Tesla's auto suicide, Model S/X dead, Cybercab fiasco, and more

And we're live? Yeah, we're live! We're live for a new episode of the Hik-Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by the great Seth Wintraub. How are you doing this week, Seth?

I'm good.

All right. All right. First off, let me, if I have a weird energy right now, although if you're listening, you're live, or if you're listening after the fact, but it's Friday, 4 p.m. as usual for us.

And there's kind of breaking news right now in the Tesla Enon world, because the DOG just dropped a ton of files regarding Epstein, and turns out that our boy, Ivan, is all over them.

But wait, I thought he only got photobombed by Maxwell. It was, he never had.

That was a photobomb. But now the most incriminating thing about the emails, and I've been in this for the last two hours, I've been going through the emails, there's 11,000 reference, 1100 reference to Elon Musk in the files.

So I'm already like two or three hundred.

A lot of them repeats themselves though, because they get the email from a bunch of different sources.

So the emails and the thread repeats themselves. So far, I'd say I'd seen probably like 50 original emails between the two of them.

So they had a relationship for sure. A lot of the emails also are weird where they are just like one sentence empty without any threads.

That they point to them being on the phone with each other and like sending each other like something just to...

Like for example, Demis Hassabi.

Sorry, I'm responsible about the head of Google DeepMind.

Like in 2014, out of nowhere, Elon is just like, is emailing Jeffrey Epstein's Demis's name.

I assume that that's them being on the phone and Jeffrey is like, Demis, how do you spell that?

And then Elon just like emails them. So there's some of that too.

So there's definitely phone conversations.

They met a few times. They met at SpaceX.

Elon invited him to SpaceX. He gave him a private tour of SpaceX.

They met in New York at a dinner.

But the main thing that is very suspicious is that some of these emails leaked last year.

As part of some of the releases with the Epstein files.

And Elon was implicated and Elon got very angry at Sky News report.

Sky News said that Elon was in the files and everything.

And Elon defended himself saying, screw Sky News for putting me in there.

Epstein tried to get me to his island and I refused.

So that was Elon's argument.

Now we don't have any proof that Elon went to the island.

What we have proved though is that for three years...

Thirsty!

Three new years even a row, 2012, 2013, 2014.

Moving to the next year.

Elon badly tried to get to the island.

He didn't refuse shit.

What's worse? Like getting caught on Epstein's Island?

Or like trying to get onto Epstein's Island and not making it there?

To be fair, Epstein wanted him to go for most of the time.

Elon was trying to figure out the logistics.

So the only one we know for sure what happened is the 2013 New Year's Eve.

Elon was badly trying to go.

He was in St. Barth.

He was right next.

And he told, I can be there like the first of January.

So January, I guess, first 2014.

And Epstein was like, sure, I'll send you an helicopter from my island to St. Barth.

And then you're going to bring you back there.

And then it was Epstein who cancelled the last second saying that he needed to stay in New York.

So he wasn't even...

Elon refused.

Elon was trying badly to get there.

There's said there's crazy emails in there.

There's an email where Elon asked him, okay, I probably can get there between this date and this date.

What date are you planning the craziest party in those dates?

So Elon knew what was going on there.

He knew it was...

Or at least he knew it was crazy parties.

And I don't know to what degree he knew what was going on with the...

I wonder if that's how he knew Trump was on the list because he's like, yeah, I was there with you.

Well, now there's some crazier stuff in the release today.

There's allegations against Elon and Trump and sexual misconduct,

allegations with children, like crazy stuff.

Now, those are tips that the FBI received.

And we don't know what to what degree they were investigating everything.

So that's the bigger question.

But what I talked about before that, those are confirmed emails

between Elon Epstein's and their entourage of like assistant and all that.

But most of the emails are strictly between Elon and Epstein.

So even if he didn't go to the crazy pit of our island,

one thing for sure, he lied about the situation.

He lied about refusing to go there.

He was trying to go there.

And that opens up a whole other door.

Like if you're lying about that, then what the hell are you lying about?

Yeah, I'm sure the Tesla board will be right on that.

And that's, I mean, I just, I just so I have some of my posts on this

because I posted the evidence as I was finding them on on the docs on X.

And some of the messages I was getting from the Tesla fans just like,

screw you, Fred, for pointing this out.

Like what?

Like that should have been a reaction to just me sharing evidence.

You should like reconsider.

If you're on board with Elon now, like pedophile,

you have to draw a line somewhere.

No, I don't know.

Like, you know, Trump rolled down, you know,

would roll down Fifth Avenue, shoot somebody.

Yeah.

You would not lose it.

It's at the same level.

That's what you're saying.

Yeah.

Once you're on board in the cult.

Man, I don't know.

I don't know.

I mean, we have Tom here says, and that's weird.

It's when the Elon had that 48 hour free with Trump.

He posted on X.

Trump isn't.

Yeah.

I mean, it's the fact that he posted that.

Like, oh, by the way, you're, you're at the Epstein fight too.

I have the read.

What's his name?

Read often read.

Yeah.

The CEO of the co-founder of Lincoln.

He responded to one of my tweets about you not being in the files.

Like, mm-hmm.

Like you're in the files.

Yeah.

But to be fair, I'm sure there's plenty of people's in these files

that didn't do anything wrong.

Right.

He's he like worked a room, got everybody's contact information.

Yeah.

But my problem with Elon and this is like why lie?

Then if I didn't do anything wrong while I you were trying,

maybe like you said, he looked too thirsty.

Like he did like that.

Oh, man.

I look thirsty as hell trying to get to the island.

Yeah, boy.

He looked thirsty as hell.

All right.

We have like we needed to get this off our chest because this is like

happening right now.

And like I said, I'm only a third of the way through these these

files.

So there's probably a lot more than that's going to come out.

I hope something happens.

I hope that like you depress me a little bit with this.

I'm even though I know you're probably right that like the

fans are not going to do anything about it.

I hope that some people that still have like, I know when

it touches your money and people are weird with your money.

Right.

You you have to draw the line somewhere.

Yeah.

I mean, like you're cool with Nazis.

You're cool with, you know, all the, you know, crazy stuff.

But but Epstein Epstein sex trafficking, including minors.

And that's the thing here.

But so so far the evidence I've seen.

He learns gets in contact with Epstein in 2012 and then

like they become friends, 2013, 2014, 2015, they are in

contact.

So far that's what I got.

Epstein got convicted of soliciting prostitution from

minors in 2009.

2009.

I want to say 2009.

The first time, 2018, 19, that was the second time where

he got suicided.

But the 2009 stuff, everyone knew about it.

Epstein was, you know, a little weird though that

liked to touch kids.

Like that was that was known.

So him trying to get to asylum after that is like

for the crazy parties and then lying about it.

What else you need?

Like you have to draw the line somewhere.

And then let's talk about other stuff.

Obviously I had an earnings thing too.

Right.

Yeah.

I had the earnings.

It was a big one.

I had this other article that was very popular here.

Tesla committed suicide.

That was my main takeaway of the of the earnings.

Now, to be fair, like we, we saw this coming from a while,

but this, this felt like the, like the final step.

We're going to talk about it a little bit.

What led me to that conclusion?

There was a few things.

Well, the first one, you know, after his opening remarks during

so every time there's the conference call that happens,

it starts with opening remarks from Elon, you know,

little normally it talks about what happens during the quarter,

whatever, something new.

And at the end, he had a little announcement.

He said, model S and X are being discontinued.

So it's the end of the model S, which lived from 2012 to 2026.

X, 2015 to 2026.

They are going to phase out the production in Q2.

So after Q2, no more new model S and new model X.

And they're going to replace the production lines in Fremont

with a production line for Optimus 3.

The next generation Optimus is going to be produced there.

So, so that's obviously a big one.

So that's one of the reasons that I say like this is the

transition from Tesla being an automaker to to whatever the

hell it is now.

The another one, the one that made me write this,

this article really was actually a comment from Lars Moravi,

the SVP of Ecoengineering at Tesla is in charge of EVs at what

was not too long ago the biggest electric automaker in the

world.

He was asked specifically about in the in the fan question

and the fan, the shareholder questions.

If Tesla plans to do any new models.

And this, this we've been saying we've been telling

everyone for the last two years at Electric,

all the Tesla shareholders, there's none.

They all been canceled.

It's everything is canceled.

Just live with this new reality.

And if you're not happy with it, push back against the reality.

If you're a shareholder, you're not happy with that.

But they kept ignoring us.

And now in this earnings report, they're like, hey,

is there any new model coming?

And Lars's response was you have to start thinking about

us as moving to providing transportation as a service

more than total addressable market for the purchase vehicle.

And basically saying, we're not really interested now in

selling cars.

We are, we are in the subscription business

transportation as a service.

So this is a big trend.

Obviously it's been going on for the last decade or so

started with software, you know, back in the day,

you were able to just buy software and they would

improve over time.

And then if you improve enough, like they would just

sell you another version of it.

And if you were happy with the last version,

you stay the last version.

If you want a new one, you pay for the new one.

Now that's gone.

Now everything is a subscription.

The elite class is, that's their goal for years now

that no one owns anything.

You just get licenses for everything.

You rent your house.

You rent your car.

You subscribe to Uber.

You subscribe to Netflix.

You subscribe to everything.

And then they try to basically max out like what's

your revenue?

All right, we'll max out your subscription exactly

where it needs to be to get the max profit out of you.

That's the goal.

And now Elon is full all in in that goal too,

because he doesn't want to sell you car anymore.

He wants to sell you transportation as a service.

And yeah.

And then finally, the last, you know,

now in the coffin with the release of their earnings,

Tesla released their 10 K.

ICC filings and the officially changed the

mission statement for Tesla to building a world

of amazing abundance instead of accelerating the

advent of electric transport and renewable energy.

Yeah.

That's a lot of stuff.

So now, now Tesla, basically Tesla, you know,

as three vehicle program model three model Y,

which are both in decline and then cyber truck,

which is a complete commercial failure.

That's that's Tesla.

Three vehicle programs.

This is some is coming too.

And again, this is some is probably the only thing

that gets me excited about Tesla these days.

But yeah, what about the roadster?

Oh, he did mention the roadster again.

So roadster apparently still alive.

They're killing the model X and S, but the roadster is still alive.

Yeah.

So let's talk a bit about the model S and X,

because look, you know,

I'm just saying that you're disconcerning the S and X

to make room for humanitarian robots,

which is the future of Tesla.

Sure, it's not only that.

It's model S and X.

I've been selling extremely poorly in the last few years.

Not because they're bad vehicles,

because the great vehicle still is just they're a little bit

tired.

Tesla hasn't showed them a lot of love in the last few years

and and there's increased competition.

So now, you know, if you want luxury electric sedan,

you're probably better off with the lucid air than you are

with the model S.

And if you're on the luxury SUV,

Mercedes EQS is also very nice.

You have the EQS as an SUV, too,

because your EQS is an actual SUV.

And you have the R1S from Rivian.

That's actually probably a better choice in the model X.

So you have that.

But it didn't have to be like that.

Something we complain a lot about Tesla is the fact that

they don't really take care of the vehicle programs.

They don't have a great vehicle program team where you

have a budget and the team fights to get some resources

and then they see what they can do with those resources

and keeping the vehicle program fresh and everything.

You don't really have that at Tesla.

Because for me, I feel like if I was in charge of Tesla,

especially after the Cybertruck.

So model S and X had a big upgrade in 2021, five years ago.

It's been a while.

I think Cybertruck came at the end of 2023.

My view is by 2024, Tesla should have brought what they did

good with the Cybertruck to the other vehicle program,

especially model S and X at the IRN.

Imagine if the model S and X had drive by wire by now.

Imagine if they had rear steering.

They're still there.

They're a pretty big car.

Real steering on this is not bad.

Do you have rear steering, by the way, on your EQS?

I do.

Yeah, I like it.

Yeah, it really helps.

So my driveway goes into the street at a very tight angle.

If I'm going to the right, I sometimes have to do a K-turn.

And obviously, I have a Chevy Bolt that can do it.

I have a Tesla Model Y that can't do it because of the distance

of the wheels and the turning radius.

But the EQS, which is much bigger than the Model Y,

can make that turn.

Great use case.

And the biggest one, obviously, that they should have brought

800-volt powertrain charging.

That's a no-brainer.

You bring all of that to the Model S and X,

and the Bolt programs would still be very competitive.

But there's just no desire to do that

because Tesla is dead as an automaker now.

It's just autonomy and robots.

All Elon cares about.

And the frustrating thing, and we talked about it a few times

over the last few months, is that it's not necessarily a choice.

Tesla did not have to make a choice here.

They could have just spun off either or the AI stuff

of the automotive stuff into another entity

and continue on like that.

And let's say you spin off Tesla AI as its own thing

and then Tesla licensed the Tesla AI stuff for autonomy.

So you can still do it.

You can still invest it in everything.

But you don't have to just give up on great electric vehicle

program, which Tesla could make 100,000 of them.

I don't know if they could still sell 100,000 of them

with the competition right now.

But I could see Model S and X be over like 60,000 units a year

easily.

And that would be very profitable at those volumes.

So just a crazy thing that they killed that.

All right.

What about the actual earnings?

Nothing too crazy.

Tesla beat both revenue and earnings by a slight amount,

mostly because of, well, one, the regulatory credits,

despite the end of Q3, we're still pretty good in Q4.

They still got like over half a million dollars,

which is half a billion dollars, sorry,

which is like more than half of their net earnings

during the net profits during the quarter.

So it's still the biggest different maker.

And a slight beat too on the energy front

that's becoming somewhat profitable.

So not enough to compensate for the reduction

in automotive revenues, but still,

for the first time, for the first time, Tesla in 2005

had a year-over-year decline in revenue too.

So the year-over-year decline in earnings

has been going on since 2023.

But the revenue decline for the first time

2025 compared to 2024.

What else?

Oh, yeah.

The Tesla disclosed the FSD subscriber account now

and then this is clearly where things are going.

Tesla, I call it right now,

especially now that they're killing more SNX,

that means that the other models is basically just Cybertruck

and a handful of Tesla-some-is.

Are you surprised they didn't kill Cybertruck with SNX?

So that was one of the first questions

when someone asked what's happening with the Cybertruck

if you're killing SNX,

which Cybertruck sells basically as much as SNX,

which is nothing.

And Elon had like a word scramble when he said that,

like he was like,

we can, Cybertruck, we can automate the line,

the production line is going to be all autonomous,

and then Cybertruck can make autonomous cargo in cities.

That's what he said.

That's what's going to save Cybertruck.

It's going to become an autonomous cargo vehicle in cities.

Go check out Jamie's post on this.

He kind of break it down completely.

It makes no sense.

I think it's kind of obvious, but still.

But now that there's only that,

this is kind of going to have to disclose Cybertruck sales.

They don't want to do that.

I actually, I think this is going to stop disclosing sales completely.

I think like within a quarter or two,

definitely within three quarters,

this is going to stop releasing quarterly sales

and instead it's just going to release this,

the active FSD subscription.

And it's already that after a great start for the first time

they disclosed it,

they back disclosed it for a year at least.

So that's, that's good.

But they call it active FSD subscription.

And when I first wrote my article on it,

I described it at just 1.1 million subscription.

But the thing we learned after that fact,

that includes the people that paid upfront.

So, and that includes 70% of that.

So 70% of that 1.1 million is people that like you and me

that bought the FSD package for up to $15,000.

The, but so the rest are about 300 something thousand people

or actually subscribe month to month to FSD paying $100 a month.

So not, not a lot.

Let's be honest.

It's not, it's not a ton.

That's why I was confused.

I was very confused because at first when they released that

they were like FSD subscription double last year.

And then I look at this,

the enter the year at 0.8 by the end of Q1,

they were still at 0.8 million.

And then by the end of the year, they were at 1.1.

So it's like, that's, I mean,

I'm no mathematician like far from doubling,

but no,

they mean actual people that are subscribing to it,

not the people that bought it upfront.

But that should go up now that subscription only feature, right?

Should.

No, like the both of them are in there.

I do expect a bump in Q1 for people that are going to be

incentivized from like the urgency to buy it instead of

subscribing to it.

So this is going to be a bump from that and a bump from

just improvement.

Like, let me, let me give Tesla some flowers, by the way,

because I just last night,

I drove from Sherman again back to my place in Montreal.

Now two hours, something ride snow.

You know, not only like some roads that a little bit of snow on

the road, no, it was not snowing actively.

And some of the side road at a little bit of snow on there.

I tried to do an FSD drive door to door.

Few good points.

Navigating my parking, my driveway situation in

Sherman again, did extremely well despite the fact that

it's covered in snow everywhere.

And it's pretty tight, you know,

because the snow banks on the sides are crazy,

extremely annoying to get out.

Even myself, when I get out on myself, it's just,

it's difficult to get out because you don't see the cars

coming from each side because of the snow banks.

Did that very well.

Got on the highway.

Massive improvement with this latest update on highway

behavior with FSD.

A lot smoother with the lane change.

When it passes a car, it goes right back to the right

lane in time.

Much more confident in changing lane.

That's a great improvement.

So I had a few interventions, mostly at stop signs where

people, you know, it's super passive at stop signs.

So if you arrive just a little bit before someone,

it won't go, sometimes it will, you know,

want the other person to go.

And I'm like, I clearly arrived first so that

other person is letting me go.

So I'm like, I actually have to press on the accelerator on

this, things like that.

Nothing crazy.

I did have to disengage when I arrived at a supercharger.

I tried to let it do its thing in park because I

selected the park, so park at the supercharger itself.

I thought it was very cool.

By the way, when I arrived there, it told me 3C is

actually not working, so don't park there.

And then it started to go to park at 3B instead.

But when it was time to reverse back into the

supercharger, it wouldn't.

So I had to take over there and park myself.

I assumed it has to do with the amount of snow that was,

you know, parking was clear, but everything was covered

in snow so there was no lines.

So I assumed that the system, FSD is not capable of

just aligning with the charging stall specifically

rather than the parking spot, my assumption.

So I had to take over there.

But then, you know, went back home to Montreal.

I continued my way to Montreal and there were like 30,

40 minutes after the supercharger.

Very smooth again.

I was like about to like give the FSD like all its

flowers.

It's like, well, big improvement and everything up

until the last traffic light.

I needed to take a left on the traffic light.

And it was red when I arrived.

And then it turned green, but green only forward.

But there was no light to go left.

It's not a light where there's a red light to turn left.

You have to wait for green light with an arrow to the left.

And it just right away went left to the degree that I

couldn't even respond.

I was already halfway through the intersection.

Good thing there was no one coming on the other way

because it was a green light on the other way.

So it's basically burned a red light.

That's the thing.

Again, light situations are a bit more complicated than that.

But essentially that's it.

So that's obviously a real like critical disengagement issue.

But other than that, very good.

But again, people get a lot confused when people talk

about FSD like that.

It's like, yeah, it's super impressive technology.

It's just like that to get to level four,

you need to have the tail end of all these weird little

situation.

And clearly it's not there yet because it just burned a red light.

So now this type of light turning left on a green light is not,

they're not like that everywhere.

So it's kind of a specific issue, but you can run into that

and it can be deadly.

So you have to be careful.

But overall, I didn't notice a big improvement

with this latest update.

Another thing that was announced during the earnings post

is that Tesla is now adding 4680 cells back into Model Y vehicles.

For those who don't remember, 4680 cells was supposed to be

the breakthrough battery for Tesla and enabling 50% cost

reduction, improve in their energy density,

enabling a $25,000 Tesla.

And all that was not quite what happened.

Tesla started producing the cell.

Do I have a timeline here?

In 2022, and then by the end of the year, it was in the Model Y.

Some of the Y built in Texas.

But then by 2023, Tesla stopped selling just a year later,

stopped selling the Model Y with 4680 cells,

presumably because it couldn't produce enough for the Model Y

and the Cybertruck and the Cybertruck got priority.

So Tesla started just the only Tesla vehicle that has

Tesla's own 4680 cells in there was the Cybertruck.

But now what happened two years later is that the Cybertruck

is just not selling at all.

So Tesla has extra capacity for the 4680 and decided

to use them back in the Model Y again.

And the reason for that too is it helps them avoid the tariffs

because that's fewer cells that they have to import.

And they can save some money there.

By the way, Tesla did disclose that in Q4 alone,

they had half a billion dollars in tariff cost.

Half a billion?

Yeah.

And that's all on batteries, I would assume, right?

Mostly probably, mostly on batteries,

especially for stationary energy storage, all the LFP stuff

that adds up pretty quickly.

All right.

Moving on.

Oh yeah, that was a crazy one.

Let's ring the call.

Okay, first of all, I'll give you some context in case

I forgot.

Earlier this month, I had an exclusive report on Tesla

having its trademark for Cybert cab suspended.

The reason was in October 2024,

when Tesla had the re-robot event and the Envilla Cybert cab

announced it was going to be called Cybert cab

and there was some confusion between Robotaxi and Cybert cab.

They used the term interchangeably.

Yeah.

And there was some confusion around that.

What we learned is that when Elon announced it,

Tesla didn't even file for the trademark.

Only a month later, they filed for the trademark.

In the meantime, a squatter like a French beverage company

actually grabbed the Cybert cab trademark.

And I shouldn't call them a squatter.

Well, it's kind of trademark squatting,

but it looks more like they had an issue with the Tesla killer

trademark and they had that themselves

for a Tesla, Nikola Tesla team,

and they are in dispute with Tesla for that.

They were like, all right, you didn't file for Cybert cab,

it's more like this kind of situation.

Anyway, it looks like that beverage company is winning right now

and Tesla cannot use Cybert cab because of it.

So that was not a report last month.

So in the earnings call on Wednesday night,

Elon sort of referenced that,

but it didn't make sense what he said.

He was really misleading.

He said, in some state, we will not be able to use the word cab,

so it won't be called Cybert cab.

I think, I don't know if he's like confused about that

or he's lying or whatever,

but it's obviously because they don't have the trademark

for Cybert cab that they can use the word Cybert cab.

Maybe there's some issues also separately

about using the word cab if you're not a taxi.

I don't know, but obviously this is not the main issue here.

So Elon said on the call at like what it was five days

or like around 6 p.m. that we're going to have to call them

either a Cybert car or a Cybert vehicle,

which are shit names by the way,

but he said that live on the show.

And then what we learned is that that night,

Tesla filed for those trademark.

So again, he did it again where he announced the name

of the product before filing for the trademark,

which I think is very like indicative

of Tesla as a company these days where the whole company

is basically Elon Musk improvising

and the rest of the company reacting to Elon's improvisation

and like trying to make things happen,

which for a $1.5 billion company, kind of weird.

Kind of weird.

Imagine like Apple launching a new product

and Tim Cook coming up with the name live at the event

without Apple having trademarked it.

Yeah, I imagine there's probably a person in Elon's entourage

that just record, you know, just everything he says.

He's just like, all right, do we cover that?

You know, like there's no person assigned.

Yeah, it's like, hey, he said, Cybert cabin,

Cybert vehicle, do we have the trademark on that?

Check that out.

He's like, no, we don't file right now.

To be fair, an hour later they filed for it.

They got it quicker now.

They tightened up the thing.

Yep.

All right.

The last thing that was mentioned in the earnings

before we move on,

and we're going to have some time to talk to you guys

if you have questions for us,

you can put them in the comment section right now.

I'm going to get to it in about 15, 20 minutes.

Is that Tesla did invest in XAI,

a nice little $2 billion deep through in that cash furnace

that they call an AI company.

And yeah, it's the shareholders actually voted on this,

the last shareholders meeting last year.

And I think they got,

they didn't get the full majority that they needed for it.

But they got, they still went ahead with it.

That's my understanding.

Like the, he just did it.

And yeah, this is kind of a strange thing to do

because as we discussed many times,

there's active shareholders lawsuits against Tesla

and Elon Musk specifically for starting XAI

in the first place

because there's competitive sectors between the two.

And you cannot start a private company

when you're, yeah,

finishing redo these to a public company.

And yeah, so they are actively suing Elon

saying that he stole resources from Tesla to start XAI.

And now Tesla is investing in XAI amid this lawsuit.

So it's basically like Elon steals your car

and then he stopped by in front of you

is like, by the way, if you pay me,

I can give you a ride in it.

It's, that's literally what's happening right now.

And then moving on from that,

what happened later this year is that Elon is floating

some rumors that Tesla XAI and SpaceX

are going to merge into one giant entity.

I even heard rumors said that the new ticker

for the company.

NAZI.

You stepped on my joke.

I'm sorry.

Because I wanted you to know that I read your stories.

Yeah.

So that was a joke, obviously.

But the real thing here is two things.

There was two different reports.

So there was routers first that came out

and said that SpaceX filed for a new merger

company entity in Nevada with XAI.

So the leading theory is that right now is that

SpaceX and XAI would merge together,

which makes a lot of sense.

Because love him or hate him, Elon.

There's one thing that he really cares about

and he's good at.

It's not losing money for his private investor.

And that's the key thing here, private investors.

I don't think he cares as much about public shareholders,

but private investors, he does his best not to.

So for the people who don't know, when he acquired

Twitter for $44 billion, there was a few people

that got in the deal with him.

A few of his friends like Larry Ellison

and the Saudis and Quatar and a bunch of cool people

jump on board to help him take Twitter private.

And then you can have a bunch of different

opinions on this.

But financially speaking, it looked quite clear

that $44 billion for Twitter was a very dumb decision.

And actually private investor in there like Fidelity,

for example, which had a fund for X,

so I had to actually assess the fair value of it,

kept downgrading it from $44 billion to, I think,

just before the merger with XAI,

I think it was closer to $8 billion.

So they were losing money.

The company was cratering, really.

And then out of nowhere, Elon had XAI as private company

by, well, through a reverse merger, really, X.

$44 billion, it's actually $33 billion,

but it's $32 billion plus assuming the debt,

the $10 billion in debt that X had.

So basically the same deal that people were buying in.

So that way they don't lose any money,

they just get their share transferred into XAI shares.

But now the same thing is happening with XAI,

where I don't know how closely people are following the AI race,

but I'm actually a big user of AI,

and I have subscription from GROC through X,

so it's not like I'm not subscribing to GROC directly,

but I do have access to GROC.

I use Gemini, and these days I'm mostly using Claude,

but I also use chat GPT and on again, I do use Codex,

and I think Codex is top notch,

but every now and again I will run a comparison test

between all four of those,

and consistently GROC is not in the top three, consistently.

And what we hear is that they're burning

to a billion dollar a month right now.

The Absorb X is debt,

they have debt on top of that,

and they just raised $20 billion,

so that helps, but still if you're burning

to a billion dollar a month, do the math,

it don't last two years.

And there's no clear competitive advantage for XAI,

there's no clear path of them like actually catching up

to especially Google and Tropic.

So what do you do?

Well, you fold that at the price that you decide

because you're negotiating from both sides

into your order private company,

and now all your friends investors have shares in your company,

and you do that when?

You do that just before you plan a SpaceX IPO

where all these shareholders can then dump their share

on the public market for a nice little bonus.

That's the Elon self-dealing way,

and now Bloomberg after that came out

and said that Tesla is also being considered

to be part of that deal.

And finally, I don't see that happening,

and I wrote that in the article.

I think the XAI SpaceX is probably more likely

to do private company.

I think Tesla complicates the deal a lot,

but it's not impossible because there's,

you have to try to look at it from Elon's standpoint,

obviously, because he's the one with all the power there,

so he's the, you know, make it happen or not.

And from Elon's standpoint,

he owns a lot more of SpaceX and XAI than he does Tesla.

So for him, it's a better deal to get Tesla

as low of a price as possible in that deal

because he ends up owning a bigger share

of the whole thing at the end.

So it's terrible for Tesla there.

And then on the other side,

it kind of screwed up all his giant compensation plan

because I look at the violas and everything

and it would be extremely difficult for him

to justify the valuation through a deal like that

if it's a 100% stock deal, which, you know,

they absorb the company.

So yeah, it would be terrible for Tesla shareholders

to just put it that way

because it would be extreme dilution of their shares

from an Elon standpoint.

Elon wouldn't mind because the share will dilute

into entities that he owns like 50% of

rather than like 20% for Tesla.

I hope that makes sense.

All right.

One little good Tesla news to hand the Tesla stuff.

Tesla announced a pretty major deal this week

with Pilot.

That's the largest operator of travel centers

like Strockstop in the United States.

I think it's home by Ryan Buffett by Berkshire Autoway.

They announced a big deal with Tesla Semi this week

to open a bunch of mega chargers at their station.

There's a little map here,

but I don't think that's strictly the pilot truck stop there,

but it's all mega chargers that are planned this year.

Sorry.

So yeah, 46, by 2027.

These pilot trucks stop.

So this is a big deal because this enables,

it will help move electric trucking

from just a local distribution network

to potentially long haul.

If you have 500 miles of range

plus a good DC mega charger network,

you can enable trucking.

Electric long haul trucking.

A little bit about Ford.

Not a lot to talk about Ford in the US.

These, when they come to electric vehicles

because they are scaling back a lot of their plans,

but in Europe, if you're not going electric,

you're not doing anything.

So they have the Capri and the Explorer EV in Europe

and they just upgraded them this week with new LFP cells

and they get a little bit boost.

They get 70 kilometers, 43 miles of range more

for a total of now 400 kilometers,

248 miles of range on the WLTP.

That's for the standard range version

and then you have 444, 275 miles for the,

that's the standard range.

That's a little bit confusing.

Yeah, WLTP too and it's kilometers.

Okay, so that's for the Explorer.

Okay, I understand this phrasing now.

It says the boat can get over 400 kilometers,

but for the Explorer standard range,

that's 444, 275 miles

and for the Capri standard range, that's 464.

The first sentence was not needed.

There's no pricing yet that has been released,

but we expect that the price could be a little bit lower

for these new model year because of the LFP cells

rather than MC cells which are generally a little bit cheaper.

So something to look out for,

but I don't know, I've never looked at the sales number

for the Ford's EVs in Europe.

I assume that's not really something that people really lean towards

with all the different things that are available in the market.

Kia and Hyundai, we like to look at their stuff in Korea

because they have some fun stuff that we just don't get here,

but we might get in the future because the Koreans are very focused on EVs

and even though they are scaling down some of their plans

in North America for geopolitical reasons,

what they're going to bring there eventually

is going to be just electric stuff, I'm pretty certain.

And this is a new version of the Kia PV-5,

which is a very important platform in the market.

And it's basically a little pickup version of it,

the pickup truck version for just the equivalent of $30,000.

And it's becoming popular in Korea

because with subsidies it's basically $20,000.

So it's the same PV-5 that we know from the Vans.

It's kind of a VAN platform that's been changing

to one of these low-ground pickup trucks.

These things are so popular in Asia

and we don't really have much of them in North America.

And it turns into a flat bed here, which is pretty cool.

So you can turn the sides over and it's a flat bed.

It's pretty awesome.

Yeah, it's like those K-cars that Trump wants, right?

But a bit bigger.

Yeah, bigger.

Yeah, so it comes with a 51.5-kilometer batch pack,

so that's why the base version is pretty cheap,

but you can also get a 71.2-kilometer batch pack.

And it's all like the feature from the front in the actual cabin.

You have all the features you expect in the Hyundai KIA's Vans vehicles,

like all the 13-inch touchscreen,

the driver assist features and all that,

vehicle to load also in there.

You know, $30,000, you have a nice little pickup truck with vehicle to load

and you're well equipped.

And lastly, that was a popular post here from our colleague Peter.

The Chinese ED pickup truck that looks just like the Toyota Hilux.

We know that the Chinese kind of, you know,

it's a suggestion to buy a signed copy.

Yeah, they like to borrow for just $18,000,

but that's the thing for the specs.

When I saw $18,000, I was like,

all right, this looks like a full-size pickup,

but let me look at those crazy, terrible specs.

Not bad.

65.5 or 88-kilowatt-hour batch packs.

The rear-wheel drive option gives you 45-kilometers of range,

252 miles, and the bigger pack gives you 510, 217 CLTC.

So still it's probably over 180 for the base battery pack.

For $18,000, you can complain.

And then over 250, probably around 250 for the 88-kilowatt-hour pack,

which I don't know how much more expensive it is,

but it's probably no more than $22,000.

No, almost $23,000.

Yeah, that thing is launching right now in China,

and we'll never see anything close to it here.

But I do, the good news, I'm like 90% sure

that I'm gonna get to test the BYD Shard next month,

almost certain.

All right, we can jump into the comment section.

First comment, why am I not surprised Elon was pals with Epstein?

And what's weird is when Elon had that 48-hour feud with Trump,

he posted on X that Trump is in the Epstein files.

Well, you know, he knows firsthand, I guess.

So it sounds like time is short again tomorrow.

I don't think it's gonna affect the stop.

Yeah, I was curious, it's because it was up like 5% today.

When this comes out and everything coming out,

people are gonna freak out.

No, it's still up 3%.

It's like your CEO is lying about being friends with Epstein,

but all good.

Yeah.

All right, thank you for all this very valuable information.

Which Chinese electric automaker do you think has a great future?

It's a dog-eat-dog world out there.

They are not gonna all survive.

That's the thing.

That's how China does it.

They're like, we're gonna encourage the whole market.

People are gonna go crazy for it,

and then we're gonna tighten the vice just slowly, slowly, slowly,

and see who survives.

Look, BYD at this point is pretty clearly the leader

and likely gonna say the leader.

They have 100,000 people just in R&D.

They make all of their own batteries.

The main problem for a long time was quality and design,

and they have both tightened those up quite a bit in the last few years.

I think you still have some road to go,

but it's going in the right direction,

and the scale is just crazy.

They know very well that in China,

competition is increasingly difficult,

so they are relying more and more in export,

and they're doing great at it.

They are electrifying the whole world, so giving credit for that.

Everyone knows I'm a fan of Xiaomi.

Not just of the actual products,

but the fact that they had nothing four years ago,

and then now they beat the Model 3 with the Su7,

and they're about to beat the Model Y with the YU7 in sales.

It's truly impressive to have that ramp up in demand,

but also in production of a very complicated product so fast.

There's going to be plenty of others,

like Zeekr makes awesome vehicles.

You've driven them, you were impressed.

What else do you think has a good chance of surviving?

I mean, we've talked,

what's the one with the battery share?

The battery swap?

Yeah, battery swap.

Neo?

Neo, probably.

So Neo would be an expang,

or in a similar situation,

where they have a very interesting product,

they're expending fast,

but they're still having issues making money,

they're still having issues finding profit,

so that's unsustainable obviously.

So I'm not saying that it won't survive,

but I'm saying that something has to change.

Yeah.

I'm trying to think,

I saw some really cool stuff at the Shanghai Auto Show,

I'm just trying to remember the names of the companies.

But let me tell you something,

I think speaking of expang in Neo,

I think those that are going to have the best change of surviving

are those that do expend beyond China.

Right.

Because the Chinese market is so competitive,

even though it's the biggest market,

there's room, like there's a lot of room,

but it's so competitive that it's hard to make money,

and it's hard to make money when you're expending

to another markets,

because you have to invest in infrastructure there

and everything,

but at least I think long term,

it's way more sustainable.

So expang in Neo has more chance there,

and BYD is the king.

And Xiaomi is just doing extremely well in China,

but they haven't expended just yet,

starting by the end of this year or next year.

So yeah, those are my main picks.

All right.

Questions.

Speck out an ideal new model from Tesla

that could generate as much profit as the three in Y

do at this time.

SUV pickup ban?

I mean, I think it's hard because the Model Y

is like the most popular type of vehicle out there.

It's declining.

I mean, the Model Y is declining.

I don't think the type of vehicle,

like the small SUV is kind of...

Yeah.

But so as much profit, yeah.

So you're right.

As much profit is probably not something that we could answer

because crossover segment is the most popular.

Though a pickup truck, like we've been talking about it

and stuff, but if you make a Maverick style

electric pickup truck,

which is apparently what Ford is doing

with their $30,000 pickup that's supposed to come out

there,

I think that can be extremely popular in North America

and profitable.

Yeah, probably because if it started $30,000

and you can make a few bucks with that

and then a few upgrades and everything,

you bring to $40,000.

It's still going to be like super popular at that level

and a lot of people are going to want these upgrades.

So yeah, I think that's a sweet spot

for profit in North America.

But yeah, also like a nice little sweet hatchback

that would be super popular in Europe

and you know, you make it hot

and try to bring that back in North America too.

And you can also then deploy a cheaper version in China,

in Asia and in a bunch of other market.

Like I think overall that could be a killer product.

All right.

Crown San Diego says,

Hot Take History will show the Model S

as a car that proved electric cars are unsustainable.

Too much lifetime emissions under zero carbon

accelerate our understanding that cars

won't fit into zero emissions world.

That's a weird take because I think the Model S

kind of proved that electric cars were actually

kind of fantastic.

So I guess that Carl's argument is that,

you know, it's a bigger vehicle.

So it still has a decent amount of emission,

which is true.

But like said, it's more about like the Model S

enable all other electric vehicles after that.

Some of them are much more efficient like the Model 3,

like the Bolt, like, you know, a bunch of other vehicles.

And ultimately, if you can control your costs of making batteries,

environmental costs of making batteries,

which you know, you can do that,

especially considering that they are recyclable.

So if you're recycling that, mining it properly

and you power them with renewable energy,

then of course it's sustainable.

All right. Tom says, which is ridiculous.

I think we're talking about the Tesla Cybertruck

being a cargo use thing,

the form factor for autonomous cargo use is unacceptable.

Yeah, it's just not like you can get some work capability

out of a Cybertruck.

My good friend Bastin owns a Cybertruck

and he uses it as a work truck.

So you can do it.

Is it the ideal form factor for that?

Is it the ideal price point for that?

Is it how this autonomy enters that?

It's like, no, it just doesn't make sense.

Even him, I send him that when he said that

and he's the biggest because I send him that

because I know he's the biggest Cybertruck fan I know.

And I was kind of like, hey, you know,

my last next is going Cybertruck is probably next

and he laughed it off.

He's like, yeah, that's not a good idea.

It's like, I don't see a Cybertruck coming

autonomously at home depots like getting stuff and leaving.

All right.

We should investigate the Tesla miraculous accounting

correction for your profitability back in 2020

when they replaced their accounting team.

There's an important story there.

I mean, there's a lot of things that I have to admit

are weird in the earning report.

They recognize a bunch of FSD revenue that was deferred.

Like, why? What happened?

Like, how do you do that?

Like, there was no major update in Q4.

So there's that payables when we're up to.

There's a lot of accounting trickery going on for sure.

I get the sense that Tesla liquidity is the reason

for an amalgamation of Elon's black holes,

XAI, XSpaceX and any other problem that needs cash.

I don't know.

Is that, you think that's right?

I mean, Tesla generated 1.6 billion in free cash flow in Q4

and then a few days later, 2 billion went out to XAI.

Yep.

All right.

I wonder if DOJ is more of a transparent release of FC

and marks a turning point in turning on this administration,

which will ultimately be good for environmental policy?

It's possible.

Do you think the first Tesla Roadster will be delivered

to a customer before or after January 1st, 2028?

No clue.

Is never in the after?

Yeah.

It's interesting option.

I'll go for never.

All right.

And then when historians write about this timeline,

the malfeasance of Elon Musk will be legendary.

Children will write reports on his criminality.

I hope that's true.

The Victor writes the history books.

And right now he's still winning.

He has control of the White House.

He's the richest man on paper, at least.

So we'll see.

Antonio, greetings from Connecticut.

Greetings, Antonio.

Going there later tonight.

Any updates on Verge battery third-party testing results?

That was supposed to be a few weeks away back in during CES,

and that's the donut battery that got a lot of hype.

Have we heard anything?

Nothing yet.

We'll give them a few more weeks.

Sorry.

All right.

I spent the day this week at Tesla Service Center

and overheard a sales meeting.

Tesla sent them an email requiring each salesman

to make 45 cold calls per day, which was much higher than before.

Yeah.

That happens pretty regularly.

You don't know anything about Musk economy.

That's ridiculous.

All right.

What will happen to us suckers who bought FSD in 2019

for my Model 3 with Hardware 3?

It was worth 15,000 in 2022.

I'm in the same boat, 2020.

But yeah.

There's going to be laws.

There are already a bunch of lawsuits,

there's going to be a settlement,

and then you're going to get a check for a few hundred bucks,

and that's going to be it.

And the lawyers are going to be rich.

Oh, man.

That's, the lawyers, they love Elon Musk.

Yeah.

They were working from a database of Hardware 3 owners with FSD,

trying to convince them to upgrade to a Hardware 4 car

before FSD becomes subscription only.

Well, what about the Hardware 4.5?

Did we talk about that at all?

Yeah.

I mean, we don't know a lot about it.

It happened.

It was a switch over in the last few weeks.

Some cars that are being delivered right now have 4.5.

Some don't.

So that's a nice little surprise that you get when you get your cars delivered.

Do you have an old odd word that was two years old at this point,

or do you get the new one?

But we don't know what's new on it, so it's not like...

And you get the new one,

which probably doesn't work with the current software yet.

Yeah.

That can be very true.

But I think it will because right now the rumor is

that there's a third system on the chip on it,

so instead of two, there's three.

So it gives you more room,

so probably you can still run the same software,

and then there's more room to go a little bit.

As far as Chinese automakers, Carl and San Diego's Li Auto

was one of the early ones who claimed profitability.

Yeah, Li Auto was some great stuff.

I saw them a lot in China last year when I was there.

Brad, how was Tesla able to initiate unsupervised

taxis in Austin? What criteria did they meet?

Like from a regulatory standpoint, like it's Texas, maybe.

There's nothing to meet.

That was quite the nice little stock pump

just before the earnings where Elon announced

like, hey, we are now fully unsupervised,

and then turns out there's chase cars

behind each of these cars,

so they just moved the supervisor there.

Now as of yesterday, apparently there's a few people

that got rides without a chase car,

but again, it's just a few rides,

and it's in a geofence area with remote monitoring

and teleoperation going on,

so it's easy to do,

and we moved that too at first,

so it's not good or bad or anything like that.

Like I said, many times I would prefer

that the monitor is always in the driver's seat

until you can prove that they don't matter being there,

but Tesla hasn't done that,

because now we do have the latest data from Tesla

because they did release the FSD mileage

in their earnings report,

and from the last data we have on crashes from November,

Tesla had nine crashes on 500,000 miles,

so that's one crash every 55,000 miles,

which is like nine time worse

than the official human mileage per crash,

but that's with police reported crashes,

so obviously there's some crashes that are not reported.

The best estimate that I got,

which are estimate, because like I said,

there are not clear reports on it,

is about 200,000 miles per crash,

which I found a little bit high,

but I certainly don't crash every 200,000 miles,

or I wouldn't say crash, it's like any kind of impact.

So still, compared to that data,

Tesla is like three or four times worse,

and that's with a safety monitor preventing more crashes.

So you're still, it's still all extremely small program

for show, it's not, there's nothing,

scale is not going to come from it just yet.

I do think that we're still at least from Tesla

a year or two away from achieving

unsupervised capabilities.

All right, I remember Elon saying on camera,

what's that?

At scale, I mean.

I remember Elon saying a long time ago

there was no reason for the SNX to exist,

now you made the move.

Oh yeah, I vaguely remember that.

All right, we talked that there's no new takes

on donut labs yet.

Grishman Shaw went from Tesla to Apple,

and he take on that,

I was just looking at her up on LinkedIn.

Senior technical program manager,

autopilot hardware went to Apple.

Oh yeah, I'm the one who tweeted that last week.

Engineering program manager, iPhone hardware,

that seems like a weird jump,

but she was also at Rivian.

Yeah, yeah, I tweeted that,

but I didn't wrote an article on it.

I don't think she's like,

there's a lot of technical program managers at Tesla.

It's not like, it's not super high.

It's pretty impressive though.

She's been at Lucid, Rivian, Tesla, and now Apple.

Yep.

As a consumer that charges at home,

why do I care about 800 volt charging?

Perhaps.

Dude, come on.

You don't travel, I guess.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, you've never used a supercharger before.

I just used one at 250 kilowatts.

If I could use it at 500 kilowatts,

that would have been there half as long.

Not really depends on the charging curve,

but you know what I mean.

You know what's the worth of it.

And 800 volt can be more efficient also

for the powertrain.

Smaller wires.

Yeah, you can have something.

There's a lot of advantage from it.

Obviously.

Now I know if you're just, you know,

using your car to go from home to work

and you can charge at home.

Yeah, we'll give it like, buy a bolt.

Yeah, hey, speaking of that,

my son's going to Oregon for college

and he wants to take his Chevy Bolt.

Across country?

Oh, I have him write an article.

Yeah, we got to knock out like a week.

You know, we got to have a week for that trip.

On top of it.

Yeah.

Yeah, probably just the travel part of it.

Yeah, you should write an article for that.

Yeah, I probably will.

If we do it.

I'm sure that someone else has done it.

Yeah, but here's some people.

I'll just love the pain of.

All right.

Well, that's it for us this week.

Anyone I hope you enjoyed the show.

If you did enjoy this, give us a like a thumbs up

and subscribe.

All these things are free to do

and they help the show more than you think

takes a second to do.

We appreciate when you do it.

And we're going to see you.

Same time same place the next week.

Have a nice weekend.

Bye bye.

Tesla's auto suicide, Model S/X dead, Cybercab fiasco, and more

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