to see that coming to production just yet, but a Hyundai is not

and they have some, some good base vehicle for it back in Korea. We're going to talk about sodium

iron cells. The Volkswagen ID4 gets a new name. Oh, that's smart. Peter didn't put it in your,

in the headlines. It's a clickbait, a little clickbait, a fun little clickbait. You click on it.

I'm going to have you to pronounce the name because I only know to pronounce it in, in, in

French and I'm pretty sure it's not the same. We're going to talk about that Terra and then

a little nugget about electric at the very end of it that we're going to discuss.

All right. So the big news this week regarding the robot taxi is that

the supervisor is gone. That's the big news. The supervisor is gone. So for those people,

remember, Elon said that the supervisor was only there for safety reason when the launch in June

is going to, they're going to be gone in the next few months. They want the passenger seat instead

of the driver's seat, by the way, for no reason whatsoever other than optics, because obviously

they would be a lot more efficient behind the wheel. But to make it look better, they put them

in the passenger seat with a finger on the kill switch. It's done just about outticks or whatever.

They were supposed to be gone in just a few months. They weren't. Then in early December,

Elon was like, by the end of the month, it's done. It wasn't. And, but now this week, only a few days

before their earnings are released, the, the announced a the, well, Elon announced that they

are removing the supervisors from inside the vehicle. Then what happened after that, a shock,

the head of self-driving robot taxi, all the autonomous stuff at Tesla

commented on it and it had a little bit more color to it that reveal a little bit of information.

They said that they are removing them from some vehicle for as a pilot for testing for a while,

which makes a lot more sense because a lot of people try to get a ride after the announcement

was made yesterday in one of those supervisor lessable taxis. And most of the people were just

getting into cars with someone in the passenger seats as usual. And then what we learned shortly

after is that they didn't remove the safety monitor completely. And Elon's announcement was

very specific about that, not to, you know, make him a liar as the, Elon is so good with this with

the words. So his exact words, remove safety monitors from inside, quoting inside the robot

taxi. What we found out is that now they're just behind the robot taxi. So all of these robot

taxis without safety monitors inside of them were spotted with training cars. So in this picture,

it's hard to see, but you actually see two robot taxis. There's another one right behind the first

one here. Red, you see just the quarter back of it. And then you see another training car right

behind it. And same from the one in front, you have a training car behind it. And a few people

that managed to get those rides and those driverless robot taxi are all confirmed that there was a

training car behind them all the way through the drive. So it just means that the kill switch

instead of being inside the car now is in the other car that the people are training it with

most likely monitoring of what's happening inside the vehicle as well. So yeah, it's

let me be clear, there's no reason to do that other than optics. Like if you're about safety,

I mean, they're really calling them safety monitor. Why are they just not behind the front wheel,

ready to take control if something happens? And then after a while, if there's no intervention

over millions of miles, then sure, go ahead, remove them. But why just keep moving them

further and further away from the steering wheel, the passenger seat, now a training car?

I asked people on Twitter yesterday, I asked them in the comment section of my article, I'm like,

give me a good reason for it other than optics, no one can come up with it.

Yeah, I mean, I guess Tesla's thinking might be that, all right, we're going to eventually have

these people in a call center. So we're going to just move them further and further away until

they get to the call center. Yeah, I mean, there's some, there's some technology behind that, like

I don't know even, so I don't know exactly what kind of technology they're using for the kiss switch

on this. The cars are staying fairly close to them, like never more than, you know, 100 feet or so.

So there is lag issues, the further you get, depending on the technology you use. So it's a

call center, maybe you're not ready for that. But but we know that that's true, because we know

that there's been like a bunch of patents and job listing related to tele operation of the

robot taxi. So but until you're ready for that, just keep them inside the car. It's just it makes

no sense to do anything else, especially you're not even allowing people to sit in the driver's

seat anyway. So you're not like removing a potential passenger from the equation. So

you were doing that when you were moving them to the passenger seat.

Right. So wait, the passenger seat can be used though, right?

It couldn't until now. Now I assume that in those ride, they could.

You know, this, it depends, like, because normally, I don't know if that's the case

with the taxi, it shouldn't be the case, because there's no one in the driver's seat anyway. But

if you if you take control of the wheel, it disengaged the self driving system. I've seen

like, when I was in China, some of these rubber taxis had the steering wheel blocked off completely,

like so that no one could just grab the wheel. So or play with the any of the buttons on the dash.

So that makes sense. Yeah, there's things like that that can make sense. But Tesla is not doing

that. So I don't know, like, maybe they could let someone in the steering in this in the

driver's seat and then deactivate the steering wheel. I don't know. Could be a possibility.

But yeah, my the bottom line on this is like, we know that FSD is improving.

We know that this is self driving technologies improving. But these things don't screen progress

to me. These screams just optics, these scream like, make it look like progress rather than

actual progress. This is still not sharing any data whatsoever on the intervention on the disengagement

of rubber taxi or FSD. I just feel that if Tesla was truly like, making like close to unsupervised

self driving, which is the impression that Elon has been cultivating for for for since 2016,

really, that says just on the verge we're so close, we're so close to it by the end of the

year by the end of the year, every year since like 2018, 2019. So it feels like it's about that

because if it was just about progress and safety, the safety monitor would be behind the steering

wheel. And Tesla would be releasing, you know, monthly, quarterly, whatever data about miles

driven on the robot taxi program miles driven on FSD intervention from drivers in FSD intervention

in the robot taxi. And I think I think there was this would be like great data towards progress

because sure, there is issue with disengagement and intervention with FSD and consumer vehicles

because everyone have different, you know, standards in terms of the quality of the driving

on FSD of their what what warrants a disengagement or intervention. But you could compare that then

to the robot taxi where it's Tesla's own requirements for that with their employees that

are the safety monitors. So we could get a great idea of the progress. But this is just not what

this day is doing. This day is just trying to maintain this illusion of leadership in autonomy

while other companies are just running with it, such as Waymo, we just announced this week,

starting commercial rides in Miami. Yeah. So that's like a six city now. And the plan to release

10 more I think in the US this year. So they are scaling fast. And I think I think it's

worrying Tesla at this point, because it's harder and harder to maintain this idea that Tesla is

just leading in autonomy. And I know like the the the old framing of it is like as soon as Tesla

has solved, you know, vision only self driving, and it's going to scale super fast, but there's

just no evidence of that other than wishful thinking. And sure, the cost is lower than Waymo,

but not that much lower than Waymo. And and if it's not working, it's like, why, why would you

assume that it's going to scale so much faster? It makes no sense to me. It just doesn't.

All right. And then the other thing that on the me for Tesla this week is the autopilot. That's

what we learned this week on Tesla configured to this morning, it happened last night was sleeping.

The autopilot has been removed from the model, all the lineup, basically the base, you need to buy

FSD to get lane keeping. That's the main changer to be clear, because they kept traffic aware cruise

control, presumably just because there's no this doesn't have a regular cruise control and didn't

want to develop one for this. So they're like, all right, we kind of have to sorry, keep traffic

aware cruise control because we cannot deliver a car without cruise control. But we can deliver

apparently a car without lane keeping, which is insane, because like, you know, you buy an entry

level Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, whatever these days, and it's going to have lane keeping standard

because it's arguably now becoming a safety feature rather than a convenience feature.

You know, it's arguable depends who you have, but a lot of people consider it a safety feature at

this point. So yeah, removing it from the standard like, now it's not autopilot anymore.

Autopilot doesn't exist basically, because it's just traffic or cruise control standard.

And then if you want any kind of lane keeping, you have to buy FSD, which obviously you get a

lot more than lane keeping, but you do get lane keeping on the highway like autopilot would

basically before the context of that change is what's important right now because it happens just

has Tesla is moving to a subscription only for FSD in just a few weeks at this point, just three,

three, four weeks from now on February 14. So it's creating some sort of urgency now that if

you want, you cannot even get autopilot right now in your car. If you take delivery right now,

it's either you subscribe to FSD for $100 a month, or you buy an $8,000 package before February 14.

It's yeah, it's a bit nuts. It's very aggressive. It's to me, it feels like Tesla needs some money

right now needs some money in Q1, because the quarter is not looking good. And that helps boost

that. But then the other the other idea too is like, after February 14, where now you don't have

access to the package, you just have access to the subscription, it's going to boost subscription now

because a lot of people are going to want to have lane keeping in the car. And now your only way to

get that is to pay $100 a month to Tesla, which you know, I don't I don't think a lot of people

is going to do that just when I'm keeping Tesla is going to keep trying to sell you FSD as hard as

they can, which which has been hard. That's that's the thing like as good as FSD is as a level two

system, not a lot of people are ready to pay $8,000 or $100 a month to to get it. You don't

want to be the argument is always like $100 a month for I think your private chauffeur, that's a deal

is like, you don't have to look over the shoulder of your private chauffeur, when you're when you're

driving them, they're only driving you, you go to sleep, you go, yeah, or you do something else,

you look at your emails. This is also like, like, you know, if you're getting a test,

test a Model 3 or Model Y, and you used to have autopilot, like that that was part of the package

that was part of, you know, you pay 40, whatever $1,000, like that's what a $40,000 car gets you

these days, like you get lane keeping and stuff, like if you buy a Volvo, if you buy, you know,

another Tesla level car, even, you know, Ford's and Chevy's have that Tesla will not have that

now. You will buy a Tesla Model 3 Model Y. And unless you pay $100 a month, you get like,

you even get cruise control. Yeah, traffic aware cruise control, that's the only thing you get.

It's, yeah, it's making the car worse. It's not it's not going the right direction,

it's going in the wrong direction. It makes no sense. And yeah, some people argue that,

you know, with Elon's new compensation package, he needs to get to 10 million subscribers of

FSD, and that's, that's part of it is like, maybe, like, I know Elon is quite delusional,

I don't know if it's like, it's not gonna happen anytime soon, like Tesla barely has,

he's close to have 10 million vehicles on the road right now. Some of them don't have the capacity

to have FSD. So, you know, let's say closer to 9 million vehicles, I think probably

at best right now, 15% of them are FSD. So you're really far from that. I don't think that's

what gets you there. The only thing that's going to get Tesla there is if it becomes unsupervised,

because in his comments announcing this to Elon said it, that the real value creation comes from

being unsupervised, being on your phone, going to sleep for the whole drive, he's right about that,

which it's sort of contradicts this approach of, you know, revenue recognition on the $8,000

package when you pre buy it, because if you pay $8,000 for FSD right now, I would argue that

$7,990 of that package, the value is would be in delivering on supervised self driving,

which is not right now. So it makes no sense to me like it's just it clearly is a griff. Yep.

All right, let's move to something that's not a griff. The Volvo EX60 was fully unveiled this

week. We talked about it last week a little bit because they were, you know, just dripping like

letting us know a little bit of specs ahead of time. But now we have the whole thing

with pictures and everything. And it's looking good. We have 100, well, two packs, it starts at

83 kilowatt hour pack, which reportedly gets 310 miles of range, which is good because this is not

like a small SUV, it's like a decent size SUV here. And then you have the 117 kilowatt hour

batch pack, which is now on the other way around huge for vehicle of that size. And

and that gives you 400 miles of range, which is currently if I'm wrong said, but they are

aiming for an EPA range on that, right? Yeah. Yeah, this is kind of a lucid kind of level of range

here. Getting close to it at least. The charging is great, too, with on 400 kilowatt 800 volt charger,

you get 173 miles of range in just 10 minutes. Of course, I would like to see the charging curve,

too, but it's great. I think we're starting to see like a new level from the legacy automakers,

like especially the Europeans. We saw the Mercedes CLCLA. That's 400 miles is 400 miles.

That's like the new, the new thing. Yeah, to be honest, I think that's the Chinese and obviously

Volvo owned by the Chinese too. But in Europe, Mercedes getting pressure from Chinese automakers

coming into the European market. In China, they have 1000 kilowatt charging now on on passenger

vehicles. So of course, like this, this breeds the competition like this. And obviously,

Volvo is in a different location, different situation, because it's an European automaker,

but Chinese owners with Chinese production. So it's a little bit messier, but Mercedes,

like you said, is a good example. I think we don't see that as much from American automakers,

even though I think there's technology improvement here, like from Tesla,

Lucid and Rivian, but from the legacy automakers, you just don't see it as much.

So you get some comparison here on the, so between the EX-60 and EX-90,

it's about 10 inches of length difference show four inches in height, three inches in width.

You lose just over an inch in long currents, but much bigger than EX-40 though. So you

like 15 inches longer, not taller though. Yeah, that's what we're seeing. It's like,

it gives me almost a wagon vibe here, a station wagon vibe.

I like it. Yeah, love it. What else? What else? What else? So you have different

trims of it. The P12 trim is going to choose 0 to 16, 3.8. Although, wait to,

yeah, it's very good for an SUV all the way to 5.7 seconds for the P6.

Yeah, pretty good too. The interior, you get a nice Volvo interior. I mean, Volvo

for a long time, very impressed with their interior.

You know, I have to say, one thing I really like is the bigger screen. One of the problems with the

the EX-30 was the screen was really small, you know, portrait screen. This looks like it's

much, much bigger. Yeah. So you have a Tesla style giant horizontal screen in the middle,

but you still get an instrument cluster. And I like these instrument cluster that are further

out. It's like, it's not a heads up display, but it's not like a in your face tiny instrument

cluster that you get in some of these cars these days. It's actually very useful. It's,

you just, you see it, you see the difference here a little bit. It's, it's really further out.

So does this thing have a third row option? Oh, it would be a tight third row.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think, I think you go for the EX-90 if you want that.

Yeah. You don't mention it. What else they mentioned? Oh, they mentioned you get an

orange and video orange chip on this. You get Google Jim and I built in. That's nice.

I said, I was, I was driving back today. Just reminded me I was driving back from,

I just got an electric TV for review. You know, I was driving back in my Tesla and

I said something. I don't remember what I said, but like I, I reacted to something that I saw on

the road, like someone being an idiot on the road or something. And then Grock responded to me.

What did it say? I don't remember. I was too shocked. I was like, I didn't say A Grock or anything

like that. They just said, they just responded to me. And then I asked them, I'm like, what, how,

how did you get triggered right now to, to, to answer? And I said, I'm always listening. I'm

like, what, where, like, I need to change these options. You know, like it's okay if I say A

Grock and then you start listening, but, well, I guess you're already listening, but you're only

listening for A Grock. And then I had a whole conversation with Grock about, okay, do you

listen to everything? Do you get the information, the Tesla get the information? And I need to do

a little research on this set because they told me that Tesla get all the information.

And the, and apparently they get all the data, all the talk, they just say it's anonymized.

It's anonymized. Yeah. Anyway, let's go back. I think a skeptic who commented at 405

got the same Can-Am Outlander. Is that what you got? Oh, yeah. Electric. Yeah, the electric one.

Yeah, skeptic at 405 said he got the same one. Nice. Yeah. I just, I tested it in Wyoming a

few months ago and I was really impressed. But now I'm getting it in the snow for the first

time. So I'm looking forward to that. All right. What else did Jamie tell us about? Oh, well, let's

look at it in white here. Damn. I think there's an off road. Yeah. All right. Cross country. Yeah.

Okay. Damn. It looks good. Yeah. Look at that. Yeah. I didn't look at all these pictures.

I don't think the off road one's going to get the mileage, the 400 miles. No, no, no,

you lose a lot of ground clearance. You see it. It doesn't look like a wagon at all anymore. Look

at this thing. This thing looks like a full SUV and this, then you look at this and it's like,

hey, is that a wagon? Yeah, it looks like it's got some more ground clearance as well. Yeah.

So in terms of pricing, so they're just talking about $60,000 right now. That's what they're

talking about. I think that's the base price, but they said they're really well equipped around

$60,000. So I don't know if it's the standard is really well equipped or if it starts lower,

but if you equip it really well, it's around $60,000. That's not clear.

And they said the P10 trim, so the P10 trim, that's the middle one. It's not the highest

version one, but it's not the smallest one. 21 bolt speaker, 15-inch curve OLED. It's curved.

Does it need to be curved? Yeah, that doesn't seem helpful. Is it curved the other way around?

Like right now I have a display that's curved in front of me, but it's like a 48-inch display.

Yeah, I wonder if it's curved toward the driver. Yeah, the other way because for the two passengers

it makes no sense to me. Anyway, I need to see it. 360 camera, large parametric roof,

20-inch five-spoke diamond cut wheels, pilot assist, standard? Wow, such an innovative company.

Trees on climate control, metallic paint, active suspension, 19.2 kilowatts on board charger.

Man, this thing's a beast. It's pretty good. Yeah, $60,000. Like what I said, I think

Model Y is going to stay the best selling electric car in the world for a bit. No doubt about it.

It's just too far ahead, but I think as a profit center for Tesla, it's going to be rough now

because at the higher hand, at the very profitable end of the range of the Model Y,

there's just so much good things coming out right now. The EX60, which I'm sure is a little bit

bigger too than the Model Y. So it's not exactly the comparison, but the iX3 from BMW, the GLC

from Mercedes, the Rivian R2 coming out, all these things are just going to devour the customer base

for Tesla of the fully equipped Model Y, long range, dual motor, and the performance version.

I can see it as clear as day. It's not wishful thinking. It's not I'm not a Tesla eater. It's

facts. Look at all these incredible cars coming out.

All right, moving on from Porsche. You wrote this this week, said nice little development for

plug and charge combined with Tesla supercharging. Yeah, so the final form of all electric vehicles

is going to be you just plug in a charger. The charger is all going to be connected to the internet.

It'll do the handshake and the credit card transaction or whatever. That all can happen

behind the scenes. This like, you know, entering your credit card number or getting an app, all that

stuff that's just silly. Too many. There's too many of them. Yeah, we have the technology plug and

charges the way to go. Tesla uses it. Everybody else uses it. Just got to get, you know, like get

the coders to do the stuff and the testing and getting it all going. But Porsche, like now, or

you know, as soon as this is live, owners that the the 2026 Taycan and the Macan owners are going

to just be able to go to Teslas and plug in now. They don't have Naxx ports. So you got to plug

and then plug in charge. So it's an extra plug in charge. But, you know, they don't have to do any

you know, apps, you know, Tesla app or whatever. And some of these have credit card things.

Don't have to do that either. And Porsche was early on the Electrify America plug and charge.

So Porsche owners, you know, who are used to getting spoiled a little bit,

can go to probably more charging stations than anybody else and just plug in and charge,

which is nice. And they also have an agreement with ChargePoint as well. So

pretty easy for Porsche owners now to just plug their car in and charge. But that's where we're

all going to land at one point or another. Yeah, like most things, like now it's a premium feature

for luxury auto maker like Porsche. But I think it's not, there's no real significant cost to it.

So might as well just make it standard because especially Tesla owners, that's been the standard

forever now. So yeah, unless they go to like, you know, have to go to an Electrify America or

yeah, that's the thing. So now it's just not just super charger, but for everyone. Yeah, that's

great. Yeah, I got a little bit curious when I saw this thing this week. So I mean, we've

need one of those electric campers for a while now. It just makes so much sense. You just go to

a camping grounds, they already have charging there, you just plug in, you charge overnight,

and then, you know, you go especially with these kinds of vans here that are like somewhat aerodynamic

and you can get, you know, I don't know about this one specifically, but technically in that form

factor, you could get 300, 400 miles of range in a vehicle. You know, you do that, you do like

200 miles in the morning, you go, you charge for lunch, and then you go 200 miles and 250 miles,

whatever, you're 400, 500 miles away in your destination in one day. And then you can camp

in there and just go back and just make so much sense. Yeah, and I love that they put solar on

there as well. And I'm sure they didn't put enough solar to have like, whatever, but you got that

huge battery, so you're going to be fine for a while. And, you know, I did a story on a Tesla

mattress, like basically a, you know, an inflatable mattress that you put in the back of the Model

Y. I think I sold like, I don't know, 700 of them or something. Like people really like camping in

their electric vehicles because- And that's not a, like, it's another bad camping situation,

but not as good as this obviously. Yeah. Yeah, totally different ballgame, but like,

it just shows people like, especially, you know, you're going cross country, you want to pay,

you know, $120, $150 for a hotel when you're just crashing out. It just like, this is, I mean,

that's a different experience than this, but like sleeping in your car is a great experience. And

like this has a kitchen and everything and sleeping up top as well. Yeah, this is based on

the Staria electric. So it's the very popular van, electric van from Hyundai. When I was in

Korea last year, I saw a bunch of them and it gets 249 miles of range, 400 kilometers on the WLTP.

So, you know, closer to 200 miles really. But this has a 800 volt system. So it's as fast, 10 to 80

percent in 20 minutes DC fast charging. The, you know, 160, 215 horsepower motor. You can still use

it as a three row van basically, but you can fold everything down to, to get like a giant bed out

of it. Like it's a pretty long bed. And with that, let's say the push of a button up or anything. Oh,

no, that's the roof at the push of a button. Okay. Then you get the roof, you get the sleeping on a

roof like you just mentioned. What else you get? 520 watts solar panel on top. Not bad. Not bad.

What you need. So 2.6 kilowatt hour or five hours. But like you said,

you already have a big battery pack in there. So you can actually use the battery pack on this. But

technically, if you use less than 2.6 kilowatt hour of energy while your park, like so if you

stand and like spend a few days somewhere and you get good light coverage, sunlight coverage,

you can run a lot of things with 2.6 kilowatt hour.

Yep. Including like climate control and stuff.

Yeah, exactly. I just don't know why we don't have any electric RV options here. I mean,

some company did a bright drop one, which bright drop bands are really on the aerodynamic.

But it, you know, I really don't have the van. If people need to come in with the vans and then

after that, like the vans get popular and then you, that's what happened with this. But let me be,

let me be fair though. First thing because I just read this year. So it's a concept right now and

it's on the evaluation. So this year, they're going to decide whether to move this to production or

not. So let me be the first to say, yeah, Hyundai bring this to production. This looks cool as hell.

There's a little outside shower too. There you go, man. Make this, Hyundai just makes a ton of

sense. And obviously Volkswagen should have made their ID buzz into this as well, obviously.

You know what, you know what, if it's complicated and everything to bring this to,

to bring the van to America is like, bring, when you launch it in North America,

launch it with this. Say right away, like this is an option. Like we launched the van,

it's going to be like an expensive product. It's kind of a luxury van, but it's close to that.

So like if it starts at like $60,000, $70,000 fine, like, by the way, you can put the camper

with it too. And people will buy this for like $90,000. I bet like it's just at first, at least.

So it makes sense. Do it. For sure.

All right. Moving on, we have CATL that confirmed that in the Q2, yeah, Q2 in the second quarter

of this year, they're going to put their new sodium batteries. So sodium is the next generation

batteries that a lot of people are hyped about. It's divest a little bit from lithium,

which is getting expensive set. I was, I track lead some prices because I have a few investment

in lead some companies. And I didn't look it up today, but yep. So today, 171,000 per Chinese

yen per ton, which is the highest it's been since 2023. And it's

triple since it's low, more than triple since it's low of 2025. So in the last six months,

it tripled in prices. Like even if you're way down from the crazy times in 2021 and 2022,

it's still not a great because it's not stable. So it's hard to, it's hard to get like

stable pricing out of it. But yeah, now sodium is the next thing. And CATL is the leader right

now in that because they have a production production right now. And it's going to go in the

JC iron model. So I've seen plenty of these. This is a very popular model in China. I saw them

everywhere. It's like an entry level vehicle. They're going to start with a small 45 kilowatt

hour pack in that. Talking about all capacity of operation between minus 30, minus

okay, even at minus 30, minus 40, what I mentioned, but okay, the charging, okay, you can still

maintain its charging at minus 30 Celsius minus 20 Fahrenheit. And it maintains its usable capacity

at minus 40 minus 40 Celsius, which is the same minus 40 Fahrenheit. So that's what we were talking

about earlier. It's that minus 40 that they joined back together. It's still retained 90% of its

usable capacity. So that's that's great because everyone knows that minus 40 Celsius of the

Fahrenheit in like a Tesla, you're going to lose lose probably 50% of your capacity, 40% maybe at

best. So mass production is going to start this July, but the production batteries are already

going to be in the car in Q2. So I'm going to keep an eye on that because that that might be like

the new big trends and batteries. And then actually, you're just like LFP took over in China.

This might be the next thing that brings the next wave. Alright, we have three more news

items to discuss. It's going to go quickly because it's not big news. So after that, we can take

you guys comments. So if you're listening live right now on Facebook, on YouTube, on X, on Lincoln,

you can put your comment in your comment section right now, can be a question, it can be, you know,

a topic that you want your thoughts about. And we're going to get to it in just a few minutes.

Alright, the Volkswagen ID for is being renamed. How do you name that set? Where's the name?

He goes way down. Oh, really? Oh, sneaky sneaky Peter, sneaky Peter.

All right. Okay, they still retain the ID. But now it's the ID. How do you pronounce that in

English? Tiguan, I think. Tiguan. In French, it's iguan. Yeah, so Tiguan is, you know, it's a popular

SUV and an old combustion engine SUV in the VW lineup. But the ID for was kind of the electric

version of it. And now instead of being the ID for it's going to be renamed the Tiguan. So they are

losing the numerical ID naming scheme. It's going to debut with the 2026. No, at the end of 2026,

so not the model year 2026, but at the end of the year, so probably the 2027 model year in the U.S.

and Europe. For a long time, it's been like the main like the flagship in world's well known VW

Tiguan, Taiwan, not Taiwan. All right, we had an update on Apptera this morning, not a good one,

not a good one. They've been public for a few now. And we always said that it was not super on

board with the going public move before revenue and things like that. And I know it happens. I

know sometimes you just, it's your last resort. But speaking of last resort, the public offering

that was announced this morning does sound like the last resort. So for those who are not aware,

when you offer a public offering below the last closing price of your stock and well below,

in this case, like 20% below, it closed at $202.41 yesterday. And they announced a public offering

of $4.5 million shares, so $9 million at $2 a year. That's just not a great news because you're

kind of you're selling the company for less than people are trading it on the public market right

now is just never a good look. It means one thing. It means we are willing to give a giant

discount or an evaluation right now to get money. So it means we need money right now. So never a

good look. And $9 million is just not that much when you're trying to build to bring

an electric vehicle to market. Not impossible. I'm not saying this is the end, but this is

just cream after is having issues. And I'm not surprised because they talked about the $60

million potential investment with US capital global when they went public. And it's just never

could never seem to have materialized. So now the stock is also trading below at least it was

when I reported this this morning like below $2. So it feels like people are just like are not

convinced about this round at all. There's also warrants that come with this investment. So if

they decide to to exercise all of them, it would be $18 million and potential potential investment,

which is better, which is like, I could see them making some very low,

low volume production with that. But yeah, it's I wish them the best. I love the product. I love

the idea of line of product on a super efficient vehicle. But I'm getting less and less confident

about them getting to production, even though they are, you know, they have production in 10

vehicles right now. Alright, lastly, before we jump into the comment section, we have some

electric news this week, we launch our forums, we got some nice whole school forums on electric.

You know, if you're tired of social media, and want or want to expand the conversation in the

electric comments article, article comments, you can do that in the forums right now. And

it's pretty cool. So for those people don't know, we're just like, so I know some people are like

mainly like podcast listeners, and they don't actually read our content. So if, if you don't

know, we are mainly a written blog, like we are a news site for electric vehicles and reviews and

all that. And, and yeah, we, we have one of the most active comment section of any news site,

any tech news site, like, it's not rare that you're going to see an article with 200 300

comments on them. So we felt like it would be good to expand this, these discussions into a more

formatted forum style. So if I click on this, I have to share this tab instead.

So you can take a look here at the forums. This is not the best look. Let me go a little bit

wider here too. So this is right there. Okay, maybe we should create a thing for the podcast

so we can get questions all week long. Oh, that's a good idea. So we need to do that right now.

All right, so we're going to have a podcast in the community section. So we have a community

section in the community section where you had podcasts and you guys if you, I wish these,

these two morons of electric would discuss that during the podcast this week, but you

don't want to join live. You could put that right in there. That's smart. We'll do that.

But there's plenty of other discussions. So there's discussion between like kind of electric

vehicles, specific brands that you want to discuss. You have micro micro mobility with e-bikes,

motorcycles, stuff like that. You have a clean energy discussion. So we just launched it this

week. So it's a little soft lunch, but there's already plenty of discussions going on here.

I see eight minutes ago we talked about the app for reading battery voltage. There's a bunch of

already interesting discussion that you guys can jump in and you are all welcome to also start

your own threads on this and talk about whatever you want with like-minded people that are passionate

about electric vehicle and renewable energy. So I think that's pretty cool. So it's electric.co

forums, forums with an S or you can just go on the electric main page and you can see at the top,

I put the electric forums right there. All right. Now let's jump into the comment section.

All right. At the beginning, we were talking about Texas probably going out of power again

and hopefully nobody dying by using a generator or their car in the garage. I was going to get to

this, but this is kind of why power walls are nice to have. And of course, I'm sure Tesla and

other battery makers will step up their advertising as soon as they start.

You should do actually, if you're one of these power wall or own battery pack user,

you know, if you're the only, if you people use power in your neighborhood and you're the only

one with power, you just put all your lights on and you go outside and then you take a nice picture

of your dead neighborhood with your lights on and then you sell that to these companies for more

Yeah. My neighbor just got an eco flow. So I have Tesla power walls, but my neighbor got

an eco flow that he really likes. Like a small one or an installed one, like a hard wired one.

It's a hardwired one. It's smart. So, you know, it flips on and off just like a power wall, but

it allows you to like turn, like special, like if, you know, for instance, you want to keep

your fridge going, but you don't care about, you know, some other stuff, it allows you to

with the app, which things you want to go. So it includes a smart switch system.

Yeah. And then the batteries are modular. So you can buy a battery and buy another battery and

whatever you want. So that's kind of cool. Yeah.

All right. Moving on. I'm looking forward to maybe buying a Volvo EX-16 a few years. I would

have bought an EX-30 if Biden hadn't screwed it up with the Chinese tariffs. Yeah. I mean,

you could also say Volvo could have made that thing in South Carolina, like they made it in

Brussels. I don't know why. I mean, you know, Biden, I don't know if he was trying to do that or not.

Skeptic says, oh yeah, this is a K&M Outlander. I think you're going to have something similar,

Fred, for review. Yeah, it's the exact one. So the Outlander Electric is the only electric

production ATV that I know of. And like in the actual, like, you know, real ATV, it's not like

a toy. Right. You know, the Outlander is also a gas-powered ATV that they have. So that's an

electric version of it. It's basically the same thing with electric. It doesn't have the biggest

battery in the world. It's kind of like a 10 kilowatt hour battery and like a very limited

range. But it's meant to be like a work ATV. And so you don't really need that much range with a

work ATV. And I already tried it, wrote an article for it. A few months ago, I went to Wyoming.

To Wyoming? Yeah. Jackson Hole is Wyoming. Yeah, Jackson Hole was Wyoming. I went to Wyoming to

test it out. And I really loved it. I think it's a great vehicle, not curious to test it in the

winter, in the snow. Because it was like 96% earlier and they were showing me 26 km of ratio.

But I know they were being conservative and I know that's a real 26. I'm not going to go

26 km on it anyway. There is a nice ATV trail not too far from my house. So I can actually get

some decent distance with it without having to go on the road, which you're not allowed to where I'm

at. But even then, I can do the whole trail. It won't be 26 km. All right. Oh, you know what?

Also, doesn't Polaris have like, didn't they have a thing with zero motorcycles? So they did

not an ATV. They did one of those like little cars. Yeah, the Polaris has the, it's a UTV,

the Ranger. Yeah, the Ranger thing. Yeah. Yeah, that was using the zero. It wasn't a big powertrain,

I think not that. I went to a place, to a dealership to get the review unit delivered.

And that place was insane. It was its giant dealer of just fun stuff like Seedoo's and

UTVs and, you know, snowmobiles and ATVs and all that. And the Can-Am UTVs that they had,

it were basically full-size pickup truck UTVs. They were crazy these days. I can't wait for

these to be electric. It's back, you know, Nicola used to work on one. Yeah, right. Which was

insane. It never made it because, you know, Nicola was kind of a bullshit company. But

it was like, I did ride in that. They didn't let me drive. And it was a ton of fun.

Yeah, they should have stuck with that thing. Yeah, probably, you know, didn't need to roll

it down the hill when we tried. Instead of going to jail. Yeah. So, yeah, Skeptic notes that the

forums need a little tweaks. Yeah, we're still working on that thing a little bit. Our partner

OpenWeb, which also does our comments, is working hard on that. So those improve.

A removable autopilot has to be one of the dumbest moves in Tesla history.

And there's no reason to recommend a Tesla anymore.

Yep. I wouldn't, yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Baby steps nerds. It will all come with time. We are careful. This is progress. Even if you

don't know it, you're not smart enough to perceive it yet. Like moving an hour hand of a clock.

All right.

Sounds like you're on X right now. That's the kind of comments. It's like,

you just have to believe, man, it's progress. It's like, they're just testing. Way more used to do

that. That's the thing you always hear, like way more used to have supervisor. No, not in

commercial operation. That's the difference. Tesla is in commercial operation right now.

People that tried it yesterday were actually paying for those rides. And yeah, it's

the only question you need to, when people do what I didn't see the guy's name there,

but when people do that, what the dime bag, Darren coins,

the only one question you have to ask, why the safety monitor is not in the driver's seat?

Why is it in the passenger seat or in a trading car? Why? That's the only reason you need to ask.

And the only answer to that question is like, optics. So even if there is progress, and I know

there is, I know that like, even though it's like with two step forward, one step backward type of

development with these, you know, neural net based autonomous system, I know that over like

months, Tesla is definitely progressing. My actual argument is that these, you know,

shenanigans, these, these, these deceptions actually hide real progress. If there was real

progress, you would get the actual data. But that's not what you get. Instead,

you get these, these deception about, yeah, we're ruining the supervisor, you're not,

you're not removing it. So why isn't the answer safety that it's, are you, are you, are your

argument is that you're increasing safety by getting the supervisor further and further away

from the driver's seat? That's the contrary. There's no, if it was about safety, the supervisor

would be the driver's seat. It's not, it's not about data collection. There's, there's no actual

safety or tech benefit to moving the safety monitor away from the driver's seat. There's none.

Simple as that. All right. So for these today, when driving downtown that they're tailing so close

behind the robot taxi that there's no way they, there aren't additional accidents.

There's going to be accident between the, the robot taxi and the trailing, you know,

safety monitor car. It's, it's dumb. Just, just put the guy in the driver's seat.

You know what they should do? I have a better idea, friend. They get a trailer.

Or they just, you know, they get a, a, yeah, yeah, a trailer or you get someone on top of

the vehicle. Like you're not inside the car. You're on top of it with your laptop and your

kill switch. Yeah. It's just, it's cartoonish. It's, uh, and, and Tesla was not forecoming

about this information by the way, but it's not like, yeah, well, there's no safety monitor inside

the vehicle anymore. We go in, uh, look at what's trading behind. They just, they just announced

this right before the earnings and like, Hey, we just made great progress. It's like, did you,

did your intervention rate go down? Did your, uh, did your disengagement like what, what,

no, no, it's just like we removed it and we put it in the car behind it. It's so dumb. It's just,

agree. All right. Uh, moving on. Uh, yeah, we saw that a certain, uh, Alex Roy, uh, said he drove,

uh, Tesla cross country, but I don't know. Don't know. Yeah. I don't, I don't get excited about,

about these, these things anymore. Like the only thing that could get me excited about, uh, Tesla

FSD and autonomy right now, there's two things either the straight up, you know, take responsibility

for it and make it unsupervised, uh, with, with, I'm talking about consumer vehicles here,

something they've, you know, promised and sold to customers for coming on 10 years now.

So there's that. So actually fulfilling the promise that would be kudos Tesla, you know,

you know, years late, but at least you did it. It's, it's, it's great. If they can prove it's

safer to humans, obviously do it and then, you know, free fall. So that and the other one is like,

share third party verified data about your disengagement and your termination rate

and, and show a clear improvement between them over time.

That's it. Those are the two only things that get me excited about it.

All right. Move on. FSD just went coast to coast. Yeah, we talked about that.

Coin guy. All right. Sorry about that. Let's move on. Wow. We've got a lot of comments. All right.

Here we go. With more charge point operators offering Nax connections, Tesla can start to

charge a monthly subscription for the right to use the supercharger network. So monthly

subscription rather than a, um, you know, per usage fee. I don't think that would be popular.

Although, no, you just, you want to pay for, for what you use. It just makes sense.

Yeah. And people don't typically use the superchargers on a, you know, daily or weekly basis

for a long. Oh, that's a good launch. I don't know if they're still doing that. I never,

I never follow up on this, but I know that back in the day, when they started open on the super

charger to third party EVs, the, um, you know, there was a price, I know there's still a price

for Tesla owners and a price for Nantes owners, but they also release a subscription service for

Nantes owners to get the same price as this owner. So if you do pay, but, you know, it's

kind of, I don't like that either because then you have to make them do the math is like,

how often do I use a supercharger is like when, at what point does it make sense for me to have

a subscription? It's like, just, you know, sell it to me with a reasonable gross margin. And that's

don't need to make things complicated.

All right. This is a confusing one. I'd change Juniper to this working wipers, no doubt.

Oh, I think EX 60, which is Juniper or Y. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, not a bad deal,

especially if you're not a FSD person, like if you, if you, if you were just wanting like an

autopilot, you get, although it has an autopilot, they don't have FSD, but I have as autopilot.

So if you wanted that, like it's going to be a little bit more expensive than a Juniper though.

Yeah. So I got a Mercedes EQS to 2023. It has media, I would call it like kind of autopilot

works, works enough. It's more like I keep your hands on it. But it's so close to

FSD that I don't feel like I'm losing anything, especially because my model Y is 2020. So

hardware three and 12.0. All right. Question. Why isn't anyone in the U.S. reported that

Ken Power had their winter day event in Denmark where they charged Volvo,

Windows and B Actros with max power over one megawatt. So

megawatt charging stations are here for real. I believe this is our Ken Power

representative. No, I think that was another name for that was like, but I mean, again,

Ken Power, great, great tech, great product they have. And megawatt charging demonstration is

nothing new really. We've seen that quite a few times now. So yeah, so that's why it didn't get

a lot of media coverage from us or I would assume from most other. Yeah, send it to a

tip at electric.co if you want to. Yeah, especially this is a Volvo when rose like Joe Joe might be

like Joe no more about EV stuff or commercial trucking. So maybe you'll get interested in it

and report on it. But we'll see. All right, Dan overseas has kind of a controversial thing,

which I don't believe in. Hyundai needs to put a small toilet in that. I'd rather have somewhere

to go to the bathroom at night inside an indoor kitchen. Don't like don't like the indoor.

No, I had a we traveled Europe in a camper and they had like a suitcase you would pull out with

the, you know, the toilet stuff. And I told the family like, you're not going to use that. We're

four years ago, five years ago. Yeah, I know they're getting better. I know that like some people

tell me about it, like they know about the composting toilet and all that. I mean,

I bring you some I use one that was actually very good in Sweden. Oh, yeah, we were doing

Polestar ice driving. So we were in the middle of the ice and nowhere and they put a little hot

for us. And they put one of those composting toilet on it. And it was actually a very nice

toilet like decent could do a number two on it. And it wouldn't be too bad. So

yeah, it's okay. So if they could do that and then turn it into something that you can just like

let go on the road, then I'm sold. Yeah, yeah. But if I have to do that thing in any way, yeah,

I don't want to, I don't think it was a combustion to other because combustion to other was no,

you need that. But you also need like you need space to like you need privacy in there. So yeah,

I don't think you get that space and I'm much space in that kind of camper, you need a bigger

camper like, you know, these custom ones that they do on the on the Daimler on the Daimler vans.

I mean, you could just yeah. And of course, bring it to the US. We agree with you on that.

We're not going to dime back. You don't have electric RVs because they're expensive as hell

and really rich people don't camp. Hmm. I don't I disagree. Yeah, for sure that most people that

buy like trailers, I like buy like very cheap ones like you know, $20,000, $15,000 ones. That's

true. That's a bigger market. But a lot of people love camping. You know, you see these

giant RVs and there's a market for smaller ones that are more affordable. But when you start talking

about rich people is like, what do you mean about rich people? Because like, are you like

anyone that buys a new vehicle is like technically rich on the grand scheme of things. Like it's like

the in the top like 20% of earnings or something. You know, other people are used cars. So, you know,

it's always relative. And it's always depending on your lifestyle to like, if you, you know,

they always say like, oh, if you don't make more than like $150,000 per year, you shouldn't buy

like a 50 plus $1,000 car is like probably unless you're like a car guy, like if I'm super geek

about cars and it will make you happy to have a car and you work on it and you use, you know,

instead of going to the restaurants, you'll just, you know, play around with your car. And that's

that's your thing is like, yeah, do it. Yep, agree.

All right, let's move on. Rich tumors are buying end of day sprinter bands and so Kyle, but they

don't want EVs. They don't want EVs because there's no nothing on the market that makes

sense right now. If you buy like the sprinter electric, the new one is getting close to it,

though. I don't think the charging is not that great. But my whole point with this,

we agree that right now, you're just in North America, there's not that many options for an

electric van that you can turn into a camper. The Hyundai one, the Storia is the name, I think.

The Storia would be one of the first one that makes sense. It's a smaller size,

too, a little bit in the sprinter, I think. Yeah, that's a much smaller problem.

Yeah, and also like, you know, if we do get to the end of the world arm again, Mad Max stuff,

it's going to be a lot easier to make electricity than refined oil to make gas.

True.

Just saying.

Which is not intuitive for most people. Most people think like, oh, something happens,

there's like no power. I mean, no power, your gas pump won't work for long.

By the way, YLE, what is that? Yeah.

News broadcasting did a deep dive into donut financials alarming. The link works here. I

will. Send me an email if you have some information about that.

What do you think about the Chinese made batteries having issues, including Rivian,

LFP, EX30 charge limit, LG China cells in Europe having problems?

LG cells, yeah, we reported on that many times on these issues there. They're kind of limited

on the models and everything. But yeah, I'm starting to hear more about the Rivian LFP stuff.

Apparently, there's a lot of people that having issues with the charging curve

when with the LFP specific models. EX30, I haven't heard as much.

All right, more on the donut. The Estonian auditor resorted to the most severe possible

conclusion is disclaimer of opinion because they were unable to obtain sufficient evidence

regarding the company's financial position. Development costs of 2.6 million euros have

been recorded on the balance sheet, but the company is unable to explain how or where these expenses

originated. Well, there's no other information about this year. I know that Verge has like

their EV manufacturing in Estonia. I don't know about donuts specifically. I think it's Finnish

company. But obviously Finland and Estonia are really close and there's a lot of business between

the two. And again, the battery, the battery is also I think under Nordic nano and not donuts. So,

yeah, we need a lot more information about this. All right, protocol six says, hey guys,

what are your thoughts on the IX3 and EX60 having far better specs than R2? We don't have announced

R2 specs, but how do we end up with legacy specs beating the EV only specs like range and 10 to

80%. I mean, I wouldn't compare the R2 to the IX3 or the EX60. I mean, that's an off-road

rivium makes like off-road vehicles. It's not quite the same. Not nearly cheaper, I would assume.

So the R2 is supposed to start around 45. Sure, the first one's going to be probably closer to

55. But like we said, the EX60 is closer to 60. So yeah, you have that to keep in mind. And also,

like you said, Proto, Cal, we don't have the final spec for the R2 just yet too. So I have some hope

that it's going to be more than decent. Yep. All right, okay, saving my money up for a solar

powered houseboat and RV and FSD verge motorcycle. There we go. Man, that's the dream. We said that.

That's that kind of guy. Man made of CO2. You're my kind of guy or man made. That's the life right

there. You have a houseboat, solar powered, like those nice little catamaran that they have now

that you can have a house catamaran with solar. Oh, RV when you're on land, electric RV with a

nice little verge motorcycle with the donut motor in the back. That sounds so crazy. Have you seen

those catamaran houseboats? Yeah, they're sweet. Our colleague Peter in Berlin is one of the people

that just like dives deep into that. And he's like, Yeah, you just remove all the diesel stuff. But in

batteries, you can live on that for most of your life. How does that affect R2? Yeah, we talked

about that a little bit. I think maybe just like Tesla, I think on the high end, the R2 might have

some competition, but all autonomous Polaris bought Ramo years ago. Oh, yeah, we might be confusing

them with Bravo now. Based on where Rivian is now with the R2 validation in your estimate,

what would be the window for official release? I think they've said early 2026, which is now.

But these things typically don't meet their deadlines. So I would say a few, they'll probably

throw out a few vehicles before summer, and then ramp up hopefully quickly.

I think they're going to release them. I think they're going to announce it before that. I think

they're going to do, there's not going to be a configurator just yet. Probably some pricing.

But they're going to deliver it to employees first. I wouldn't be surprised if it's like,

March, end of March or April, they announced, we start R2 deliveries, but it's just for employees at

first. And then the launcher configurator, or they invite people to join a specific configurator,

to start getting some order confirmation in. And then, yeah, around the summer, I think you start

real customer deliveries. That's reasonable, I think.

All right. Let's see. We got a lot of that. At least Cruz and Waymo use remote drivers to

give appearance of full autonomy when they were starting out.

Not just when they were starting. Well, I don't know about remote drivers. I think it's like,

to the operation that gets in. And when something happens, I don't think anyone is like

fully driving remotely with, unless you get the lag down completely, it makes no sense.

All right. One more, tumors aren't deep thinkers, and then we got a link to the

Donut Labs. I haven't seen that go through yet, but I'll check it out.

All right. Well, that's it for this week's episode of the Electric Podcast. Again,

I hope you stay safe out there this weekend, because it's going to be a crazy one,

very low temperature and a lot of snow. So stay safe out there. And if you do enjoy the

Electric Podcast, give us a like, a thumbs up, whatever it is on the app you're watching,

five star rating on your podcast app. If you think we deserve it, it helps to show more than

you think, and it takes a second to do. And we're going to see you same time next week. Stay safe out

there. Bye-bye.

Tesla Robotaxi grift, Volvo EX60 is a beast, Aptera in danger, and more

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