Tesla's disaster earnings, Beijing Auto Show is mad, new EVs galore

But, yeah, crazy, crazy, crazy week, crazy week with Tesla earnings that were nuts this week,

and then the Beijing Auto Show I was at yesterday was complete madness. I had never been to the

Beijing Auto Show, and it's been, I know it's been going every year and every year, and

even people who have been before that I joined yesterday were completely floored by just

how big it has gotten. You remember when we were at the IAA and it was like the Frankfurt

originally and then it was Munich, it is like the IAA from Munich and the IAA from Frankfurt

combined together. It's insane, it's massive, there's too many people to be honest with

you. It's just you cannot, like all the cars, like yesterday was the first day, so all the

new cars that were on the veal, I couldn't even get to really, because it was just, it

was just...

Yeah, I was at the Shanghai Auto Show last year and I think they, they move it back

and forth, right? Because I just saw, you posted your Chinese driver's license

and then I saw my Chinese driver's license come up in my like, you know, a year ago

today, Facebook or whatever. So I think, I think they, they move it back and forth

from Beijing to Shanghai.

That might, because they do call it, they don't call it the Beijing Auto Show, some people

call it that here, but the official name is the China International Auto Show.

But yeah, there's like 12 halls that are all gigantic. You get into one and if

you know like two brands and they're, you're lucky, because all the other brands are

just completely new to you. It's, there's so many vehicles. It's, it's insane.

It's absolutely nuts. Yeah, it's a world on its own. You're, I don't know how to

say it any other way.

That what that meant is also a new e-veg allure. So there's been a ton of unveiling

this week. Most of them based in Beijing. Some of the vehicles will be

international. Some of the vehicles are going to be China only, which is, I know,

is not ideal for our audience. But are we going to focus on some EVs that are

going to be international so that other markets should get them, although the

US less likely so because of the tariffs, obviously. But let's start with the

test earnings because these were crazy earnings this week. I think everyone

can agree with that. Even the, even the most hardcore test that happens

were, were not happy about it. A lot of people are concerned about Elon and his

state of mind or his level of energies and all that. I personally didn't

see too much into that during the call. I thought he was normal. If anything,

I thought he was a little bit more realistic than usual. Like, you know,

he wasn't as aggressive in his timelines. It was, it probably is why some of the

test offense were actually a little bit upset after the earnings. But when

talking about the actual financials here, the, this actually beat on earnings

a little bit, expectation where at 37 cents per share. This came in at 41

cents per share. Revenue was roughly as expected at 22.3 billion. This came at

22.38 so yeah, mid expectation there. Gross margin jumped to 21.1% at 478

basis point increase, which explained, explained the beat on earnings per share.

But as soon as you dig into the earnings a little bit is where things fall

apart. Like, you don't even have to dig that much. So it's, it's pretty clear

what's happening here. We're going to get into what they said during the

call, but during the call, they also announced that Tesla is going to

decash flow negatives and start losing money starting next quarter

and throughout the rest of the year. And it's fairly clear that they were going

to lose money in Q1 and Tesla basically pulled all the levers, including

some quite questionable ones to show profit this quarter because they did

guide it. And this, and you know, if it would have been pretty bad if they

didn't. But it's pretty obvious that the, the, the operations didn't, wasn't

profitable in Q1. Tesla, Tesla, I mean, I don't want to say cook the books, but

it's basically as, because I'm not saying that they do anything illegal. It's

just that it's, yeah, these days it's, it's not, let's put it like that. What

they did exactly is the main thing that affected the profits this

quarter is a change in warranty reserves. So Tesla put some cash that they had

put in reserve for Romanti and declared it as, as revenue and the, they put

that in income. So that was the biggest boost. Second business boost is

tariff relief. So they say that it's not the IEWPA tariffs that from the

Supreme Court are ruling in February, which makes sense because I know some

companies are already booking that, but you, there's a whole process to get

refunds and it's going to take a while. I'm sure it's not going to be an easy

process. So Tesla says it hasn't booked that yet, but it mentioned without

doing to the details other tariff relief that they booked as income. So that

helped with profit this quarter. And there's a bunch of, there was a $250

million one just, just for that. So that's like half of Tesla's net income.

That was, that came from that. The other half, the warranty reserve. And then

the, the push supplier payments by 10 days this quarter. And that is up like

30%. I think it was like 52 days in Q3, 2020, 2025. Then it was like 61 days

in Q4. So just like the quarter prior to the Q1. And, and now it's 71

days. So they were basically just pushing payments to suppliers. And that

is quite visible in their accounts payable with surge to $13 billion, an

increase of, sorry, to $14.7 billion up from $13.3 billion. So $1.3 billion

increase quarter over quarter, despite this is deliveries being way down in

Q1 versus Q3. When your operations are smaller, your accounts payable are

generally smaller, but it didn't happen there. Why? Well, because Tesla has

pushed the payment to suppliers. That is normally a clearance catered at the,

you, you just want to massage your accounting for the quarter and make it

look better. Because that, that is straight in the red for Tesla. If they

don't do that, then they also started issuing a lot more debt. There was

$4.3 billion in new debt issues in net cash flow. So they also refinanced

some of that. So in net financing cash flow was $1.2 billion. So Tesla, if

Tesla didn't do any of that, like if Tesla played fair like this, you know,

regular accounting this quarter, probably would have lost $3 billion, $4 billion

dollars in the quarter, which is, which is pretty bad, obviously. Now, so

surprising the stock didn't die.

Yeah, well, what happened when I start today? I didn't even, you know, I've

just literally just woke up.

It was up a little bit, but not much.

But they, so when, when Tesla released their earnings, the, the stock

actually went up because of the beat. And, and then as soon as you know,

people started digging a little bit, like, like things that I just said, like

this article I posted, like within half an hour of the earnings release. So

people, I'm sure I'm not the only one that figured that out. And then Elon

started talking on the call. And that's when things went down pretty

quickly. I think by the end of the night, by the end of the call, Tesla

was down like 2% or something. And part of that, I think that the main part

of that is Tesla confirming that they're going to start losing

money by the end of this year.

Well, yeah.

And, and a bunch of other things, so especially the comments, the

comments around the RoboTaxi and full sub driving. So the first one

here that we covered is RoboTaxi launches. So that was straight

from the earning straight from the shareholder letter. So it was not

that much information, but they basically just updated

this chart here that says where Tesla is going to launch RoboTaxi

next, all the other cities. So obviously, Dallas and Houston

sort of already happened last weekend. The Tesla literally put

like one car in each market called it an expansion a few days

before earnings. If you want to call that a stockpump before

earnings, I would. But the, so yeah, ramping on supervised,

it's now listed in Austin, Dallas and Austin. But the shifted

preparation underway in all these other cities here, except

instead of first half of 2026 I was listed before. So it does

look like some of these going to be delayed. But after that,

there was also a mention of unsupervised self driving

and consumer vehicles, which I think is always the most

important benchmark because there's a lot of gold posts moving

across the board with Tesla. But this one is the one that has

been promised since 2016, has been sold to consumers since

2016. I think it's the most important benchmarking. And

yeah, that also has been pushed. So, you know, it was

supposed to be at the end of the last time mine was supposed

to be by the end of 2025. It didn't happen, obviously. Then

there was no update. Now, Elon is aiming for Q4 2026. But yeah,

his exact language is I'm just guessing here, but probably in

the fourth quarter. So yeah, he at least he's being honest

about it. Like I said, this this call, he was a lot more

honest about these things. And the keyword that's doing all

the lifting here is guessing. He's guessing. And that's the

only thing he can do about these stuff because Tesla doesn't

really know what happened. But what was really telling and

interesting is that he got a little bit poked about like, what

are the steps that needs to happen to get there? And I

think the question here was framed. Yeah, it was framed in. He

said that v 14.3 was the last puzzle piece to achieve

all super fossil driving. I'm sorry about getting my nose

a little bit stuffed after an argument. And the so where you

go from there, you said it's the last piece of the puzzle, you

just released it. What do we need the next to achieve on

survival of driving in consumer vehicle in your course? And he

he was kind of obviously frazzled by that, because he didn't

like, you kind of painted yourself in a corner when you

said it's the last piece of the puzzle. So he's like, Yeah, it's

the last piece, like everything is there. Obviously, I think it's

safer and then human. But then he said the edge cases or the

problem, which we always knew, obviously, and he cited like

complex intersection unsafe attrition or bad road markings

where there are challenges as factors slowing the rollout. I

think it would release unsupervised gradually to

customer police as we feel a particular geography is

confirmed to be safe. So basically, he wants to validate

in specific areas over time, and then release into the

consumer fleet, which is, you know, exactly the way more

approach, exactly all of their geofence approach out there

exactly things that Elon poo pooed for years. I mean, in on

is on the record selling that if you have a geofence

mapping system, you, you know, you don't have real self

driving. And it's exactly what this is the point right now. So

yeah, the plan appears to be that eventually this is going to

allow consumer vehicles to be unsupervised in the same areas

that this the as rubble taxi. So in this case, it's, you

know, a very small part of Houston, Houston, and Dallas.

And it's also extremely limited in the in term of what you

can do there, like any kind of going to go on highways or

things like that unsupervised. So it's nothing basically, it's

not happening. It is. It's what I'm when I'm seeing these

comments at these days, I call them stalling tactics. Now

it's just a way to keep people thinking that yeah, okay, it's

there's progress. It's happening. But ultimately, it's all

stalling tactics. It's just it's just what it is. Then it was

asked about like, yeah, we could kind of met unsupervised on v

13. But why would we because we know that we have big upgrades

coming in v 15, that will make the car a lot safer. But then

if you take that approach, you will never release on

survival driving because there's always going to be a new

update that's going to be safer coming down the pipe. So

again, another another like stalling tactic that that makes

no sense. And then probably the biggest news growing unsupervised

in their earnings, there is regarding the hardware three. So

there was a new admission that hardware three is not going to

support on on special driving. This is nuts to me. So we've

been talking about this for like two years, three years now

that we've been saying like, it's not going to happen on

hardware three. We're also super skeptical on other word for

obviously, but like, our word three is for who the hell thinks

that Tesla is going to release one of the greatest AI product of

all time on 10 year old hardware on one of the most

transformational mobility product of all time on 10 years old

hardware is just it's not going to happen. And, and there was

obviously the 2025 early to January 2025 admission that it was

going to happen that they can be sort of backtrack this

admission. And then they say they're going to do the v14 light

which makes no sense because it's a light version of something

that it's not unsupervised. So why would you even care about

that? And now he again, I don't know if Jamie actually got the

quote. Yeah, okay. So the new quote here is unfortunately,

all the way to we wish it was otherwise, but our three simply

does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised for

self driving. We did think at the one point it would have

that but relative to type over here, or to where for it has

only an eight and remember this because this is important

here. It has only an eight of the memory bandwidth of our

workforce. So the memory bandwidth is the actual

bull neck here. And the memory is one of the key elements

needed for unsupervised fsd. It's generally a thing that gets

that thing that's needed for AI. If you're doing an auto

regressive transformer memory bandwidth is the true point.

So he said not enough memory, they cannot do it on our

three. And then what they said is absolutely nuts. So how do you

fix that? Well, well, the first part was not two dots. I'm not a

fan of it. But they said that you're going to offer discounts

on upgraded to our four cores. They didn't go to you don't

didn't go to details about that was what those discounts are

going to be like or anything. But you're going to offer

discounts on them. And they're also going to do

upgrades. The so one or the other, I guess, and the the

upgrades even said that this is gonna we have the full quote

here. Yeah, for customer that I've bought fsd what we're

offering is a sincere trade in like a discounted trade in for

cars that have hardware for hardware. Yeah, you trade in

your hardware three course because I think that's what he

meant. So you get I think the discounted trade in

I don't I don't think even that you get a discounted trade in

offer, you get a higher trading offer for a free car to

compensate for your hardware for car purchase. That's what I

would cash with interest. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, is that is that

equivalent to what you paid for more like we don't know. We

also be offering ability to upgrade the car to replace

the computer and you also need to replace the camera. So

he also admitted it's not just the memory. It's also the

camera. The problem. Oh, that just changed all story change

right there. Unfortunately, to go onward for do this and

officially, we're going to have to set up kind of mini

factories or small factories and major metal plant area in

order to do it efficiently because it's if it's done at

service center is extremely slow and so inefficient. And we

basically need mini production lines to make that change. And

I do think over time, it's gonna make sense for us to

convert all of our three cars to our word for because that's

what's enabled them to enter the real taxi fleet and have

them survive some time. Okay. Okay, a lot of cars. It's all

the bullshit set who in the right mind believes that this is

going to set up many factories. We're talking about millions

of cars here to change the computer is one thing if it

was really just the memory the computer swap is not too

bad. So we still have to design a whole new computer

because there's the hardware for computer doesn't actually fit in

the hardware three cars, you have to change the the camera

on this isn't everything. But then you have to change the

six camera modules in millions of cars at the same time. It

makes absolute no sense. It's not going to happen. It's

just simply simply won't happen. You have to

reimburse everyone. That's it. Compensate everyone

financially. Maybe and don't do it as a discount on a new car.

Some people not gonna want a new Tesla but after being giving

you what is basically a 10 year long interest free, you

gonna think everyone's gonna want a new Tesla? It's just not

gonna happen. So you just have to reimburse everyone and then

pray don't sue you for for more because they probably are

entitled to more. Yeah, the hardware three comments was

actually she nuts. Then you said that cyber cat production

started in on the earnings call you now said the release this

picture of it. Also, it looked different with different with

the picture. Look like they changed the the finish of it

apparently to use it like a new plastic finish like a glossy

finish and I mean, I've never been a fan of the cyber

cat as a whole. But I honestly do think that it makes it

worse like I did like the metallic finish a lot more. What kind

of tacky like gold but like this is like tacky plastic key kind

of a look that I'm not a fan of. Yeah, and the cybercab it's

just hard to get excited about it because it's purely, you

know, something that's going to be used in those verbal

taxi pilot projects. So, you know, it's it's very limited

use is no hard to get excited about that. Alright, and then you

remember, I just mentioned the memory issue in ardo or three, you

know, I'm just hammering that the problem with actually on

supervised driving in ardo or three is the memory and ardo or

four has a lot more memory. And you know, I'm also talked

about ardo or five and say, you know, he's been going

back and forth about ardo or five even making it to test

the vehicles. He says, you don't need it. We're good

with unsupervised. I was running over for but not during the

call he says that eventually we'll make it to cars, but we

don't really need it. We want to do it more for data centers

and optimists. But now what we learn is that this actually

has an ardo or four plus coming. And this is something

different than the ardo or 4.5 that we've seen before. So

it's not officially announced ardo or four plus and set what

do you think is different in ardo or four plus?

Everything.

The memory. So the actual bubble neck in ardo or three, the

memory that is now completely fine in ardo or four is getting

an upgrade with ardo or four plus with more memory and

significantly more memory double the memory. It goes from 16

gigabits per chips to 32 gigabits per chip 64 gigabits

with the two redundancy chips. I think I think this is room to

be. Well, we're always worried about other where for but AI for

now that he called it, but not that the AI for plus is coming

with double the memory. I think that this is like seeing a need to

get more memories in those cars to achieve to fit bigger

neural nets, bigger models that are safer and you need

bigger models and safer models to achieve unsupervised

driving. So yeah, it's this this is on launching into

production next year, depending if you're waiting on on

Samsung. So Samsung is making the upgrade there. Well, yeah,

it's, it's crazy stuff. All right, one more earnings news in

the test that didn't announce that on the shareholder later,

nor in the earnings calls that followed. But yesterday, for me

yesterday, I don't know when is when, but you know, when the 10

Q came out, I was digging into it. And I saw that this actually

disclosed like really buried into the finding that they bought

an AI hardware company for up to $2 billion. So in April,

so we think the company entered into an agreement to

acquire an AI hardware company completely unnamed here for

up to $2 billion in Tesla common stock in equity awards, of

which approximately $1.8 billion is subject to certain

service condition and performance mouse on the

dependent on the successful deployment of the company's

technology. So it's, it's probably a fairly small company.

Even though it's $2 billion sounds big, but it's $200 million.

The actual purchase is really $200 million. And then the

is $1.8 billion that the investors can get depending on the

department of technology. So it can be said that maybe like some

kind of, what's the word? Equia, is that a lot of money for

an act bar, though?

It is. But, you know, even is getting like a trillion dollars

in stock compensation. And this is like nothing in compared to

that. And the thing do come in, do say that it's all Tesla

stock and it's equity award.

All funny money.

So yeah, exactly. And I tried to like dig into what what it could

be like it could be anything. Like I said, I think I think

it's, it's would be hard to figure out what it is right now.

Like I'm going to figure it out. You know, I always do within

a few months, especially looking at like, linking people and

moving from one side or the other eventually eventually I

figured out. But right now, I think it's probably too small

for me to pinpoint it. You know, like SpaceX just announced

like some a right to acquire closer for $60 billion. And

then this is like, yeah, this is like nothing compared to

that.

Start with Elon's cousins, you know.

And that was like, that was that like, is that like 1.6

billion?

Most of us, but it was. Yeah, we're we're way past those numbers

that. All right, one more test and use before we jump into other

news. We are live as usual. So if you guys have questions for

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you do it. It's free to do it takes a second.

Alrighty, model YL has been spotted in the wild in

California near Palo Alto. And it's the first time it's been

seen driving in US rules. And it's clearly a prototype

version. It has like the classic Tesla camouflage. I

don't know why it's like, the fact that it's camouflage is

the reason that people spotted it because otherwise

people it's hard to tell like I've seen, I've seen a

couple here actually a bunch of model YL in China. And the

only reason I can tell it's a YL, it's either it's right

next to another model Y or I see it from the back and I see

the little L badge on it because it's just an extended

wheelbase. So that's it. But yeah, the why it's

interesting model YL being spotted in the US is that it

wasn't even confirmed really that it was going to come to

the US. You know, I said that it might, when it was

launched in China last year, he said that it might never come

over. Because of the advent of self driving, which we always

said was a stupid thing to do because well, first of all, it's

not nowhere near, you know, self driving, unsupervised

self driving at scale. And also if you do achieve

unsupervised self driving at scale, model YL is a great

vehicle to put that in and to use that as a real taxi

service. I would argue it's better than the current model

Y that he used and a lot better than the cyber cabin,

though less efficient, I guess. But you know, Tesla

should probably should have just like Uber as a

Uber XL option to order if you're a bunch of people

that want to split it. You should have the cyber

cab around if it's just you and you and somebody else.

And then if it's like six people, I just I'll just

order a double taxi XL model YL. But now that it's been

spotted testing in US roads, it's probably confirmed

that Elon, you know, some some Tesla employees and

Tesla executive Tesla convinced Elon to just do it

because it just makes sense, buddy. All right, moving

on set, you you reported on the launch of a new

Cayenne and you can't coupé. Yeah, don't you

like that look? It's kind of a stunner. It's a great

picture. Yeah. So yeah, Porsche, you know, we've

known about the Cayenne electric for a while. It's

kind of an SUV looking vehicle. And now they have

the coupe, which is still an SUV similar insides. But

much much, I would say much handsomer, much more

like a, you know, has some 911 type of vibes in

it. But, you know, I think that the thing that

everybody kind of flips out at is the Cayenne's

just absolute just crazy numbers. So you got a

2.4 seconds zero to 16. Of course, that's the

turbo model. There's an S model that's a little

bit slower. And then there's a just a regular

model that's only, you know, 100 something

thousand dollars. This, you know, the coupe has

a nice low drag coefficient of 0.23, which

is below the SUVs 0.25. You know, it does all the

cool Porsche stuff like torque vectoring on the

turbo and S models. You know, it's roomy inside.

It's bigger than a Macan. I think it's the

most powerful Porsche ever with a crazy, you

know, it's like 1.1. Sorry, 1,100 something

horsepower. It's also, you know, just bananas

numbers on this thing. 850 kilowatts and 1,139

Yeah, and like over 1,000 foot pounds of torque

just absurd. And then, you know, it's got a lot

of other stuff that's kind of cool 800 volt

charging just like every other Porsche. But with

such a big battery, you're talking about 400

kilowatt charging, 10 to 80 percent charge in

just 16 minutes, which is, you know, we're

getting close to a gasoline speed there.

And what's kind of nice about Porsche is that

they have chargers on both sides. So this will

have a NAX port on the driver side. So for

superchargers, whatever. And then a AC only

J1772 charger on the other side. So kind of

nice for folks that may be charged at home with

the, you know, an old fashioned J1772, but on

the road, they want to hit the, you know, the

superchargers. You got both there. And of

course, you can have an adapter as well.

Also, Porsche has got this beautiful interior,

you know, kind of stems from the Taycan, but

in the McConn, but Cayenne as their kind of

flagship is even more impressive. And, you

know, it's obviously similar to the SUV. So,

you know, you're kind of getting that same

interior, but in a more sporty exterior.

I just, you know, it's just like kind of

baffling the numbers that these vehicles are

throwing up now, just super fast charging.

You know, beautiful that this one goes off road.

But the prices of course are absurd, not absurd.

I mean, you're getting probably one of the

one of the better vehicles in the world,

starting at 113,000 and then going up to 168,000

and then before editions.

Yeah, beautiful car.

Well, before that, like it just was just a few

years ago, if you needed a thousand or

smaller vehicles, like it was a supercar,

you know, and they needed to be like a

low to the ground supercar. Now, yeah, like

they call it an SUV, but with that coupé back,

like it's pretty much like a crossover,

but it's still pretty big.

The BMW i7 was on view.

Matt is not happy that we're talking about

the Porsche in the middle of a revolution

of transportation. Brainwashing. Matt,

if you're still listening, Matt, you know,

when I don't know what brainwashing

you mean, but we don't do any of that here.

We talk about actual facts. So if you have

any counter-arguments about what I said

about the situation, which all coming

straight from Elon, straight from Tesla,

just putting them in a more realistic point of view.

If you have counter-arguments, that I'm

willing to hear them, but we don't talk

about like these small brain thing

and sold brainwashing thing. That's not

our type of thing here. So you can move on

if that's what you want to talk about.

The i7 new class, so the new generation

of the latest and best, biggest also sedan

from BMW with the latest new class design here

that, you know, we've been happy to see

like the Bverti, the Kine, Kine grill go,

but damn, they didn't want to stay too far from this one.

Though just like this that we talked about

with the car here and the spec on this

are not bad at all. They're pretty impressive.

So four of them, 50 miles of range,

all that, that's going to be WLTP to assume.

Very like boxy for a sedan, very,

and of strong front-end, strong, well,

again with the Kine grill, I don't know if they

call it that anymore, but inside, you know,

they've been this new new class, this new new

class that doesn't roll off the tongue.

They have this display with like sharp cut corners

in the front and like just a smaller version

of it for the passenger. I'm not the biggest fan

of that, but I do like these new,

sometimes they call it heads-up display, but

and I don't know if I would call them that,

but these new like deep in the dash display,

I do actually like them quite a bit.

There's a bunch of Ecos in China and I have that now,

and they are a great solution where it's kind

of a mix between an instrument cluster,

but instead of putting in front behind the wheel,

you put it away for their back to dash.

So it's between an instrument cluster

and a heads-up display. I like those quite a bit.

I think these are going to be a trend in the future,

in the industry.

They have the latest Alexa and Amazon-based system in there,

powering the operating system actually on the low-U.

Beautiful interior.

So, yeah, 113 kWh battery pack. So that's a huge pack,

447, 720 kilometers under the WLTP,

probably like in the I-300 under the EP, I would assume.

Charges 0 to 10 to 80 in 28 minutes.

Sorry, pretty good.

But the pricing is also up there,

because this is the top of the line of BMW.

It's $107,000, the base price on this.

And it's coming to dealership in the next few months, I think.

Then in China, I was here with X-Pang,

brought me to the show here, thanks to X-Pang,

and I got to see their new GX flagship SUV

in person, kind of a Range Rover competitor,

about half the price of a Range Rover.

Even though it's half the price, starting at $58,000,

the price is still from, like I've been just poking around,

because the Chinese market is so,

and this is going to get beyond the Chinese market, by the way,

so you can get excited about that almost here in the US, obviously,

because X-Pang is one of the new Chinese brands

that is expanding internationally,

most aggressively, I would say, you know,

other than BYD, probably.

And the, but on the Chinese market,

they need to be successful on the Chinese market, too, obviously.

And a lot of people, they're only complaining about this,

at $58,000, this is a little bit too expensive, I think,

is that the competition is just not here.

But you get a lot for $58,000, or basically $400,000 one.

Range of up to 750 kilometers, 466 miles,

but that's CLTC, so if it was like EPA,

I would say would probably be in the mid-300,

so 350 or so, which is still very good.

But that's the all-electric version.

There's also a range extender version

that puts the range closer to like 430 kilometers,

so you get around 180 miles, I would say, APA,

and then the rest is a gas generator.

Which is also not a bad solution,

because 180 miles a range

will get you commuting, driving all the time,

and then if you want to get a real long distance, you do that.

Personally, I think where the charging infrastructure

is already there, you don't really need that,

you can go just the all-electric version.

But in China right now,

it's getting very popular in the extender range version.

Yeah, you get steer-by-wire for that.

You get super fast charging,

you get a crazy interior,

super luxurious interior with these beautiful captain's seat

in the back, automatically soft closing doors front and back.

You get beautiful UI in the front,

you get the massaging seats,

you get a screen also popping out to here,

you don't see it, but it pops down for the back seat.

You have a nice video of it,

I'm doing a walk around,

but I was trying to upload it last night from the hotel room,

it just was opening so slow.

As soon as the podcast is over,

I'm going to add to the article a video of it

where you can see a better look of the interior.

Now, this is where X-Men lose me a little bit

with the L4-ready stuff.

So, Seth, I'm going to post today the article

for you, it's probably going to be Saturday at that point,

but the article on the VLA,

so I did try the,

so there's going to be a podcast exclusive,

I did try the VLA 2.0 around Beijing yesterday.

Did you get a gold bar?

And they didn't actually do that,

they gave up on that,

and I do understand why they gave up on that,

and it has nothing to do with the performance of the system

and everything to do with the people behind the wheel.

Because VLA 2.0 is level two as it's the driving,

so you're responsible and you can take over

and you should take over if you feel the need to.

But I was like, so there was a bunch of people

driving all around this part of town here

near the airport with X-Pine on VLA 2.0,

and I was behind a nice little lady,

I think it was like an Indonesian lady,

who was obviously not used at all to VLA driving

or level two driver assistance driving like FSD,

and she, I did my whole drive,

like a 45-minute drive without zero intervention,

went pretty smooth, very impressed with the system,

but to me it felt like it was FSD V14 really,

it felt very similar to that,

a little bit more aggressive maybe than V14,

maybe like V14 or Max mode,

but half the trip I was following this lady,

which was also in a P7 from X-Pine doing the VLA drive,

and it's cool, on these vehicles here,

they have indicators from the outside

that you know if they're using a driving assistance system,

so I could see when she was using it,

and when she wasn't, and when she was disengaging,

and this woman was like very cautious

and disengaging at every opportunity possible,

so you can really do that.

But for me, especially me,

it was my third time driving in Beijing,

so I'm a little bit more used

of the driving style of people here too,

which is super aggressive,

so I let it do its thing, and it did extremely well.

There was one time that I almost pressed a brake,

because I don't know if you know,

you know when you're allowed to turn right on a red light,

but I don't know about you,

but in Tibet, the way we do it is that we do it,

but we do it as a stop,

so you stop at the red light,

make sure it's safe, and then you turn.

That's the normal approach, right?

And in China, they don't do that.

Like, if it's a red, but you're doing a right turn,

you just go if you can go.

You don't stop.

So first of all, I didn't remember that,

so I was about to press a brake,

but the guy was like, no, you're good, you're good, you're good.

So I'm like, okay,

but then we were turning into a road,

a multiple lane road, full of traffic,

like the people were coming in fast,

so I was looking at the incoming traffic here,

and I was like, whoa, is it going to go straight into that?

And then there was one car coming in,

and it looked like it was about to get in front of it,

but it slowed down and brake just at the right time,

and then squeezed between two cars expertly.

Like, it was really nice.

I've never seen like FSD being aggressive enough

to squeeze into a level of traffic like that.

Like, when I tell you that there was no room

between the two cars, basically, it was very impressive.

But I was like, this goes on the brake at that point.

I'm going to have a full video of it.

I don't know if it's going to be able to do tomorrow

because they're sending me the footage and everything,

but it's impressive stuff.

The only real intervention that I had

was pressing on the accelerator at one point,

because just like Tesla, there was an issue with,

it was 70 kilometers limit,

and it was driving at 40 kilometers for some reason,

so that happens all the time with FSD also.

So just press on the accelerator

and it just picks back up.

But yeah, it's, VLA 2.0 is probably on par with FSD in China,

which is stuck at V13, and getting pretty close to V14.

The goal that they set out is that,

so they are very well aware that Tesla is stagnant

with FSD in China for a really good reason,

and so they actually sent out engineers

to test out FSD V14 in the US

because their goal is that

EVLA 2.0 in China, from Spain,

is as good and better than the latest FSD available anywhere.

And their goal is to achieve that,

to achieve parity by August,

and honestly, I think they have a good shot at doing it.

And now what I like about X-Pane compared to Tesla

is that they don't tell you,

oh, we're going to release some,

so we don't sell you,

first of all, they don't sell you anything

because the VLA 2.0 is free.

It's included in the car,

and they don't promise you that it's going to be unsupervised.

But they do say the same thing that Tesla,

like, hardware-ready, though, for this GX here,

so that's how we came to see it.

It's L4-ready, so it's level 4-ready.

Just like Tesla, they only have cameras in there,

but they do have a crazy computer,

so they have their own Turing AI chip that has 3,000 tops.

So they think that's what they say when it's L4-ready.

They think that L4 models is going to fit easily into their system.

So still about wire.

I'll already mention the six-layer redundancy,

aviation-inspired system, any other price.

It starts at $58,000.

That's the only thing I've heard people say that's like,

yeah, it's priced a little high for China.

So $58,000 is not cheap,

but you get a vehicle to that.

You tell me a GX or a Range Rover,

which I think starts at like $110,000.

Honestly, it's like the sports version of like $90,000.

I would take this any day, over a Range Rover, honestly.

And for people who need to understand,

if you ask like, why do they cut costs and everything,

like is the fit and finish and everything,

the fit and finish I've seen here in China,

and not just expand, like from most of the automakers

has been incredible.

In those price range, like if when you get over like $40,000,

$30,000, they beat the West on everything,

including fit and finish.

And you kind of, for the GX,

you kind of need a good fit and finish,

because if you look at the lines here,

the lines are kind of, it's a bit like what Elon said

with the Sabre truck,

like you have to have great fit and finish

on it otherwise it looks horrible.

Other people think it looks horrible without that too,

but that's another thing.

All right, then the Hyundai also had a big unveil

at the show yesterday, the unveiled the Ionite V,

which might look like a concept vehicle to you,

but it's not.

It's actually a production vehicle.

So it's interesting.

I'm not at it.

I think it's, they're trying something.

They're really, they're bringing a car to production

that is completely different from anything else.

It's a single line.

Make me a car that's half Lambo, half Pontiac Aztec,

half CyberCab, half, I don't know.

Yeah, I called it like a useful version of the CyberCab,

but like you know, I'm not the biggest fan

of the CyberCab design,

but it's also different.

This is like a single line from the front-hand

all the way to the back, a smooth line all the way through.

So you get kind of like a Cybertruck-like dash hood

and windshield, because Cybertruck is also like one line there,

but it breaks off at the roof, go back.

Yeah, it's a whatever.

They haven't released all the specs on this yet.

I think there is a range specs.

They talked a lot about the inside too,

which very minimalist.

I'm not mad at the inside.

It's okay.

They have CATL batteries in there,

powering an 800 volt architecture.

The range, Celtic 600 kilometers of range,

expected to be 450, 400 ETWLTP, 280, 300 miles EPA.

But yeah, there's not much other spec on this.

It's going to launch later this year.

And yeah, they're trying something wild,

something different,

because Hyundai is not doing super well in China enough.

So they're just trying to sell basically.

The pricing obviously is going to be the difference maker here.

Yeah, I'm not practically mad at it.

Yeah, it's fun.

The proportion works.

Like the proportion, for me, like the Cybertruck cab,

for example, which most people compare this to the Cybertruck cab,

proportions are weird on the Cybertruck cab.

Like it's tall, it's narrow, it's all about efficiency,

which I get, but it's just a two passenger vehicle.

Like this is a four doors, looks pretty roomy inside.

It's probably not for everyone,

but the proportion works for me, I don't know.

I do get the Lambo comparison though.

All right, Hyundai had also another unveiling this week.

The Ioniq 3 has been fully unveiled,

which is, if we're going to do another comparison, it's the...

Man, what's the name of that car that they have?

Hyundai, the Velo...

Velo...

Delay.

Is that a...

The Volvo?

Do you remember?

The Volvo Velo?

I don't know.

No, it's not a Volvo.

It's a Hyundai, it's like the small Hyundai.

It's actually like a two door or something.

Yeah, yeah, it's something like...

You know what I'm talking about.

I think it's like a two door or...

Yeah, Veloster, Velostar.

Veloster.

Veloster, all right.

So it looks like a little bigger version of that,

which I always like the look of the Veloster actually.

It's a bummer than I don't remember how to spell it.

But yeah, it looks like a tiny little extended version of it here.

Some aggressive looking badgeback

on the Velo Milan this week.

It's on the EGMP, just like the other IONIQS.

So a two battery pack.

You got a 42.2 kW battery pack in a 61,

so that's one of the smaller

that you pack out there for the latest generation of EVs.

213 miles of range.

213 miles of range, 244 kilometers WLTP

on that 42 kW battery pack.

So it's more like a city car.

And then you can get the 61 kW battery pack

for 308 miles of range for 196 kilometers,

which is going to be closer to like 270 miles maybe, if an EPA.

But I don't think this car is coming to the US anyway.

But you can still have this as like a road tripping.

Like you can go long distance on it

with the bigger badgeback, I think.

Because you do get pretty good charging,

10 to 80% in 29 minutes, 30 minutes for the bigger pack.

Only a single front-mounted motor on this, so no hot hatch.

You know, this could be like a fun car to drive

with like two small motors

or just one bigger rear-wheel drive motor.

And even with a small battery pack,

probably a lot lighter with a small battery pack,

this could be a fun car to drive.

It has the latest Prius Connected Portainment System in there.

You can have it in 12.9 and 14.6 display.

A lot of manual buttons, like the analog buttons on this.

It's even smaller than the ID.3 in the Bolt EV.

It's really one of the smallest EVs out there right now.

Smallest, like still full performance EV,

like, you know, the smaller EV like the Honda E,

the Mini, the Smart and all that,

but like it's, this is like still,

you can get a 61 kHz battery pack in this thing.

So, it's a full EV.

Also with all the latest driver assistant tech on this.

And the price, the price is where like it's,

so the starting price, 25,000 pounds,

that, yeah, that's pounds, that's what it was, right?

So the equivalent of $33,500.

Yeah, so you can, the Bolt start out, what these days?

Like, you know, Chevy Bolt, I think it's just under 30.

Yeah.

It's a harder sell, I think.

But again, it's not, I would assume these prices

include that too, since this is Europe.

Yep.

All right, still at the show,

CTL had a bunch of unveiling this week.

They, they showed the Unveiled new battery pack,

especially a Sodium Ion battery pack,

but they also like updated the entire lineup of battery

sell, and now they have like a very,

always had a pretty deep lineup,

but then they have something for everything.

And the Sodium is a trend that we're seeing in China

right now, really popping up.

It looks like it's, it's ready.

Well, Sodium has been around for a little bit already,

especially in the energy storage system,

because the, the energy density was not quite there

for mobility just yet, but now it's getting to a point

where you can actually put this in a car

and get the decent range,

and then that battery is going to last forever

because Sodium has great longevity,

and also some great performance in the cold.

That's what they are featuring here.

BYD did the same to the, they have,

they actually have in their boot,

they have cold chambers at minus 30 Celsius,

and they are freezing cars for like a day,

and then they demonstrate the charging

by plugging in at 100 kilowatts,

1000 kilowatts, sorry.

So 10 to 98 percent charging in six minutes.

So that's the other thing with Sodium,

so you can push it like higher.

You don't need that buffer at the end.

So you can basically push it to 100

in just six minutes, it's just nuts.

So they won up the second generation of the BYD blade

that was nine minutes, just a few months ago.

So then this is rolling out right now,

like this is going to be in cars in 2026.

The CATL chief scientist Wukai at the event said that

he believed that LFP is nearing its

theoretical limit regarding energy density.

So we're great leaps in energy density with LFP

in the last few years, enabling them to now be

the leading chemistry for electric vehicles.

It's still not as good as an MC or NCA,

but it's good enough that most EVs can just use that.

And then if you want a higher end EV,

you go with these other chemistry.

So now he says that the next generation to push this

further with better performance and lower cost.

So I think Sodium also aims to be lower cost.

I don't know if it is lower cost than an FB right now,

but I think the path is going towards there.

Because you need to remember that the cost is important

by the kilowatt hour.

So if you have a lower density, then you need more battery.

So you have more batteries, it's hard to be cost sensitive,

but they see a path there.

All right, two more news article,

and then we jump into the comments section.

So if you guys have comments for us,

you can put them there right now

and we'll get to it in just a few seconds.

Rivian this week, nothing too crazy.

They just the announced that they are starting

customer vehicle production for the R2 right now.

So a few weeks ago, it was the validation units,

really the production start.

Now the official production for customers

are starting with deliveries expected to spring.

So any day, any month now.

But I think the official timeline is June

for customer-customer deliveries,

because I think they are counting also employee-customer

deliveries too, because employees are actually buying the vehicle.

But the first, I think if it is going to be

like a customer launch, it's going to be in June probably.

But this is impressive, especially if you'll miss this,

but the factory in Illinois got hit by an EF-1 tornado

that ripped off a significant part of the roof,

specifically in the building where they are building the R2.

Fortunately, no one was hurt or anything like that.

It did create some damages and everything,

but RJ this week said that it doesn't affect the timeline.

They are good to go.

The work keeps going.

So the R2 is coming.

Yeah, and I won't say anything about it,

but there is going to be,

because we get in trouble for things like that,

but there is an event coming up.

That's all I'll say.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, don't say no more, Seth,

because last time we got in trouble.

Yeah, I'll explain.

Another thing I want to mention quickly

when I explain is I think it's worth mentioning.

I'm not super hyped about this,

but I need to do like a quick biacupa and say,

this thing is actually happening.

These flying cars,

so they call it a flying car.

It's not really a flying car.

It's basically a man drone,

but it's an electric,

vertical takeoff and landing deco.

The why they call it flying cars

is because it's being sold combined

with this giant van here,

which is an electric extended range van.

And it fits in the back of the van

and you can deploy it and fly it out.

So X-Pang under its A-Ridge division

has been working on this for a while now.

And they've been pushing the deliveries

of these for a while.

And the other people, including myself,

were pretty skeptical about them

actually releasing this thing.

But last week,

earlier this week,

I actually went to the factory.

So they build this giant factory here,

which is not just a rendering anymore.

It's a real thing.

It's a real giant factory.

And I walked the factory.

I couldn't film inside the factory,

but I walked the factory.

And I can tell you for a fact

that they are building these things,

like for real.

It's also, I got to say,

so I posted on the channel the flight.

They show us a demonstration.

It's nothing too crazy to see,

to be honest, which is just flies

like 20 meters in the air

and move around a little bit

and fly back down.

But the prototype,

now the production intent vehicle

that they use,

I saw a prototype of it last year

when I came in China in November.

And I was not impressed by it.

I was like, this is,

this looks very flimsy.

This looks put together last minute.

But this looks like pretty beat up really.

But this version looks so much more refined,

so much more production ready,

so much more like just packaged well.

And then I walked the production line

and there were no jokes.

Like a dozens of bodies going through assembly

then a few like nearly finished units

going through final assembly.

And then I think eight or nine units

that I counted

that were in various stage of QA

are completely finished.

And there was like,

maybe a hundred workers

working your production line

actually building these things.

And it's a giant factory

that they plan to expend

to 5,000 units in there.

So I don't know if that's going to happen,

but they're for sure building these

and planning to deliver them to the customers.

And they do have a ton of reservation

actually with significant deposits for these.

The use case though

is where they'll lose me a little bit.

Like it's the aim at the leisure market right now.

And so the regulations are obviously a big issue

also with these things

that you need to be able to find them.

In China, they do have regulations specifically

for this type of lightweight vehicles

that do make sense.

So it's like two weekends of training

and you can get a lot of your license.

And then there are plenty of every year

when you can use them.

There's like 3,000 national park in China.

So what they want to do is

they want to build like small little resorts

or like camping grounds

where you can go

where expand as those

or if you have your own,

you can go there

and fly them around

and visit the national park with that.

You can fly around for about 20 minutes

with them and then fly back.

So it's not,

it's a toy for the rich more than anything.

With the range I mean?

So as most,

they say 20 minutes of range more than

they don't talk about actual like distance much.

But it has two battery packs.

So it has like a total of

224, 25 kilowatt hour battery pack

but you can only use one

because there's always a redundancy one.

So everything has redundancy.

So if anything,

what I think is most interesting about this thing is

their approach to like the technology

innovations that comes with this

that can be applied to another thing

including the battery.

Like they make an insanely,

insanely lightweight battery pack.

I think this whole thing is like 700 kilograms.

So it's pretty big.

Like it doesn't use that big right now

but you can fit two people in there.

You know, it has a 50 kilowatt hour battery pack

or 225 kilowatt hour battery pack.

The propellers are pretty big.

Everything is carbon fibers.

And then it can also be all folded together

into the back of that van like I said.

Though I've seen them,

I have never seen them getting it in or out.

I just showed it,

did a demonstration yesterday

but the demonstration handed with like the

aircraft being like halfway inside the vehicle.

So I'm not,

I don't know if they're still figuring that out.

And all the demonstration would seem focused

more on the aircraft rather than the van

which is a brand new vehicle for Expand 2.

Expand as a van,

which is a very nice van by the way,

but not an RS6WI or like this.

But it looks like this is actually happening.

It's happening.

All right.

Yep.

All right.

So you know,

we talked a little bit on the

previous about the setting up

mini factories in metro areas

that you learned talked about on the conference call.

Also, I had a good laugh when I heard,

uh-oh, where'd you go Fred?

When I heard next month.

Sorry, I just...

For the Roadster reveal.

Yeah, did we talk about the Roadster reveal?

Oh yeah, I think I forgot to put it in the podcast notes.

Oh, sorry, that's my bad.

Yeah, it pushed maybe next month.

That's what you said.

Maybe.

Oh, I don't know if anyone is shocked.

And also never,

ever.

All right.

If Tesla sets up a bunch of regional money-losing

miniature factories to retrofit the cameras

and hardware three cars,

I'll eat my shorts.

All right.

You're...

It says that.

Don't, uh, don't worry about that one.

All right.

I'm sure all these companies booking tariff relief funds

are going to lower the prices on their products.

Now, since it was the customers

who ultimately paid those tariffs,

I don't expect Tesla will be doing that.

No.

Yeah.

I saw that the Nintendo customers

are suing Nintendo for the tariff relief funds.

And you know, good companies,

that's what they should do.

Like if you pass along the tariffs to

customers and you're getting it back,

like just get it back,

especially if you're a profitable company and everything,

it's just, in my sense.

All right.

When will Tesla update to 800 volt and improve charging?

This has not improved since the launch of the Model 3,

almost 10 years ago.

Isn't the Cybertruck 800?

Yeah.

The thinking was always that,

you know, Cybertruck was the first one

and then he's going to trickle down through the lineup.

But, uh, and, you know, 800 volt is not

necessary for everything.

You know, you can have a great charging curve

without an e-download system.

And, you know, Tesla's Model 3,

Model Y are not the cheapest vehicle,

but they're not, you know, not expensive either.

So if they can get it there at the price range, good.

But we thought always that it would actually come to the more S and X.

Guess not.

But obviously, you know, you need space to build robots.

Yeah.

I think the Optimus is supposed to be 800 volts.

So that's good news.

All right.

Trump is the number one seller of EVs globally.

We talk about this in the Slack room a little bit.

Europe EV sales are up 50 percent

and China has government-controlled gas prices

for the last two weeks.

Prices went way up.

So this month EV sales should be way up.

Yes, Trump.

Yeah, I was talking to people.

I was talking to people in China about this.

And, uh, because I was talking to a guy that, uh,

you know, was really curious about, you know,

where I'm from and, uh, like how goods or EV sales,

where I'm from and everything.

I was like, yeah, it's, you know, it goes up and back.

But like in Canada, it's like 20 percent.

So we're better than the U.S.

I'm like 8 percent.

And it was like, so in China, it's pretty good, right?

But you guys are like 50 percent.

And it's like, yeah, that's what they're saying right now.

But you look at the stats in the next few weeks,

next few months, it's going to be all EVs

because of the gas prices, you say?

So I said, no one is buying a gas car right now.

So that's, that's, that's good.

Tesla in the call also mentioned it

that they saw their European sales go up

in the last few weeks, uh, with, uh, due to gas prices.

So that's good for Tesla

because it was sitting on like a 50,000 extra production

last year, last quarter.

So they're going to be able to work through that a little bit

with, uh, things that hire gas prices.

And Tesla said they would not produce the Roadster

for at least a year.

I guess, crazy, not shocking.

Yeah, it's like, okay, because they said

that they're still like validating for a demonstration.

Not, that's not an excuse

for not doing the demo this month, as promised.

So, uh, if they're doing validation for a demo,

that means nothing.

You're pretty far from, yeah, you're far from production.

Uh, let's see.

Elon laying the blame for FSD,

never working on memory bandwidth,

is like Sam Elton telling everyone

their jobs will all be gone soon,

as they can build all the data centers,

con men who forgot to flee.

Interesting.

Well, Elon is also saying that

all our jobs are going away

and we're going to have universal basic income,

universal high income, sorry,

because basics is not,

doesn't sound as good, right?

No, it's abundance.

No, basic income.

There was abundance everywhere.

Yeah, amazing abundance.

All right, let's move on here.

Have you guys or anyone in the media

tried to get access to one of the newly delivered purge,

oh, I think he meant verge motorcycles,

to inspect their batteries,

assuming some have been delivered?

Yeah, no, we, we, you might have,

I don't know if you missed the podcast last week,

but we are, we actually discussed this where,

you know, this, this whole donut

barry thing is becoming less and less

credible.

You know, looking like, yeah,

credible, that's a good word.

You're even getting soon,

the, the, yeah, they're even getting soon

by one of that pro-year of nano Nordic,

that is, or Nordic panel.

That's not a good look.

That, yeah, not a good look.

All right, Mark Bober SF says,

the new i3 and i7 have ugly butts.

Okay.

Well, I don't even know

if I looked at the rear end of them.

Oh, you look fried at the rear.

I'm sure you looked at the rear.

All right.

One of the nice points about the

latest Chinese extended range EVs

is that they are offering over 200 miles

of EV only range DC fast charging

and a good EV only range

will only help future E revs compete.

Yeah, I like those extended range EVs

for those people who are not going,

like people who just want to put gas

in the car.

I feel like that is the

that's the bridge they need to get to EVs.

Yeah, because they are EV first

and they are decent EVs, right,

with the ranging standard.

And then after that, they have the option.

And I think it's just for a couple of reasons

is for, you know, there's places

where the charging infrastructure

is not quite there yet.

And also, you know,

there's a lot of people in China.

There's a lot, a lot of people.

There's a lot, a lot of charging also.

So that's good.

But if you cannot have home charging,

cannot have like city street charging

or whatever, you want to have,

you know, your car to keep going.

So they charge their car with gas,

basically.

But it's China is moving super fast

to be 100% electric within the next,

you know, less than 10 years, really.

And the thing that helps them get there

because, you know, you could,

you could use that car in 10 years

and never have to actually put gas in it.

So that's the way that they see it basically.

All right.

Do we talk about the Kia EV3 and Hyundai Ioniq 3?

I believe Kia EV3 will come to the USA.

But why do you think the Ioniq isn't?

I think we saw it at the New York Auto Show.

So it's definitely coming.

Yeah.

Maybe you should, but have they announced it for the Ioniq?

I don't think so.

But I mean, this is a matter of time.

Yeah.

Maybe.

The metallic gold color Hyundai is using,

is using, has already been ruined by,

for me by the CyberCab.

And okay.

And we talked about the VeloStar.

I don't know how to pronounce that correctly.

Veloster.

I like I3 and IX3,

but I don't like the I7.

All right.

We're talking about BMW's.

Yeah.

Yeah, I do.

I'm not a fan at all of the latest design from BMW,

but the IX3 I think looks awesome.

So it's kind of hit or miss with them.

Veloster has three doors,

one on driver's side,

two on passenger's side.

That's wild.

I was lucky to see it during the Focus Group stage,

years before it launched.

One of Hyundai's better designs.

Okay.

I never realized that.

Yeah.

You know, I kind of,

that is kind of an interesting idea.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I'm driving into the out.

It makes sense.

Yeah.

I, you know, you bigger door on the driver's side.

I'm driving into the outskirts of Chicago as we speak,

so I can sit in the R2 tomorrow.

Yeah.

If you're in Chicago,

the R2 is making its debut there.

I think they should cancel the R1T low sales number

and build an R2T truck.

45K based on R2,

because smaller, more efficient GVV truck.

Also, I think Chevy should build an Equinox EV truck.

40K.

Yeah.

I really want to see a small electric EV

and hopefully Slate is not the only one to do it.

We know Ford is doing it.

So, let's see one of them.

Yeah.

I'm done with all that.

Question.

Why have Rivians,

lease prices gone up so much for the R1?

Sure they need the money

and sure R2 is cheaper,

but the lease rates have gone up so much.

I would assume that might be because of interest rates.

Yeah.

I'm not following that at all actually.

Yeah.

Maybe they just want a bigger differentiator between the...

Well, I would assume that they're not going to release a lease on the R2

right away though.

So maybe, yeah.

Skeptic says pull-self flying should be easier to achieve

than pull-self driving

just because aerospace is more forgiving

to deviations than a road.

Is that a logical expectation?

That part is,

but you also have to avoid other flying things

which may not be as easy.

And you also have more dimensions.

Driving is two-dimensional.

Yeah.

Flying is three-dimensional.

Yeah.

But that expanding as a little pilot system

that flies by itself too.

So you can manually fly it

or you can just tell it to go back

to a certain location and it will.

Without the full self-flying,

the flying car market won't happen.

I mean, we have airplanes, but...

They figured out that the roaring 20s was too close to home

for all these massive wildfires

taking a doubled year over a year so far.

What is this context?

I don't know what they're talking about.

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

Question.

Do you think the tide is turning

on the seemingly unwavering faith

of the Tesla Elan ardent fans?

Are people coming to their senses?

Yeah, really.

I thought the reaction from the earnings call

was bad all the way through.

I think most of the fans were like...

Other than that, of course,

if you look at the big X account,

like the propaganda in this,

like Sawyer and Omar and everything,

you can forget about it

and for sure they're going to keep doing what they do.

But from the smaller accounts,

a lot of them were like,

hey, what the hell is going on?

But if anything,

Enon was just a little bit more realistic in this entire...

He was a little bit closer,

and I mean,

the closer he's doing a lot of the carrying here,

but closer to the truth than he usually is,

and they got mad at him for it.

It's pretty funny to me.

Yeah, I don't think that much going to change.

The only thing that might change,

and I'm going to start like a hater

and a shorter and everything like that,

but they confirmed that they're going to lose money.

And maybe if they lose money,

maybe the stock reacts accordingly

and settle down a bit.

And if it does settle down,

maybe that is the trigger

that gets the investors maybe think again about Enon,

thinking that maybe his approach is not the right one.

I've always said that I think the stock price

is the only thing that's going to make the shareholders

just not like Enon,

because they think it's kind of a money-making machine.

And nothing changed for me in my mind

that Enon is just not taking this as our direction.

Changing your mission to amazing abundance is just...

You're losing your mind.

And you're losing talent.

You're losing...

Like a company ultimately,

and I'm citing Enon here,

is just the people that is the company.

Like the people that work at the company

makes the company.

That's it.

And a lot of people at Tesla came at Tesla for the mission,

a lot of...

Especially the top talent.

The best people,

they were extremely passionate about the mission

and also building cool shit.

Because you're engineers,

they just want to build cool shit.

That's what they want to do.

And now Tesla is not building as much cool shit.

Self-driving is cool for sure.

I'm not saying it's not cool,

but hardware is cool too,

and building cool vehicles is nice.

And I don't see Tesla doing that much right now.

Like CyberCat to me is just not a cool product.

And that, with also the lack of a passion for the mission,

Tesla is losing time left and right.

And I think ultimately,

that's going to be the end of Tesla if that keeps going.

So if the stuck crashes,

and people turn on him,

and maybe you can, you know,

re-steer towards the...

Because I think Tesla could slap a much greater impact

than it has right now on accelerating EV adoption,

and especially in the US.

Like, this is like 50% of the US market,

but the US market is nothing compared to the rest of the world.

It's 8% of new vehicles or EVs.

It's so bad for a first world country.

Yeah.

You know what?

For me, it's interesting that a lot of these folks

are more aligned with the stock price than Elon.

Like they get mad at you.

So it's interesting.

It'll be interesting to see what happens if he tanks the stock.

All right.

Elon's is on the record a few times saying

that the stock price is too high at Tesla.

Yeah, it'll be interesting.

I wonder if there will be a class action suit

for hardware threes, full self-driving computer Tesla owners?

I think there's already a few of them.

It is not as critical as people who paid money for FSD,

but there will be many more of us who are displeased.

Yeah, anybody who bought hardware three car should be displeased.

These used to say we were entering the roaring 20s,

but dropped it for abundance.

That's the roaring 20s era.

Ah, OK, OK, I'm fine.

That's on GM cancelling future updates to its large vehicles.

I think you'd get a post on that like Silverado and Hummer.

Yeah, it was actually in the next generation of the vehicles.

I don't know if it was like a refresh

or the full next gen of these vehicles,

but there was a report coming from Crane in Detroit,

which usually they are pretty connected

with the big threes in Detroit Crane.

So the report carries some weight.

And I shared the report on that extract with my comments on it.

GM reached back to us and it was not exactly a deny.

They just say that while we haven't said anything,

it was like, I know you haven't said anything.

That's why people were reporting from sources.

So it's not like a real like deny of it.

So I think the report is probably correct.

And we know what GM does.

GM, they follow the political winds in the US.

I wonder though, I mean, 200, what, 205 kilowatt hours.

That's a huge battery pack,

especially now that there's gas,

like Ford's going to like a gas backup,

Rivian kind of tops out at like 140 kilowatt hours.

Maybe they're just like toning that down a little.

A 200 kilowatt hour battery is just massive.

So maybe there's something to that.

Yeah.

I think it's fair to say that every month,

Elon loses some muskites and never gains any new ones.

I don't know.

I mean, they gain new ones all the time.

This is a moron born every minute.

Like it's just gains new ones.

I think you're right that the rate is losing more.

He's losing in them at a higher rate than he's gaining new ones.

But he's gaining new ones.

There's morons more in every minute.

All right.

That's all for the useful comments.

Yeah.

All right.

Thanks a lot for listening to the electric podcast this week.

I'm going to go back to sleep because it's 5 a.m. for me here.

I'm going to see you same time and place next week.

I'm going to be back in Canada Monday.

Tesla Cybercab

Tesla Model Y

Porsche Cayenne

Porsche 911

Porsche Taycan

Land Rover Range Rover

Mclaren Sabre

Aztek Pontiac Aztec

Tesla Cybertruck

Hyundai Ioniq 3

Hyundai Veloster

Toyota Prius

Volkswagen Id3

Rivian R2

Tesla Model 3

Tesla Roadster

BMW i3

Kia EV3

iX3 (G08)

Rivian R1T

Chevrolet Equinox

Chevrolet Silverado

Original notes