Polestar is a car brand from Sweden that focuses entirely on making high-end electric cars. They used to be a special performance division of Volvo before becoming their own separate company.
Geely is a massive car company based in China. They own several famous European car brands, including Volvo and Lotus, and help them build new electric vehicles.
A connected car is simply a car that has its own internet connection. This allows it to get map updates, stream music, and let you control things like the air conditioning from an app on your phone.
The Polestar 3 is a sporty, luxury electric SUV. It is designed to be fast, comfortable, and packed with modern technology, competing with other high-end electric family cars.
The Polestar 4 is a sleek electric SUV with a very unusual design feature: it has no rear window. Instead, it uses a camera on the roof to show the driver what is behind them on a digital screen.
The Polestar 2 is a compact electric sedan with a hatchback trunk. It is designed to be a direct competitor to the popular Tesla Model 3, offering a clean Swedish design and sporty handling.
The Volvo EX30 is a very small, affordable electric SUV. It is designed to be eco-friendly, using lots of recycled materials inside, and is perfect for city driving.
The Chevy Equinox EV is an electric version of Chevrolet's popular mid-sized family SUV, built to offer good driving range at a price that normal families can afford.
The Highlander is a large family SUV made by Toyota that has three rows of seats to carry up to eight people. It is famous for being a reliable, everyday family vehicle.
NIO is a major electric car company from China. Instead of making you plug your car in to charge, they are famous for stations where a machine swaps your dead battery for a fresh one in just a few minutes.
The Seal is a sleek, electric four-door sedan made by BYD, a major Chinese electric car company. It is designed to be a sporty and modern electric car with a high-tech interior.
The Model 3 is Tesla's smaller, most affordable four-door sedan. It runs entirely on electricity and features a very simple interior dominated by a single large touchscreen in the center of the dashboard.
The Cybertruck is a large, electric pickup truck made by Tesla that looks like a futuristic, metallic triangle. It is built with a shiny, unpainted stainless steel exterior instead of traditional automotive paint.
The Model X is Tesla's large luxury SUV. It is best known for its rear doors that open upward like wings, making it easier to get in and out of the back seats in tight parking spaces.
The Model S is Tesla's large, luxury four-door hatchback. It was the car that made Tesla famous by proving that electric cars could be fast, luxurious, and travel long distances on a single charge.
FSD stands for Full Self-Driving, which is Tesla's software that can steer, brake, and accelerate the car on city streets and highways. However, the driver must still pay attention and be ready to take over at any second.
The Tesla Model Y is a highly popular electric family SUV. It looks like a taller, roomier version of the Model 3 sedan and is known for its great range and high-tech features.
LIVE
Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable
energy, autonomous driving and much much more. My name is Bode and I am your host. We are
recording this week. I am recording this on a Thursday sitting outside while my kids are doing
martial arts and it's it's been a good week. It's just a busy week so I'm a little
late in getting this out but lots of good things going on just taking a lot of time so
this episode is going to be a little different just because you know there's just like putting it
together I've just been piecing it here and there as I've been able to have a little bit of time to
work through this so keep that in mind it might be a little bit shorter I don't know I tend to
think that these things take less time to record than they really do but in reality I usually end
up around 20 minutes so as I'm sitting here watching through the window the kids doing their
jujitsu my daughter was working with another kid and that kid got up and he must have gotten hurt
so if I sound distracted I just want to make sure it looks like he's okay.
Anyway moving on we have a new Patreon supporter and that Patreon supporter's name is Ben. Ben
thank you so much for supporting the show. I've had an opportunity to have a few interactions
back and forth with Ben so I really appreciate that he came over and decided to start to support
the show. If you would like to support the show you can go to patreon.com forward slash kilowatt
or support kilowatt.com and when you do that if you go to support kilowatt.com you could choose
to support either on Patreon or Supercast however it makes sense to you and I only ask for a dollar
so that will be the Patreon plug I'll keep it real quick. Let's go ahead and dive into our EV news
Polestar which is a Swedish company.
They are owned by Gili which is a Chinese company and right now I don't know how many people
wear this but the U.S. and China Chinese relations aren't fantastic at the moment
in I think it was under the Biden administration they actually put a ban on Chinese connected cars
in place and the Trump administration left it in place that's how I understand how this whole
thing worked but the ban includes any model year after 2027 so 2027 and beyond well Gili
owns Volvo they also own like I said they also own Polestar and Volvo is actually we talked about
this a few weeks ago they actually received approval by the U.S. Department of Commerce
to bypass this connected car ban and Polestar did not get that same approval to bypass it
it doesn't sound like Polestar was like fighting it super hard honestly but yeah so Polestar
will no longer be able to sell cars here in the U.S. doesn't mean they won't be able to sell cars
elsewhere just here in the United States they after the 2027 model year comes around they will
not be able to sell cars so it's it's 2026 and that's it we will not see any 2027 Polestar's in
the U.S. unless something crazy happens now the interesting thing is the Polestar and the Volvo
EVs and Volvo and Polestar share a lot of the same DNA and their infotainment systems their
connected car features are built on Google built in so they're run on Google built in which is the
same thing that Chevy is using and other automakers are using so for Polestar not to
to get approval seems a little weird to me if Volvo could get approval it's not to say that
they're exactly the same just because they're both built on Google built in you know they can
customize it here and there to suit their needs so it may be that there's something different about
what Polestar is doing versus what Volvo is doing but because they're both owned by the same company
because they're both Swedish owned companies and I believe Volvo actually owns a portion of Polestar
as well there should be some communication back and forth to how they could make this whole connected
car thing work now it's not just the infotainment system that you know that the U.S. government
is looking at it's the whole connected car and where it's phoning home to and all that other
stuff and so there's a lot to this that I'm oversimplifying but what I really kind of
want to point out is because they're both owned by the same parent company and they both are built
on this a lot of the same DNA you would think that they would be able to figure that part out
so that Polestar could continue selling cars here in the U.S. and if I had to like think of
why this is an issue is maybe Polestar's aren't selling that great here in the U.S.
anyway and then they decided you know what this isn't just this isn't a market that's
going to work out so why try and that might be the case I don't know but I do
think that it's interesting that Volvo was approved Polestar wasn't it is also interesting
because Polestar has manufacturing plants in the United States not Polestar I'm sorry
Volvo has manufacturing plants in the United States and right now Polestar is there are
some Polestar's produced in the United States but they're also coming out of China and Korea
so I don't I mean that that might also play a factor in this like South Carolina plant is where
they're building the Polestar 3 the Polestar 4 is primarily built in South Korea
and the Polestar 2 is typically coming out of China so with that you know I don't know
the bummer on this is that we're losing a really good EV car here in the United States that people
who own them love them so that is a little bit of a bummer but to celebrate the fact that
there are ending operations in the United States Polestar is discounting the Polestar 3 and the
Polestar 4 at the moment they don't sell the Polestar 2 in the United States anymore just
like they don't sell the Volvo EX 30 in the United States because that's also built in China but the
the discounts on the 3 and the 4 they're pretty significant it could be up to $23,000 for the
Polestar 3 and up to $25,000 off for the Polestar 4 so if we look at this a Polestar 3 now starts
at $54,000 a Polestar 4 which is reviewed really well now starts at $35,000 if you wanted to pick
up an EV that was a really good value this would be the time if you were interested in Polestar
now there are different terms and conditions you have to meet to get the $25,000 or $23,000 off the
cars so please go and do your your your research but if you meet the conditions that's a pretty good
number $35,000 like we're looking at Chevy Equinox
prices for $35,000 and a Polestar 4 I'm looking up the range here real quick
yeah the single motor Polestar 4 has got a range of 310 miles if you're looking at a dual motor
it's 280,000 miles or 280 miles it's got a range of 310 miles for a single motor and a
range of 280 miles for the dual motor if you want the performance you're only going to get at 255
miles but still $35,000 is a great price for that car
okay um it's it's a new month we're sitting on July 2nd as I record this and in the new month
and it's a new quarter and we usually start seeing delivery numbers so I was going to
talk a little bit about delivery numbers and I'll pepper our men and over the next couple of shows
as we get more information but Toyota sold 17,500 EVs and my first thought because I had just done
a story or I just put in a story about Neo which we'll talk about in a second my first thought was
that was how many they sold in June and I was very impressed and then I found out it wasn't
I'm still impressed because it's Toyota but Toyota sold 17,500 EVs that was for the first half of
2026 you know they have some they have the Toyota Highlander coming that's going to be all EV they
got some cool stuff coming in terms of EVs over the next year or two so we'll see what happens
with Toyota but yeah that's not a great number overall for six months for a car company as big
as Toyota but they're also you know not really selling a lot of different EV brands so they've
really kind of put the their efforts into this next series which will be start with the Highlander
and so on and then and they they they have some newer you I don't know I don't want to go too
much into Toyota anyway they it's not just the the Highlander there's other stuff going on
um now let's move on to Rivian deliveries Rivian delivered 12,194 vehicles in Q2 of 2026
that is up 14 percent year over year so that's a great bonus
improvement for Rivian their initial guidance was they were going to sell or deliver between
nine and 11,000 cars over Q2 of 2026 so they certainly beat expectations and Rivian is
actually revised their delivery guidance so initially they said they're going to deliver
somewhere between 62 and 67,000 EVs in 2026 they are now saying they're going to sell between
or deliver between 65 and 70,000 vehicles and I'm sure as Rivian is as they kind of get on
board with production on the R2 as that ramps up I'm sure R2 is going to make up a decent part of
that you know 65,000 to 70,000 vehicles so we'll keep an eye on it Rivian I think their earnings
call is July 20th so we will for sure cover Rivian's earnings call this quarter I don't
think I'm going to do a Ford and GM unless something crazy comes out of their earnings
calls because they just were not that interesting to me um overall so we'll cover Lucid and Tesla
and Rivian oh and just kind of a side note here I didn't write this down but Lucid is doing a big
shake up in the C-suite they got a new CEO and that CEO is making sweeping changes in the C-suite so
if we have time you know in a future show and it's still relevant I'll talk about that but
just keep that in the back of your head finally NIO had a pretty good June sales were actually up
for NIO 63% year over year so NIO had a total of 40,597 deliveries in June that is a fantastic
number for NIO if you're looking at how these deliveries were split up across NIO's three
brands so you have NIO that's the the main brand that they started with they delivered 21,908
vehicles and then you have the Envo and the Envo has vehicles that are competing with like the
Model Y they they're a little bit more money but they're less money than let's say the NIO brand
those uh they delivered 11,743 of those vehicles and then they had the Firefly which is their most
affordable brand um when I say their most affordable brand when you compare the Firefly with like a
BYD Seal the Firefly's about twice the price so they delivered 6,946 Fireflies which honestly
I'm a little surprised about because this is supposed to be their their really affordable brand
their compact car their their you know the the plan was to sell them in Europe and you know Australia
New Zealand and stuff like that and it just they started production last year in 2025 like April
of 2025 and they just really haven't um taken off like I think they should have now granted this is
almost 7,000 cars in a month whereas Toyota is only delivered in the United States 17,000 cars so
you know it's not in the first half of 2026 it's not nothing but I would have expected them to
have much higher sales of the Firefly so I wonder what's going on there in the markets that they're
selling that car all right let's move on to our Tesla news and we're going to start off with
Tesla's delivery numbers Tesla had a fantastic Q2 2026 when it comes to production and delivery
numbers as a matter of fact it is there if you look at all of their quarters throughout the history
of the company this is the fourth best quarter they've ever had so when you look at 2025 especially
the latter half of 2025 and the first half of 2026 we had some down numbers for Tesla
and it looks like those numbers are starting to tick back up again in Q2 2026 so starting off with
the production numbers when we look at Model 3 and Model Y production they in three months they
produced 442,936 vehicles I mean this there other than BYD they're just eclipsing
everybody in the EV market and then when we look at other models which include Cybertruck,
Semi and Model S and Model X they produced 8,822 that's a grand total of 451,758 vehicles produced
in three months which is just an amazing number all right let's move on to our delivery numbers
and yes I am in fact back in my studio if it sounds different it's because I'm back in my studio
so now delivery numbers when we look at the Model 3 and the Model Y
they delivered 467,762 vehicles that is just such an amazing number you know in one quarter they
delivered what a lot of EV companies would love to deliver in a year one quarter and then when we
look at other models again that includes the Cybertruck, the Semi, the S and the X and I would
expect that we would have you know a little bit bigger SNX sales just simply because that was the
end of the of an era with the SNX they delivered 2,364 EVs total across all four of those vehicles
uh let's see and that gave us a grand total of 480,126 EVs delivered in Q2, 2026 so pretty good
I mean it's a hard one to you know you can have a lot of bad things to say about Tesla and you
you just can't argue that they're a popular they they build a good car
it may not be to your liking but they build a good car it's relatively fairly priced and people
tend to like them so yeah Tesla's earnings call will be July 22nd at the end of the month here
so we will make sure to cover them as well this next one's a bit weird since December of 2025
deaths there there been uh somebody has stolen batteries from Tesla
a minimum of 11 times since December of 2025 and it's not that they sold they stole a couple of
battery cells here here and there they saw whole battery packs whole power walls in some cases
and it's just like in December they sold they stole excuse me about half a million dollars worth
of of batteries and then that happened one time they sold they stole two full trailers
and then in January that happened to nine more times they stole these trailers so what
it happened was the thieves exploited security gaps by using fake IDs and they had you know
relationships with different Tesla shipping companies and they were able to gain access
through you know different failed security protocols on Tesla's part and the and the
shipping companies part to make these thefts pretty frequent and you know two full trailers
of power walls in December like I said were totaled that $475,000 that's insane so what it looks like
it happened is the freight broker that Tesla uses contracted the jobs to fraudulent carriers
and that's that's how you know they were able to just drive away with trailers full of batteries
at this at the time that the article was written that I'm getting this from
there was three arrests made and it does sound like you know the authorities had put GPS trackers
in the trailers and they're able to kind of track down at least some of the people who were doing
this but you would think like if you made it away in December of 2025 if you made it away with
over half a million dollars with the batteries obviously you're not selling those poor power
walls anywhere because Tesla once they're activated Tesla's going to be like we know this is a stolen
power wall where'd you get it and they'll be able to track it back but maybe they could take these
apart and sell the modules or sell the individual battery cells that kind of thing right um but
that would be that should that should be where you stop you know doing this 10 more times at least
10 more times you eventually Tesla's going to catch on and they're going to be like oh yeah we're
going to let you steal something and we're going to track it and then we'll catch you and that's
what they did so anyway i thought it was a weird story all right uh fsd yeah we have a new fsd version
for hardware or ai3 vehicles it is fsd version 14 light so hardware for vehicles already have
version 14 this is the
this is the lighter version this is the not as full featured version of fsd version 14 that
hardware for vehicles have this is actually the first fsd or major fsd update for hardware
three vehicles in around 14 months and it's not to say it's they're not their first update for the
vehicle itself it's the first fsd major update and a shock a la swami had this to say fsd version
14 is now rolling out to ai3 early access customers based on the feedback will roll out to more
customers over the next few weeks this build distills the driver behavior from ai4's version 14
series into both camera and compute config of ai3 it includes destination options speed
profiles on city roads but more importantly significant improved safety we hope you'll
enjoy it once it ships wide the build ships wide so in the release notes this is what it says
distilled intelligence from hardware three version 14 into hardware three
it allows hardware three to directly learn how to handle scenarios using hardware for v14 as a
guide this process unlocks the improvements that have been made to hardware four including reinforced
learning and offline models for hardware three so i'm reading from reading this right it's basically
we took the intelligence from ai or hardware four vehicles and then we pass that down into hardware
three and it can phone home based on and learn based on hardware four experiences if i'm reading
that right it also improves both proactive and reactive response across a wide variety
categories including navigation handling merging forks pedestrian interactions traffic lights
and vehicle cut in scenarios improve general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer
false slowdowns smoother steering and more consistent lane centering that is fantastic
in introduced parking unparking and reversing capabilities um unparking is a funny term added
arrival options for you to select where fsd should park whether that's going to be in a
parking lot or on the street or in the driveway or on curbside speed profiles are now available
to further customize driving style preference this update is in my opinion pretty impressive
especially when you consider that hardware three or ai three has about 15 of the cube the memory
bandwidth that hardware four does so we're definitely you know constrained with hardware three
and it sounds like they were able to take a lot of the features that hardware four had and bring
them to hardware three obviously this is not where we need to be in terms of making it so that
everybody can have a you know level four level five experience with their car but uh you know
it's a step in the right direction of uh but until they can basically replace the hardware four
computers that are replaced hardware three with hardware four computers or ai three and ai four
so yeah um i need to start saying ai i it's it's hard because we started off with the hardware
nomenclature and then uh they switched without telling anybody to ai and they talked to people
like they were dumb if they were saying hardware instead of ai but really like ai three
hmm i mean it was just to call out hardware three hardware four i don't i don't like ai is
something different so anyway whatever that's what they're doing uh this will like a shock said
once the the testers you know get it and start playing with it and you know it rolls out to
more people it will be um a wider roll out in the us and then maybe the rest of north america in
terms of this being rolled out to e u countries uh or excuse me approved e u countries china south
korea new zealand and australia that's probably going to be sometime in the future um and it's
going to be in the order that i just set it in but i can't imagine that uh tesla's going to roll
this out uh across multiple countries quickly i remind this is going to take some time so
in the end though i do have i have plenty of criticisms when it comes to tesla but i do
think this is a step in the right direction uh a little update we talked about the car accident
that occurred where a tesla driver drove into a house in katie texas and killed a 76 year old
grandmother the driver is being uh uh he's going to trial for manslaughter so just kind of fyi
just a little update on that i mean it doesn't mean he's going to be convicted of manslaughter
that just means he's going to trial um and then you know we'll see what happens after that um
oh you know what there's a new model y did is everybody wear this uh the model y l premium
or the longer three row model y is now available for sell here in the united states or excuse me
it's available for pre-order here in the united states and it is a little bit longer than a
standard model y and initially they're only going to sell the model y l premium which is a three row
car um so you'll be able to it'll have two captain seats and then two seats in the back
so it'll fit six it looks like comfortably and you know i don't know how much comfortable more
comfortable this is going to be than like a model x it kind of looks tight back in the back seats
there but that's just based on tesla's um based on their images i'm trying to look and see what
the overall so the overall length is 195 inches tesla doesn't make it easy to compare here compare
models oh they do make it easy to compare i'm just stupid uh so we'll do the rear wheel drive
with the model y premium all wheel drive all right so we're looking at some significant
pricing differences i can make this bigger um if we're looking at the starting model y
that starts at 40 000 whereas the starting price of the model y premium is going to be 62 000
range is going to be 325 miles uh 0 to 16 4.4 seconds so uh that's not too bad you're going to
get 12 month trial of fsd versus uh when you buy a new tesla now you get a one month trial
and then it's 99 after that more options to exterior colors get a couple of different wheel
options uh you can choose between all black premium interior or that really pretty zen gray
interior that we talked about a couple weeks ago uh you know you get the extended range or
extended storage the first row gets heated and ventilated seats um the the seats the two captain
seats in the back have armrests that automatically go up and down so that's pretty cool uh let's see
here 18 inch audio system or 18 speaker audio system so yeah i mean i don't know that i'd want to
spend 61 000 on this car but it's the initial rollout is the premium so i mean it's it's pretty
cool i'm gonna see if i can does it show what the the cargo space you get 89 cubic feet in the
premium versus 76 cubic feet and just in the standard model y um
let's see how long much longer this is model y
hold on this is riveting i'm sure scroll all the way down to the bottom
we are looking at 188 inches so we're looking about seven inches more in the premium
model y l versus just the regular base model standard model y so i don't know i mean depending
on how you configure that seven inches you know there's a little bit of space you can
with the seats were up you could push those seats back a little bit further so and make it more
comfortable for the people in the back seat um interesting though we'll we'll see how people
here in the u.s uh like it all right everybody well that is it for me i've
blathered on long enough hopefully you enjoyed this episode if you have any questions you can
email me it's bodi b o d i e at 918 digital dot com thanks again to ben for signing
up and becoming a patreon patreon patron uh sorry thanks to ben for signing up and becoming a patron
and then uh one more thing oh if you want to follow me on linkedin it's bodigrim b o d i e g r i m m
and that's pretty much the only social media that i'm halfway uh active on but i do respond to my
emails not always quickly but i i do eventually respond so you can email me as well all right
everybody thank you so much and uh our next episode will either be an interview or news probably news
and then the next one will be an interview so i hope you all enjoyed this episode and i will talk to
you soon
you
About this episode
Polestar faces a major setback as the US connected car ban blocks the brand from selling vehicles past the 2027 model year, prompting massive clearance discounts on the Polestar 3 and 4. Meanwhile, the EV market sees a strong Q2 rebound. Tesla posts its fourth-best quarter in history, Rivian beats expectations and raises its yearly guidance, and Chinese automaker NIO reports surging June sales. Host Bode breaks down these delivery numbers, compares Volvo's regulatory escape to Polestar's fate, and analyzes what these shifting market dynamics mean for buyers looking for massive EV discounts.
In this episode, we dive into Tesla's spectacular rebound as they crush Wall Street expectations with their fourth-best quarter ever, driven by a massive 25% surge in Q2 deliveries. We also break down the surprising news of the U.S. government muscling Polestar out of the American market over connected vehicle rules, leading to staggering $25,000 discounts on remaining stock. Plus, Tesla officially launches its highly anticipated, larger 6-seat Model Y L in the States, offering a compelling blend of space and range. Over at Lucid, a major C-suite overhaul signals shifting strategies following recent layoffs, while Rivian celebrates a stellar quarter fueled by intense anticipation for the upcoming R2. Finally, we uncover a wild true-crime wave hitting Gigafactory Nevada, where thieves have repeatedly made off with entire truckloads of Tesla batteries.
