Tesla's Supercharger Team laid off - What does it mean? | Tesla Motors Club Podcast #64

Hey there.

Welcome to another TeslaMotors Club podcast.

My name is Lewis.

I'm Doug.

And I'm Mike.

Today's episode will cover,, Tesla laying off their entiresupercharging team, , maybe sortof, and then bringing some back.

I don't know.

We'll see.

supercharger vandalism is on the rise,possibly connected, , some crazy newlow interest rate financing and more.

Episode 64 starts now.

Oh man, we're back.

we're back.

Hello gentlemen.

Hey,Here we are doing it again.

And it's too warm outside.

I don't know about where you guysare, it's getting hot in Austin.

it's perfect in the Bay Area perusual.

always,It is 70 degrees and sunnyhere in Southern California.

it's in the nineties here.

I was miserable going outside.

you can keep it.

yeah, no good.

So supercharging team, there's been alot going on , they laid them off andthen maybe they hired some back andthere's all this drama with an executive.

And Doug, why don't you,break this down for us?

okay, so there have beenseveral reports, actually,Electrek had relatively early report aboutthis and it got later reported as new newsfrom, , more mainstream, outlets, it'sthe kind of thing that, Elon would callfake news, and actually, if you look atit, the reports are, a little bit sketchybecause it's like, , unnamed sourcesinside or former employees still unnamed.

But the thing there are enough ofthem that it seems to corroborate.

That, basically, , this,, female executive.

Rebecca Tannucci had, , already done her10 percent layoff of staff that, , Elonhad demanded, the week or two prior.

, and he wanted more and she, , pushedback, , as, you would, in thatyou're running this team and, well,these are the people we need to have.

And dude, Tesla'ssupercharging is a rock star,That'sthe golden goose right there.

It's a competitive advantage forsure.

and then recently , you wouldthink that supercharging would be really,Accelerating what they're doing , to beready for different vehicles coming up,having more version four, , superchargers,, expanding existing supercharger locationsbecause of, , other EVs , coming touse that space so it made sense tobe, , putting more resources in thesupercharging, especially at this time,right now, as people are transitioningto the Tesla connector and somepeople, , doing it now with adapters.

, so it was a little bit surprising.

The timing, , but yeah, , shepushed back for seems like logicalreasons to me and Elon's responseis to fire the entire team.

, you would think that if she's not doingwhat he wants, then she would be theone fired, but he fired everybody.

Scorched earth.

which, is an Elonkind of thing to do.

, now the Elon fanboys that, , thinkhe's doing some four dimensionalchess you know, you've never run a.

multi billion dollar company,you know, what do you know?

yeah, that's true.

I don't know anything,See the engineers builtand designed the superchargers.

Once they've done that,they don't need engineersanymore.

They just, already built it.

So they just installed 'em places.

Right.

Like that.

I saw a lot of those threads and I waslike, oh, okay.

they're a bunch of Legos.

I mean, what was left was alot of people, , that were like,Oh, but we were in the middle of aproject,Who do we talk to?

Where do we get paid?

all my emails arebouncing now, what are we doing?

Cause it's not just Tesla, right?

It's, , the location, , the businessesaround it, the, people that actually ownthe space, there's local utility stuff.

It's a pretty complex tapestry of,different, organizations involved.

it's not like Tesla can justroll up and do it anywhere.

There are negotiations that , haveto happen , at many differentlevels for these things.

And that's what Tesla really had.

They had , , a team to do this.

And it's not just being anengineer or some book knowledge.

There's, , a lot of institutionalknowledge, , that, , wasbasically just, scorched.

Right.

, so yeah, I'm sure thosepeople will be fine.

Other people will try topick them up, I guess.

no, they are.

over the weekend.

People were saying that they hadalready picked up new jobs that theyhad offers in their inbox as soon asthe scorched earth was publicized.

People had offers.

So even if Elon wanted to hire some ofthem back, he may have missed the boaton that, that you can't rehire somebodythat doesn't want to be there anymore.

layoffs in general, typicallythe way to do it, if you need to do it.

You do more than you need and youhire back, you don't want layoffsto be a prolonged, painful thing ofpeople wondering, , for a month onend, you want to rip off the bandaid.

, so , that's typically thesmart business way to do.

It's not necessarily the mostcompassionate way, but in some waysit might be more compassionate, right?

Is that you rip off the bandaidand then you see where yourdeficiencies are and you hire back.

but specifically supercharging.

It just didn't seem to makea whole lot of sense here.

Yeah, I feel like, layoffs.

Are not necessarily a bad thing, ? It

makes a lot of sense at times companiestend to build up this cruft theyget bigger and bigger and biggerand they don't really prune down.

Most companies don't.

And so layoffs are kind of a wayto keep the organization healthy.

they definitely are not good when youdo a layoff every other week this teamspecifically, they laid off, , 10, 15percent of folks, and then they cameback and ended up all getting laid off.

, , Tesla's on a few, I think this year,like you're doing layoffs everyfew months, it's sends a lot of badsignals and it really hurts morale.

For example, I will protect the namesof the innocent, but I was, hangingout with some Tesla engineers, thisweek, , we didn't talk about anythingto get them fired, don't worry.

But the, but the overall, vibethat they conveyed to me wasthat, the morale was super low.

And to be clear, we were nottalking on behalf of the podcast.

They didn't know necessarilythat I was doing Tesla stuff.

, I'm just an engineer.

I was meeting with otherengineers but they basically wereasking me about career advice.

And what they should do and lookingat other roles because they're kind oflike, I may not have a job tomorrow.

, , they feel things changing andthe ground coming out from underthem, seeing these types of moves.

So it's not great.

, the way in which Tesla has necessarilybeen going about this kind of stuff.

Lately, I should say, , you add thatwith the timing of, the vote on , thepay package and all the other kinds ofstuff, and it makes it really question,what are the motivations here and whatare reasons behind why this stuff'shappening?

Yeah, I feel like themorale thing is a big deal.

A lot of what Tesla does, atleast it seems, is for thepurpose of recruiting, right?

all this Optimus stuff, the AI days,given what's happened recently, I stillthink Tesla is the place you want on yourresume, I guess, but is everybody justgonna look at it as a stepping stone,or here's a place to build a career.

And, , if people are.

Looking how, , like Elon's notgoing to treat his employees.

Well,would you really want tocome to Tesla?

you need that stepping stoneand you need the name, but you stillhave to support your family andyou still have to pay your bills.

Yeah.

I I guess the other thingis given the current.

Trajectory of the stock, , if you think,, that the stock options are going tohave a lot of value, then, then that'sanother reason to sign on beyond salary.

And I think the salaryis below market at Tesla.

years ago, that wasokaybecause of how well thestock did.

not today,maybe not today.

And I've, talked with people who've, gonethrough the Tesla recruiting process.

, that might be slightly dated because maybethis was like five or so years ago, but,it was like, you really need to believein the mission, and checking out howmuch of a true believer you are in EVsor , in what Elon's goals are or whatever.

, , , okay, maybe just your skills and you'reable to do stuff, but really believingin the mission to me sounded like anexcuse to be paid less, and to put in,, more hours than, you would normally,.,

Louis: Apple was similarApple had a similar,culture, certainly yearsago.

I don't know how it is today,but.

even that didn't save Tesla people.

I mean, there was a Tesla engineerthat lived in his car and showered atthe gym and they still whacked him.

, , he was obviously mixingand drinking the Kool AidI feel like the majority offolks at those companies, definitelyyou're drinking the Kool Aid andit's part of the culture, right?

Google was like that for years.

Meta you kind of have to be that way whenyou're in those types of environments.

, I've worked in startups it's part ofthe culture, it's just one of thosethings where I feel like most rationalpeople, you kind of feel that way for thefirst 10 employees, maybe the first 20employees, when you're getting to like.

Five to six digitemployees, like, come on.

Right.

At thatlittle harder.

harder to do.

And then also you're acog in the machine, man.

When you've got a hundred thousandpeople working on this thing, howmuch impact do you personally have?

Sure.

There are individuals thatTesla that have amazing impact.

Elon has phenomenal impact,that's the minority.

but engineer number three, thatdesigns a screw for a thing, right?

it's hard to live and breathe the companyat that point.

then when you're a part of ateam, that's extremely successful, doingreally good things and being recognized,outside the company so much.

And then,yeah, just getting whackedfor no fault of your own,Yeah.

Talk about whiplash.

that's, gotta hurt.

that's unfortunate.

it reminded me, Doug, how they, workwith other external organizations,cause they have to install these things.

There's all these contracts and deals.

It honestly reminded me of my wholesolar power wall debacle with Tesla.

I bought Tesla solar andpower wall for my house.

And they said, well, wecan't do that all at once.

We got to split the order becausethe batteries are backed up.

I said, fine.

In the middle of this, I don't know if hequit or he got fired, but the person thatwas in charge of my order wasn't there.

The email started bouncing back.

Next thing I know, Idon't have power wall.

I only have solar panels.

They never put in the other order.

They wouldn't let me buy them.

There's all this drama around itand now they will happily sellthem to me, but I'm over it.

I'm already like, you know what, whywould I buy Tesla Powerwall there wasgood alternatives out there, right?

it's possible they may have screwedup deals where there would havebeen superchargers that now therewon't be a Tesla supercharger there.

There might be a different companyor they might not do it at all.

It might impact.

, Evie adoption.

So it's never good when you have thosetypes of, things that come up that areunexpected when you're in the middleof working on a project or a deal.

to lack of transition, the lackof handoff is just unprofessional.

So hopefully this doesn'tcome to bite them longterm.

supercharging is one of.

The, competitive factors in Teslabeing so successful that network,Elon was the visionary behind.

We really need this network years ago.

And you have it, but you need to expandit to really grow the market how you want.

And now you've got all these otherautomakers all coming on boardto like use your superchargingnetwork, you're supposed to begrowing this network, right?

They had concrete goals of we'regoing to double and triple, andwe're going to do all this stuffplus, all the federaltax dollars he was goingand the tax dollarsyou're going to get.

And it's like, man, I hope youdidn't jeopardize all this withthese types of shenanigans.

supercharging in particular,if you think of all the sort ofdifferent Tesla moves, that oneparticularly is a stroke of genius.

One that I thought was nuts whenthey first started doing it.

At the time and, for yearsafterwards, every, charging, network.

For the most part was a failing business.

And I was like, why do you needto be in this business too?

Except that, Oh, really it's thebusiness of selling their cars.

and so that was really well done.

I mean, you think of otherthings like the shift to.

, autonomous driving, , that wasn'tan original Tesla thought, Elonsaw , the little Waymo cars and, he,man.

We've all seen it.

well, it's, that, like wewere talking about, with, XAI.

That's, uh, what about me sort of thing, Tesla moving to autonomy that was afterGoogle had , these little cat carsgoing around if you remember back inthe day and, I think, either Larryor Sergei had, said something, aboutit and Elon basically, Oh, that's thenew hotness, , I want a piece of that.

And that was a majorshift for the company.

And of course, now he's, for the mostpart, putting all the eggs in that basket.

, but, that wasn't an original idea, right?

but the superchargers that reallywas, as far as I could tell now, noother company was thinking to do that.

To, take that on , and that reallywas a stroke of genius and that hasset Tesla apart,Immensely.

It's not just a, supercharger,it's the execution.

you just drive your car upand plug in no card, no app.

Just plug it in.

the, beauty of the verticalintegration, yeah, I givethem a lot of credit for that.

So anyway.

Of course the network is stillthere, but to destroy the team,while they're in the middle of, goinggangbusters, that's kind of tough.

They're supposed to be expandingright so, yeah, it's kind of crazyand it kind of leads into our next,discussion point on it vandalism atsuperchargers, is apparently on the rise.

Apparently.

Mike, you can giveus a little bit of thedetails on this,so what's happened lately, and itis kind of made the mainstream news,is people are going in and cuttingthe charging cord from the top of thecharger and . The common thought is

they're cutting it for the copper.

They're trying to steal thecopper wiring and get a few bucks.

some of the more, conspiracy thinkingthe people that want to ice ourstations and they've decided theycan just cut the cord and not haveto deal with their truck park there.

, it's a payback as it were, butregardless of who's right on that?

It's certainly increasing.

They're seeing more and moreincidents like this taking place.

Either the cords are getting cut orthe stations are getting run over.

It's not helping that Tesla'sremoved some of the, bollards , tokeep people from hitting them.

And now people are hitting them.

I have to say, I was, somewhatsurprised that wasn't more of anissue in the past, but.

There's no camerasor anybody looking at them.

well, I mean, that's 1of the possible deterrence.

But, we've seen vandalizedlevel 2, stations for years foras long as they've been there.

Sure.

The European model is that.

Their level two chargingstations don't even have cables.

You supply your own cable.

you keep that in your car andyou plug in with the Meninke's,connector on both ends.

And that's mainly to prevent,cable theft, and vandalism.

, so I was sort of surprisedsince there's been news aboutit now, though, the rate, atleast thereports that I'm seeing are increasingAnd when you see the news reports, theymentioned, Oh, and you can remove thisand you don't even get electrocuted.

for that inside information.

that info.

Yeah.

I've seen videos of wHeresomebody cut the thing whileit's mid charge and sparks fly.

And the guy steps out ofhis car, like what happened?

And that's cause the dude juststole the cable mid charge.

, so it's troubling and it'stroubling now, especially, okay.

If that whole supercharging team gone.

Right.

Who's going to fix it?

The maintenance, right?

Uptime of Tesla superchargers far.

Better than any other charging network.

I think in part is a lot of thosecharging networks were essentially inthe business of getting federal subsidiesto build the chargers insteadof,necessarily run them.

Yeah,instead of maintaining them.

yeah, the governmentwas their customer, not the enduser being their customer,yeah, exactly.

That's the problem.

so obviously there are thingsthat can do, there should be cameras.

I suppose you could have amore complicated pedestal.

Top men, topmen are on this job.

They had some top men and women,top people working on this full time.

Yeah.

Every time I hear, Mike talk about horrorstories at other, , non Tesla stations.

It's just , makes me not even imaginebuying a car that can't charge atthe Tesla supercharging state, right?

The Tesla supercharging network isthe.

Network, there's nothing closeand then to go, Oh, now we're goingto have vandalism problems, soit's quality is going to go downcombined with the people that wereworking on it are no longer there.

That really makes me concernedfor how things are going tobe maintained.

on the Rivian Reddit, I'm on theChevy bolt Reddit and a few others.

And people are just nowgetting their adapters.

Rivian's just started shippingthem in quantity and Chevy peopleare getting their adapters andthey're all going, what the hell?

Yeah.

Are we even going to have asupercharger that works or are we going togo around like EA or other unkind words?

Mike, did you saythat , they're getting hit more?

, cause part of the reason toremove those bollards is tomake access easier forthose other brands ofvehicle.

There are folks that track thissort of thing and they're saying that, the reported incidents are on the rise.

Now they didn't giveany hard numbers to it.

It's just gossip at this point,Yeah.

but yeah, if you make accesseasier, then shit's going to happen.

Yeah, well, hopefullythey get things under control.

we already know they rehiredsome of the folks that were laidoff and I'm sure they'll end uphiring more people in the future.

Would you be that eagerto go back after,, being treated that way?

Imean, no.

no.

Hell no.

My, advice at least on theengineering side I've been, in industryin a number of different industriesfor about 20 years, my advice is nevergo back to a company you left, whetheryou chose to leave or you didn't choosetoYeah.

Don't go back.

times I've done it.

It's never worth it.

So why not?

Whathappens?

Yeah.

one of our producerssaid same advice for a badrelationshipbreakup.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

true.

whenever you leave, whatever itis, a relationship of work or personalgoing back, it's never the same.

It's always different.

And it's usually differentin a weird way.

So.

I don't recommend it.

personal relations aside, if theyoffered you, okay, yeah, take me back,but, double my salary or something.

Yeah.

But that'snot realistic.

I actually had that.

I worked at a companyand left voluntarily.

They doubled my pay to get meto work for them from home.

This is, , 15 plus years ago.

I got to work from home, double the pay.

And I lasted maybe three monthsbefore I just couldn't do it anymore.

it was just so weird.

I had a couple of weeks off between thishappening and then even just going back tothe office sometimes and just working withthese people, I was like, I can't do this.

I don't care.

And I just got a differentjob for double the pay.

What makes it weird?

it's a lack of trust.

well, it just loses its luster.

You work somewhere for a few yearsand you leave and then you go back.

It's different, but it's also the same.

It's like going to your childhood home.

It's like, there's weird memories orthings that you connect with stuff,but it doesn't look the same anymore.

So it was just like a weird, perspective.

And I wasn't even working with the samepeople, which is the other crazy thing.

I thought it was going to be great.

Just didn't like it.

I didn't want to do that work anymore.

I just, Oh, it's justawful.

Well, can you imagine, , let'ssay you're in Tesla, you're workingin a supercharger team, you guysare getting awards, you're gettingaccolades, the whole world lovesyou, , you're working your butt off,trying to, spread the wealth, yourreviews come in, you get good reviews.

And then Elon has a, , man,child, hissy fit, chucks you.

for no good reason.

And then kind of says, Oh yeah,well, maybe we should let you back.

I mean, it's tough,I, feel like a lot ofpeople, if you believe in thebut I can do my mission,of charging the world somewheremaybe,I'm charging EVsYou may nothave the same impact though.

Right?

maybe I can have a better impact.

Maybe I can take EA andraise it out of the gutter.

thatmight be a little harsh.

anyway,Well, but maybe if you came backin a, better position, I don't know.

I don't have any personalexperience with it,but it, seems, prettyrough, which is why I asked the question.

Cause I honestlydon't know.

but it's an interesting position to be in.

I'm like Lewis.

I've done the samething a couple of timesand it hasn't worked out.

Well.

The few times I've gone back,I've had friends do it too,where they work somewhere, they leave,they go somewhere else for a yearand they go back and it's never thesame , cause you , have all of thishistorical knowledge and perspectiveand it's different it's just weirdYou'd almost think that wasan asset though, , the things youmentioned, , knowing the system,having the historical knowledge and,can, be anasset,and especially you're able to comeback at a position of slightlyhigher status or power, maybeyou have a better chanceof navigating things.

but if they, chopped everybodyelse,I don't know, man.

I don't know if it's a psychologything.

I'm notsure what it is, but itjust never feels the same.

but yeah, so hopefullythings work out there.

Hopefully they improve.

Cause it is one of our favorite thingsabout Tesla is the supercharge network.

so this next topic is pretty interesting.

In fact, I've had multiple friends ofmine contact me over it specificallythat they've been marketed thisand they're actually interested.

started promoting0.

99 percentfinancing, which isinsane.

absolutelyinsane.

right now, if, you,haven't been living under a rock.

And you've been paying attention tointerest rates and loans and mortgagesand all this stuff for the past two years.

under 1 percent or just say 1percent is cuckoo bananas right now.

In fact, I'm not even sure they, there'sno bank that's going to underwrite this.

Like it's gotta be Teslafinancing doing it themselves.

you can't buy money at that rate.

I,I,I think this iscrazy.

Mike, you actually are tryingto leverage this now, right?

, you're buying in.

but, , as we all know, that'sone and a half to two years out fromtoday, assuming it all goes well,but I have been kind of poking aroundand kind of wishing I could upgrade.

I've got a model three and I've gota Pacifica hybrid , this showedup in my inbox and the day after Iwent ahead and bought a, Model Y.

I ordered a rear wheel drive model Y , onthis deal, but then I thought about itfor a week and in fact, just today, I wentahead and canceled that and I upgraded toan all wheel drive model Y with this ratethat I can actually pick up locally, soI don't have to wait for them to producethese, , new long range rear wheel drives.

, but yeah, , I went to the Tesla store.

That's in our local mall . And

the place was just crazy.

It was like an Apple store.

Everybody and the brother was in thisplace, were three salesmen and a wholelot of people talking about Tesla.

, you couldn't get a reply from email.

You couldn't call in.

It was pretty much, you're on hold,come down to see us and hang up.

so it sounds likethis is a brilliant tactic toboost sales andto make the quarterlynumbers look good, right?

Yeah.

If you wannapump sales and you can affordto carry the 0.99%, then yeah.

Elon,is genius.

It's genius.

I'mexplain how they can carry that?

Arethey financing it themselves or do theyhave some other financial institutionunderwriting these loans or how does itwork?

not clear.

I've been told that Tesla'scarrying the paper on this.

I've been also told that if you're uprightand breathing, you can probably get it.

, theyseem to be kind of loose on thequalifying.

to move the car, you have tomake a personal judgmentwhere you can actuallyafford it or not,I , I've always thought that Teslashould be in this financing game sincemost,,manufacturers make lot ofthey do have theirown finance company.

you can read the fine print and they'lltell you who's underwriting their various.

Loans.

And there is, was it Tesla finance Lewis?

We were looking at itYeah.

so when I financed mine, it wentthrough Wells Fargo, , who's underwrotethe loan and actually carried it.

, which I didn't mind becausethey were my mortgage.

So it was like, yeah,everything's all the same, but Ididn't expect that , because, allthe paperwork just said Tesla upuntil everything went through.

but yeah, they do actually have Teslafinancing as one of their loan servicing.

Yeah.

organizations.

my understanding is they're basicallysubsidizing the loans to some degree.

So I don't know if they're workingwith other partners and they're justpaying the difference in interest orthey're doing something along thoselines, moving money around some kindof tax, something to make it happen.

Or if they're carrying the loansthemselves, I would think they don't wantto carry the loans because they like touse their capital on hand in various ways.

And that's probably not the way thatTesla wants to leverage their capital.

but , yeah, I don't know.

There's probably a, accountantout there, CFO somewhere thatknows way more about this than me Thefinancial tricks, but they're doingsomething to where , it's not like theyfound a bank willing to do this, causethat's not going tono bank, no bankswilling to do that.

rates are too high.

Thebanks aren't going toIn fact,, there's some very tightrestrictions on this.

Elizabeth, had a comment, will theydecrease people's current rate that wasactually asked when I was standing inthe store and the sales rep says, no,they've already made that sale.

we have documentationthat came from Tesla.

It was very explicit.

This is for Model Y, this is for,now, started on the 10th, ends onthe 30th, it's a very tight window.

Everything pre existing, no cando, , no Model 3, no Cybertruck, sorry.

Just theModel Y.

Yeah.

There's the boost salesnumbers for the quarter.

Cause it's this, month.

. You have to buy it by the end of this

month, I believe.

yes, you have to order.

You don't have to take delivery.

But you do have to order.

The Y that's avery popular vehicle.

Right.

But, people know that there's a refresh,Just over the hill and,Juniper,Well, I wouldargue most peopledon't know.

okay, it may be,but, then also, in termsof their manufacturing.

, they're geared up to make a bunch of Ysthey are,hasbeen a slowdown.

So these are the things that they need tomoveMmNow, I would say this.

When I was in the store, they had aHighland and they had a Model Y, youget in the Highland, you look around.

You can feel and see how much upgradedthe Highland is over the old model three.

When you shut the door, it's got avery BMW Mercedes thunk to the door.

Now it just has a very nice feel to it.

You go to the Y and it kind offeels like a high end Chevy.

it justdoesn't have the same feel, touch.

that theHighwind has got.

Yeah, there's a lot more carpetingin places that used to just be plastic.

So it's, designedto absorb a lot of noise.

It has , the double pane glass,that thecurrent model Y should have,supposed to havethat.

I'll find out.

but, it's all theother little things.

, there's that little tab underthe door that seats it justright, , as it comes in.

So, itdefinitely feelsmore of a solid vehicle.

I will say this.

And Louis, you're goingto laugh at me for this.

so the 0.

99 kind of pushed me overthe edge, but you know whatreally pushed me over the edge?

The Model Y has stalks.

Juniper, by all accounts, Juniper won't.

Sure, they willnot.

am notinterested in that.

So I view this as kind of like mylast chance to get a relativelynew Teslawith stalks.

fairis your last chance.

with aprobablyinterest rate.

That was a great interest rate.

Yeah,that'sfair.

I've said before,they should offer them as anoption.

Cause it's just plain ridiculous.

probably won't.

Who knows,maybe,I mean Juniper's been pausedfrom everything I've heard, so.

I've been looking at so muchinformation the last couple ofdays about this whole thing.

I don't remember the source,but there is a user out there.

I think it was in Reddit, but I thinkhe pulled it from somewhere else.

They actually did the calculation of 0.

99 percent interest of what you'd payover the life of a loan of 72 months.

And they referenced it to a currentcredit union loan of like 6.

5 and then a high risk loan of, 10 plus.

And over the life of the loan, you'retalking eight, nine, 10, 000 in savings.

this is real money.

So if you have any way of pulling this offand you want a Y,What's funny is I feellike this is almost a gimmickto try to not upset the owners.

So for example, if you think aboutin the grand scheme of things,Tesla has a few knobs they canturnfor sales and what they'vedone in the last two years,dropped the price.

Yeah.

And what's funny is,it pissed all of us off.

Like everybody that owns a caris mad about that, but there wereother dealerships for years andyears over, you know, Toyota woulddo it.

I think Idid it withmy Jeep 0 percent financing.

Right.

So they, I think they may be havingrealized , this is a way to dropthe price of the car, a few thousanddollars to get more sales without peoplebeing upset that already own the car.

Cause the cost is the same.

It's just.

You better interest rates.

So people don't see it thesame, even though it is.

, so I think this might just be Teslarealizing, Oh wait, here's a knob here.

We haven't turned yet.

That doesn't piss everybodyoff.

So brand new car qualifiesfor the 7, the model Y does.

Yeah.

So you get 0.

99%.

You get the 7, 500 discount up front.

It's a killer deal.

It is absolutely a killer deal.

And some States offer.

incentives on top of that.

it'll be interesting tosee how long they do this for.

If come back again.

You know, they did multiple rounds of thiswill be the only time ever we let somebodytransferFSD and then they did itagain or, supercharging.

bought my Y, but thelittle voice in my head was kindof wishing they did this for the X.

Imight've considered an X.

TheyI'd probably buy one.

I, anyway, I think it'ssmart on Tesla's side.

It's definitely should juice sales.

I'm interested to seewhere the numbers land.

They seem to be really focused onthis quarter and that leads intoour next topic, which I think issomewhat potentially connected to thelayoffs they did and all the otherstuff is this investor voting, Elonman.

package thing.

There's a shareholder wrotecoming up.

Yeah.

There'shmm.

Yeah.

lots of drama thereIf any of you guys investin, , any companies, , you might getan email or a little letter in the mailabout proxy vote for, a shareholdervote coming up They have these variousthings that they're voting on andwhat the board suggests you vote on.

you know, I've gotten those samebefore most of the time I ignore them.

, I'm not that significantenough of a shareholder forit to really matter anyway.

, but I've never seen it where.

the board is actually putting outads to try to get you to vote theway they want you to vote, thatto me is, sort of new, especiallyTesla, that Tesla that doesn't donormal ads, yet you see their, chair,, putting out an ad telling them tovote The way Elon wants you to vote.

so that's, pretty interesting.

, there are several things,worth chatting about on it.

the main two are reaffirming, Elon'spay package from a few years backIs it like2018 or something?

, it was a while ago.

there's a lawsuit about it andthe judge, , said , , basically thatthe board wasn't acting independentlyenough when they approved it.

, so that has been pushed backand then the other one is thatTesla wants to reincorporate inTexas, , which, , can only be seenas, Elon being pissed at Delaware.

,And if you look at Twitter, it's amazing.

, I've never seen this before.

it just feels really culty, Youhave all these people this ishow I'm voting and they literallyshow screenshots of their votes.

And this is what I'm, doing.

And Isupport Elon.

like a political election.

Yeah,what it feels like.

, and then you have some people that arejust like, no, I'm not voting for this.

a perfectly rational personcould say, , why would I voteto reincorporate in Texas?

It's such an unknown.

whereas Delaware is basically setup to be friendly to corporations.

, so it really is just as far as I can,armchair psychologist, it's just,you know, I'm pissed at Delaware.

. Yeah.

I mean, Elon has made these tweets.

No one should ever incorporatetheir company in Delaware.

Come on.

that'sridiculous.

Texas is pretty corporatefriendly, but yes, you're right.

For legal precedent, Delawareis the de facto standard.

I would argue though, that probably mostpeople don't know that or think of it tothat degree, most people probably hearDelaware's where things are incorporated,but they don't realize why it matters.

It's interesting point though oflike,, yeah, clearly it's Elon decidedthey're moving their incorporation.

I highly doubt this came from theCFO's office, this is probably,Elon deciding this,And the board trying toshow that they're independent, uh,that ain't working then, you know?

yeah.

I'm thinking back on it.

I'm pretty sure there have been adsin the past for votes at certaincompanies years and years ago.

but they've been very targeted ads.

maybe it's just cause Tesla's somainstream and into the public eye.

But, , yeah, crazy.

It's like a political adcampaign, Of , vote this, do this.

And I almost feel like the timing isterrible because it's like, this isbased on how the company would be doingand how their performance would be.

And in 2018,there was a lot of like, holy crap,the company was about to go underand things weren't working and theypulled it through and became supervaluable and everything's amazing.

So in that point of time, yeah.

Give the guy the biggest pay package ever.

We did it.

, Let's go kind of thing.

And now it's like, well,where's the stock price now?

Where's the room for growth.

Now sales have been slipping.

There's more pressure industrywide, and it's kind of like, Shouldwe be giving him the largest paypackage ever In all the Twitter stuff.

So there's a lot of Teslashareholders that are.

Not as on board with, , someof Elon's decisions.

So I think the timing, , again, it mademore sense in 2018, it makes less sensenow, but because of the judge it'salmost like they have to do it again.

, so yeah, I'm, interestedto see , where this goes.

, but the cult of is strong.

There's a lot of folks that are.

Very in favor of, , givinghim this pay package.

If you think about it, he wouldn'tneed the pay package if it wasn't forthe Twitter buy, his argument of, Ilost too much control of the company.

I need more control of the company.

It's like, yeah, you sold all that stock.

Cause you bought another companyfor 40 billion, so you wantanother 50 billion in Tesla.

And you could argue that himselling that stock, , obviouslynegatively affected the, , stockprice.

and it did, for example,I think Tesla today would bebetter off if he never boughtTwitter forso many different factors,it would be better off.

And so it's kind of funny thatit's like now , he wants to geta big payout additionally fromTesla to get more control.

That he only needsbecause he bought Twitter.

and it's not evenjust the stock he sold.

It's the stock that's up as collateral,He's leveraged it.

Earlier , you were connecting, this shareholder vote to, , theother things, the layoffs, , the 0.

99, , financing, couldyou elaborate on that?

I just feel like, whenever you'reworried about shareholders, you'regenerally focused on the stock price.

And what are the factors or thethings that they're doing totry to help the stock price?

Oftentimes investors like layoffs.

Because that means the company isbeing more lean, more efficient, whichmeans they're being more profitable.

So when you talk about things like,, doing layoffs to cut costs, thatmeans their profitability goes up.

That means their stock price goes up.

When you talk about the interest rates,as Mike described, probably Tesla's,sales numbers are going to rebound, right?

They were down last quarter.

They're probably going to bedoing much better this quarterin a big part because of this deal.

And if the numbers look reallygood, that's something theycan point you to go, Hey, look.

The numbers are fantastic.

He clearly deservesthis pay package, right?

, it's a standard executiveshort term thinking thing of,let me just do this thing.

That's going to hurt the company longterm, but looks really good right now.

So the stock price goes up.

So I get my bonus payout, right?

Like, Executives have been doing thatsince, the nineties or whatever it was.

So, , yeah, in my mind,they're all connected.

I feel like this is allbecause of this pay package.

Now, would they have done some ofthese things without the pay package?

Sure.

But I feel like they'remore important to them.

And I don't think we get theadvertisements and all theother kind of stuff going on.

I think that's why they're so hotfor doing this is they reallywant this to happen, right?

, Elon really wants it.

, and the Elon bubble he has around himon the board and, , certain investors,they really want Elon to be happy.

So that's why they're pushingfor this.

So that's my feeling.

I maybe it's a conspiracy.

I'm being too,conspiracy nut,but.

has also positioned it as.

Give me what I want, or I mightwalk, not even just this package.

I mean, he's basically said hewants another package afterthis that ensures that he has atleast, , 1 4th of all shares interms of voting power, , so that,he can guide things the way he wants it.

into that.

,Would Elon really walk if,I don't think so.

Well,do you think, Mike?

I think he would, I don'tthinkhe's rational enough to sit there anddecide unemotionally emotions rule.

Himand I, I think this would probablyturn the burner up to high andhe'd probably do it just because itseems like something to doBut Tesla is wherehe gets the most attention.

, before he was as big on Twitter Imean, if we had this conversation backin 2015, say, SpaceX really shouldhave been his main thing, right?

Yeah.

I wish it wasbut,it might be after all thisbut, cars a little more literallydown to earth , and that was somethingthat was getting more attention.

So in terms of him building hispublic clout, , it was really Teslaand then of course Tesla's wherehe's made his real money, at leaston paper,in terms ofTesla shares,right.

of his money.

Oh, thevast majority,But he's made a lot of noise.

He wants to get into, AI, , he wantsto really play in that sandbox.

yeah.

he may view this as a wayto stop spreading himself sothinI doubt it.

go focus on something shiny and new.

I don't believethat.

I mean, AI is AI, right?

He's going to be doing AI with Twitter.

He's going to be doing AI with Tesla.

at some point they'llbe doing AI with space.

AI is going to beequivalent to just sayingsoftware at some pointin the future, right?

It's just going tobe another thing that every company does.

but we're not thereSure.

think hewants to be at thefront of it,He doesfor sure.

, yeah, I agree withthat, , here's the thing.

AI is still more of a research projectthan a product okay, I'll caveatand say that open AI has done aphenomenal job of productizing AI.

Because if you look at all thethings they had with chat GPTbefore that, all that stuff existed,they did not invent a lot of thatstuff, but they figured outhow to productize it reallybut there's a point here, Lewis.

Elon, doesn't want to sell cars.

That's not what hewants to do.

to sell the future.

You'reHe wants to sellthe future,Sure.

to be seen as the smartestkid in the block about selling thefuture moving over to AI or somethinglike that is an easy way to do it.

That's fair.

The point still stands.

I still don't think he'sgoing to leave Tesla,because Tesla is almost kind ofhis baby at this point, right?

One.

It made him a lot of money.

Sure.

But I agree with Doug.

It got him a lot of publicity.

It got him a lot of attention.

He loves that.

, and , whenever you have somebodylike Elon, and this is truefor all of them, anybody that'sexecutive with multiple companies, thenthere's not a lot, but For example, SteveJobs is the same way, Gates is the sameway when you start going into a bunch ofdifferent companies or you own chunks ofit, you start interplaying between themsure,Jobs did it a lot, right?

With, , next and then Apple buyingnext to use the hardware so.

It's a common thing that,executives will do , whenthey're these multiple companies.

And I don't see Elon gettingaway from that, right?

Like SpaceX uses Tesla vehicles for thingsand they share engineering , XAI istechnically a company that is developingAI and they're all using XAI stuff and.

They're maybe going touse Tesla's chip design.

And, , I think the ecosystem is there.

I can't seehim cutting out a bigpart of his ecosystem.

Maybe if he decides toretire at some point, but I don't thinkhe'll ever retire.

SpaceX is,using Model S motors to, actuate, the gridfins, for example,you know.

Exactly.

So there's this tightintegration between the company.

So I don't think he'll walk.

, I think he will, , definitelythreaten to for sure., which,

he's sort of done already.

Now what I would say is youdo want Elon to be happy.

if he's upset, it may cause things tohappen at the company that make all of usunhappy,Yeah.

Look at the supercharger network.

exactly superchargernetwork, , they have great products.

as a customer, I love Tesla's products.

I want them to continue toinnovate and expand and grow.

And what concerns me is like Isaid, I spent time with severalTesla engineers this week.

And they were talkingabout morale's really low.

They're thinking aboutlooking for other jobs.

They're not sure if they'regoing to be employed.

And that's the thing you don't want.

You want Tesla to be abastion of innovationand excitement foryoung engineers to gowork there.

please come workfor us and see the future.

Yeah.

And so where get nervousabout this kind of stuff.

So , I want him to be happy.

Do I think he deserves that payout?

Probably not.

I don't think anybodydeserves that payout.

I don't care whoyou are, butwant to live in a worldWhere someone makes the worlda better place, better than wedo.

There.

was a Silicon Valleyepisode, right?

Where they did a spoof on that.

Where the guy basicallysaid, what, he's like,if I'm not theone making it a betterYeah.

Gavin Belson.

Belson.

or whatever in Silicon Valley.

Fantastic show.

If you haven't seen it,Well, it, tracks.

I mean, that's what SamAltman said about Elon, right?

yes,He wants tosave the world as longas he the one doing it.

correct.

So it is what it is.

But, , anyway,, we'll giveyou updates when this happens.

, the shareholder vote coming up,Related to some of thethings we talked about today.

There's also a fun FSDclass action lawsuit.

the class action lawsuits are never fun.

I'm, being.

Facetious,the problem with class action,is, you never get anything out of it.

thelawyers get everything.

the lawyers get it.

ever makesanything except the lawyers.

Yeah.

I mean, I think I was owed,like, two bucks from something.

And then you got to go through all thetrouble of getting it back.

And it's like, why even bother?

Right.

You spent more on thestamp to send me the letterthan I'm going to actuallymake out of this.

I think my batterygate class action suit withApple was like a dollar,dollar and a half.

I mean, something ridiculous.

They just giveit to you in Apple storecredit.

That's,in anoriginal, iPod Nano and getting thelatest versions of the iPod Nano,and that was kind of nice,but, that was best evergot on one of those things.

cool.

Nano is a nice one.

It's true.

So the class action lawsuit, I findsomewhat amusing because we've talkedabout FSD tons of times on the show,obviously, but I found most amusing issomething that was said earlier before westarted today's episode is Mike, you weretalking about your recent usage of FSD.

yeah.

and you're probably thebiggestcriticcritic and skeptic of FSD of thethree of us.

Absolutely.

tell the people whatyou said, because I was blownAlright, alright.

, so I have a little route that I,use my FSD on when I come home.

And it's got, Unprotected left turn.

It's got unmarked widestreets in a housing track.

It's got a roundabout.

It's got all theseinteresting little things.

And FSD has just been a hotmess trying to get to my house.

So a couple of days ago, as I was comingup to my unprotected left, I took myiPhone, I set it up and I recorded this.

I was stunned.

That it was smooth, it made the turn, itread the signs right, stayed in the centerof the lane, it didn't have the digitalmeltdown when it was trying to make theroundabout like it always does, and I wasvery impressed actually, , given some ofthe other adventures I've had with FSD.

I'll admit it worked now.

I want to repeat this tosee if it's repeatableor if hell froze over for the dayit's funny to me because youwere giving this anecdote of like, oh myGod, FSD worked betterthan it's ever worked.

And I wassuper impressed with ittrue and thenbut this lawsuit that's goingon right now is basically claimingsome level of fraud on Tesla's part.

saying that they are advertisingthis capability or they're sellingit as it has this capability or willOkay, solet's parse this out a little bit so onedisclaimer a retired lawyer filed thislawsuitI think the disclaimeris none of us are lawyers,so don't take anything we say it'sbeing legalized.

seriously,I don't play one on TV,but he was making the point thathe bought it on his 2017, model S.

And most of us know by now thatthe hardware on those, there'sno way in hell it's ever going torun the FSD in its current state.

Nor is there any upgrade.

is not Tesla'sopinion, but sure, that'sMike'sWell, yeah, well, okay.

Suit yourself.

They still claim hardware 3 willworkOh, right.

have been upgraded to hardware3.

So anyway, keep going.

could have been and wouldn't.

Could have been had not been upgraded.

I think they stopped at 2.

5.

Oh,okay.

AndI really think that's the crux of it.

I think the newer Tesla'slike we own, there's a chance.

But I think the older folks on 2.

5 or earlier who were promisedFSD, they're kind of out of luck.

I don't see it ever happening for them.

And it's a hardware limitation thatTesla either didn't fully anticipateor did and kind of blew it off.

I mean, who knows?

computers are like dog years.

I mean, they probably had the best ofintentions when they put it all togetherand sold it to the consumer, but youknow, software moves at the speed oflight.

Sometimesthe intentions are good.

The Tesla didn'tsell it knowingly going.

We'll never getI think their intentions were fine.

that's good.

Court case over.

They'renot going to lose thecase.

ThenI think the consumer.

bought it in good faith, you know, theypaid their 8, 000 for it or whatever theypaid.

money.

But I kind of think Teslaowed it to them to either compensatethem and say, sorry, our bad.

We can't make it work.

Here's a free superchargingor here's a credit orwhatever, but they just kindof took their money and said,yeah,nice to know you.

easiest thing they couldhave done is just, brought itforward as these people areoften Tesla fans, especially early buyers.

And they've since bought several Tesla's,Oh yeah.

Early adopters.

You're eligible for yournext Tesla purchase for freeFSD transfer,right?

That's what they should do.

They should just let them transfer itforward to anew vehicle becausetheirold vehicle can't evenupgrade to do the stuff thatthe newones can.

but also I bought this thing and Istill haven't been given what I bought.

I, supported you,Yeah, but that was R& D budget.

You're not getting that back.

That went to R& D.

especially the way they usedto do it, because, when I boughtit, paying for FSD got you nothingextra,It was a, promise.

like there were no extra featuresuntilthey,Reshuffled some of the things thatyou got with enhanced pilot, andthey push that into, what theycall it FSD capability or whatever.

so yeah, I would have, thoughtthat would be the way to do it.

I mean, if you can get away with itthough, geez, all that free money.

you, guys agree with the lawsuit?

Do you think it's a fair lawsuit ofsaying, Hey, I paid for this thing.

You never gave it to me.

It's some level of fraud, whatever,ignoring the legal definitions ofwhat that means.

false advertisingIn principle, I agree with it.

You shouldhave gotten something for your 8, 000.

What about you, Doug?

Yeah, I would say in principle,yeah, I I'm sure they had their lawyersgo over the fine print pretty well, to me,one of the bigger things that, helps theclass action case is, , that video thathas been shown to be basically staged, andespecially that little intro.

That was a lie, right?

Yeah.

said,footage wasthis is all real and,we're showing you what it can do.

And, there was no interventionJustwhere, it turned out, theroute actually had been practicedseveral times and they wereHelpers.

spotvehicles driving along with it.

Yeah.

Imean, I don't have any problem with,with, Making that type of video, youknow, , showing, , what we expect tohappen.

that's,art of the possibleI want to punch every executive inthe face that ever says it to me.

but you have to present itthat way.

it was, presented as this iswhat's possible right now.

, so yeah, I think that is aproblem and there should be some,restitution because of that.

but, , even, without intentfor fraud, The truth ispeople were promised somethingand.

in the next year is whatwe heard all the time in the next year.

And of course it's been,practically a decade.

And, if you talk to any people thatworked in the field at that time.

They were all like, yeah, there'sno way it's going to two yearsfrom now and most likely morethan 10 years from now, back then.

And these are the people that,should know something about it.

Those are also the people that,uh,yeah, they wanted LIDAR,but.

It was reasonable for them to wantLIDAR because, that's what worked.

Right.

and Tesla literally has used LIDAR.

How theyuse it to train their cameras.

Cause LIDAR is a, piece of groundtruth in terms of how far away arethings in three dimensional space.

but of course there are thingsyou can do with cameras.

, motion parallax, or even just staticparallax with multiple camerasthat allow you to infer distance.

basically you can train an AI,like, okay, what do you see?

And then here's the actual,truth using the LIDARdata.

so what you're tellingme is there is actuallyhope.

I real hope I can haveJarvis on my Model runningFSD for me.

maybe you'll get Grock making,uh, snarky comments at You oh, isthat where you really want to go?

You don't really want togo there.

Making dad puns.

Are you sure you wantthat?

I didcrack up though, I saw onstreaming, there's , the TomHanks movie Finch,where he builds a robot.

I haven't seen it yet, but I saw onthe trailer, there's a whole thingwhere he builds a robot and thenhe's teaching the robot to drive.

So there's a robot driving his car.

And I was like, Oh, Hey, that'show he's gettingself driving to work.

I was like, we're gonnahave optimists in as FSD.

That'll be fun.

You know, used tobe another sort of DARPAgrand challenge, not, the autonomousdriving one, but there's one forhumanoid robotsOh yeah, I remember seeingvideos from that.

and there'll be differenttasks, like, , open, a door,and onewas actually, , get inthe car and drive it.

And, , I don't know if they're stilldoing it, but, I'm sure you can find onYouTube, there are tons of great blooperreels of, variousbipedal robots failing at various tasks.

not quite assuccessful as they had hoped.

Well, we'll get there.

FSD is not quite as what wehoped either.

I mean, between bashingyour rims on the curbsI don't know, Mike.

I heard, this Mike guy telling me that itwas superimpressive and everythingworked perfectly.

SoI'm looking forward to hearing theupdate ifit's repeatable.

was a very limited space.

Not a curb to be found.

Alrighty.

So that's our show.

hopefully that was enough always,we appreciate your comments andquestions and all that stuff coming in.

So keep that coming.

, like, and subscribe, on Xor, you know,It's Twitter.

all the Twitter stuff hasbeen expunged at this point,right?

At leastin terms ofthe routing of the URLs and stuff, right?

He said The core.

was allX now,the naming.

Yeah, so on X and on YouTube, , feelfree to go over to the Tesla motors club.

com website.

I'll become a supportingmember that always helps out.

, thank you to , producers.

Danny, who's holding down the forttoday, , we will see you next time.

Go ahead and say it, Doug.

Laters!

Can't go withoutit.

Yeah.

Go.

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