Tesla unveils Megablock, bunch of new EVs at IAA, Hyundai's plant, and more

Two, one, we are alive for a new episode of Electric Podcast.

I'm friend Lambert, your host.

And as usual, I'm joined by Seth Winchaw.

How are you doing this week, Seth?

I'm good.

You're ready to start.

We have plenty to talk about.

We have Tesla that unveiled the Megaplock slash Megapack 3.

We have a little exit letter that

was very interesting from a Tesla engineer that kind of exposed Elon

Musk's betrayal of the Tesla mission.

We have a little update on the Cybertruck's wireless charging

that we talked a little bit about last week

after Porsche unveiled its own.

Then we have a bunch of EVs that were unveiled,

whether they're full EVs, whether they're prototypes,

at the IAA in Munich this week.

All right, let's jump.

Let's start with the Megaplock Megapack that

was unveiled on Monday night.

It was unveiled sort of in the margins

of the big RE Plus renewable energy convention in Las Vegas.

Tesla did it at their, well, it's not there.

It's the Boring Company's Loop Network thing.

But the event was powered by Megapack and Cybertruck

to buy directional charging, which was pretty cool.

So there's kind of two products unveiled at this event.

But mainly it's the Megapack 3.

So it's a new version of the Megapack

with the biggest difference being a new bigger cell being

used in it, a new 2.8-liter battery cell.

So it's not Tesla cells, but it was developed

with its supplying partners, battery cell suppliers.

It enables an upgrade from 3.9 megawatt hour

at the Megapack 2 to 5 megawatt hours now

for the new Megapack 3.

But then the thing is, is now Tesla

is sort of combining the Megapack 3

into a new product called the Megablock, which

consists of four Megapack 3, so 20 megawatt hour of energy

storage capacity.

But it's now connected to a new megavolt transformer,

a switch gear, in sort of like its old block products.

Obviously, this needs to be assembled on site

unlike the Megapack that can just be packed in the container.

But it's seen as like one product because according

to Mike Snyder, this is VP of energy and charging,

it reduce installation time by 23%,

which due to more assembly, it can

be made at the factory rather than on site.

It can also, it also increases the energy density

per acre to now 248 megawatt hour per acre that

can be deployed at the UCV scale.

Snyder said that Tesla is preparing

to build the Megapack starting in late 2026.

And it's 2026.

And it's going to be in Houston, Texas.

So we reported earlier this year

on electric that Tesla surprised with the acquisition

of a new location just outside of Austin, Houston.

And that was going to be the second megafactory

in the US with Leitrop.

But the third megafactory to produce the Megapack

with Shanghai also entering production earlier this year.

So for now, Tesla appears to still be producing the Megapack

2 in those two factories in late California and Shanghai.

But the new factory in Texas is going

to be for specifically the Megapack 3,

which then is going to be combined as a megablock for new Tesla

U2T scale energy storage customers.

It looks like a significant improvement,

significant like an incremental improvement

over Tesla's existing product.

Again, mostly because of the new battery cells,

but also through this new architecture here

with a simpler busbar assembly that

reduces the number of connector greatly.

I don't have the exact number for the me,

but it was like a significant percentage of reduction

in wiring connection.

And this new transformer, which there was some confusion

about the transformer.

During the event, Snyder said that they're

going to work with suppliers and everything,

but then Elon Musk on X after the event said

that Tesla is going to produce its own transformer.

It might be one of those situations

where Tesla engineers learned about the production

of the transformer from that tweet itself.

From what we hear, Tesla is not really

advanced in that project.

And of course, we reported earlier this year

that Drew Baglino started in Iran Power

to do just that to produce transformer.

And he recruited a lot.

And I mean a lot of Tesla's top power electronics

engineers because obviously Baglino was, for years,

Tesla's the main guy when it comes to power electronics.

And he led a lot of the teams that

develop it, a lot of the inverters,

whether it be at the energy storage product,

like the power walls and the mega pack and power pack,

or also Tesla's electric vehicle inverters

and power electronics.

And he recruited a lot of the top talent for that

and brought them to Iran Power

to develop their own solid state transformer,

which has a similar solution as this.

So it does look like Tesla kind of playing a little catch-up

here and trying to develop their own transformer

and switch gear to be able to connect that

to the new mega pack 3 for this new mega block product.

All right, we have, speaking of Tesla energy,

we have a Tesla auto-bidder engineer,

one of the top, if not the top auto-bidder engineer

in Europe, Giorgio Ballestri,

not sure if pronounce his last name correctly,

but an eight-year veteran of Tesla.

Most recently was one of the algorithm engineer

for auto-bidder,

which is Tesla's real-time trading control platform

for energy assets like mega packs.

And he announces departure, say that again?

I didn't say anything, sorry.

Oh, sorry, I got something.

He announces departure on the post on LinkedIn yesterday.

And it started making the rounds on social media

and in the media now,

because he made an interesting statement in there.

Most of the posts, to be fair,

is around just, you know,

is accomplishment him and his team

at Tesla over the last eight years,

mostly in accelerating the deployment

and optimizing the deployment of energy storage

through mega pack, power pack and power walls.

But the most interesting part of his,

basically it's exit letter

that he made public through LinkedIn,

is that he stated that the main reason,

the elephant in the room was Elon Musk

and that is betrayal basically of the mission

is why he left.

I'm gonna cite him

because I think it was a very eloquent letter.

Altas being said,

and he said that after listing the achievements

at Tesla for the last eight years,

I do need to address the elephant in the room.

The main reason I'm leaving

is that I think Elon has dealt huge damage

to this mission

and to the health of democratic institution

in civil countries.

That's quite the statement here.

And I kind of agree with it.

Beyond that,

Elon's leadership and decision-making

seems seriously compromised.

Given his huge and growing inexplicably stake in Tesla,

he's referencing the new compensation package,

I can convince myself anymore

that this is the right place to be.

This is not just about politics,

it's about lying to the public,

manipulating public discourse,

targeting minorities

and supporting climate change deniers

and political forces aligned

with the oil and gas industry.

I think it's fairly indisputable

that the current US administration

is slowing down the energy transition.

Unfortunately,

speed is critical

if we are to advert the worst consequences

of climate change.

So this is a pretty strong statement set.

Yep.

No, I address very shortly,

I address a lot of the problems

that we've been citing with Elon Musk for a while.

You know, the main one for us,

especially when it relates to electric

is what is counter to the mission,

the betrayal to the mission here,

which is highlighted in his statement

through a bunch of different things.

But the main one obviously is the backing

of the current administration in the US,

which has,

which is filled

with climate change deniers

and people who have implemented policies,

active policies right now

that are undoubtedly slowing

the transition to renewable energy

and electric transport,

which was Tesla's core mission for years.

So obviously other people

that joined Tesla for that mission,

which sounds like the case here

for Mr. Ballast-Rary,

sorry if I miss out the last name.

It's demoralizing.

It feels like counterproductive

where like you put so many efforts,

so much work, so much effort into that mission.

And then the CEO of the company

who's gets rewarded with more shares in company

is clearly working against the mission

with hundreds of millions of dollars

into politics,

into campaigns from politicians

that are actively trying to slow down that mission.

It's still super counterproductive.

And also he touched to other things

that I thought was interesting,

like, you know, beyond just does that

Elon's leadership in this was making

seem seriously compromised.

You know, he's made a lot of stupid mistakes

that just doesn't make sense.

Like, you know,

Tesla not launching any other vehicle

in the past five years

on the third of the Cybertruck,

which has been a commercial flop.

You know, they think the whole house on AI

on autonomous driving and robots

while neglecting Tesla's very successfully the business

a bet that doesn't really

seems like it was warranted.

Even if you do believe in autonomous driving

and robotics,

feels like this could have,

you know, worked in that direction

without giving up on these,

which just seems to be what's happening

to a certain degree.

I know, you know, down,

this is down like 12% in the deliveries this year.

It doesn't sound like much.

But, you know, when you were going

growing at 30, 50% a year,

it's quite a reversal.

Yeah, second year in a row too.

Second year and next year

looks like it's going to be likely worse

based on the current conditions.

No tax incentives.

Yeah.

Based on the fact that the US is Tesla's health market

and it likely won't be for EVs next year

while, you know, Europe is going down like a rock

and China is down 12%, I think,

also this year in deliveries

and probably is going to get worse

because competition is just eating up.

Even touched on another thing that personally,

one of the things that hurts me the most

with Elon is the lies.

He's consistently being caught lying on Twitter,

just consistently.

Like it's every week, if not every day thing

where he posts something that is purpose,

clearly false and could be easily verified

if he took a second.

So, you know, which leads people to think

that he might actually be actively lying

rather than just, you know, being wrong.

And it's extremely divisive what he's posting,

you know, just what we saw just this week in the US

with the Charlie Kirk situation, which is, you know, tragedy.

And the first thing he posts is just inciting

more violence against the left.

I mean, though we had no facts whatsoever

about who killed them, it's just,

it seems completely responsible.

It seems to bring chaos more than anything else.

And there's no positive coming out of that, it feels like.

So it's hard to be working for someone like that.

And it looks like that's what Gregorio here,

sort of with Giorgio, posted.

And I share a lot of his feelings.

And I don't blame anyone working at Tesla right now

because I see a lot of that's in the comments,

sometimes at Electric or social media posts

that like, how can you work at Tesla at all?

Like you can still work at Tesla

and, you know, contribute to the mission meaningfully.

So if that's your focus, like obviously,

like no one can blame you for doing that.

And also at the same time, if you have a job right now

in the current economic situation,

I would kind of hold on to it if I'm on this with you.

Because I don't think it's gonna get,

the thing is gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.

So how does, how does, so let's back out of this

a little bit, how does Tesla get out of this?

And also how does Elon Musk think

that Tesla is gonna back out of this?

So he thinks that they're gonna get full self-driving

in a year, it's always a year.

And that's gonna spur demand

and the robots are gonna start being bought

and that's gonna spur demand, you know,

a new revenue stream.

Like, you know, I don't think a lot of people,

well, I don't think a lot of people out of

how does Tesla shareholders are putting a lot of stake

in that?

So how do they get, like realistically,

how do they get out of this funk there?

I mean, I've kind of laid it out in my own master plan

part four before Tesla released their own.

I think you truly get out of this fully,

you need to get rid of Elon

and then take very specific steps to make this right,

things right with customers, reinforce the EV lineup

and approach autonomous driving

in a more fruitful and transparent way.

That said, to be honest with you,

like now I just, I don't see,

well, I mean, even when I wrote that,

I was very well aware that I don't think that,

I put very little chances of it happening.

But now, since he released the master plan part four

back right away with the new compensation plan.

And to me, it looks very clear

that Tesla is executing their plan very well

where Tesla's gonna have a great,

it's, there's no doubt that Q3 is gonna be very good

because of the tax rate of all the demand being pulled forward.

You know, Europe is still bad.

China is still not very good.

This is again, like down 10, 12% this year.

And it looks like it's gonna be down this quarter too

unless Tesla pulls a crazy end of September,

which is not impossible, but unlikely in my opinion.

But the US compensate for the whole thing.

Also South Korea doing great, Turkey doing great,

but that those are gonna slow down a lot,

especially Turkey because it was a similar situation

as in the US really with the demanding pull forward

for insensitive regions.

So Q3 is gonna be great.

So it's gonna be good for Tesla right now.

And then earnings are gonna come out later

in late October.

And then within the weeks after that,

Tesla holds its shareholder meeting.

You know, just Elon's gonna go real thick

with all the autonomous stuff again, all the robot stuff.

And they will be coming out of the,

probably of the release of the 14 for FSD,

which is gonna be like a significant improvement.

I would hope so,

because they've been no improvement to FSD all year.

Since FSD 13, V13, they have been no improvement.

So it's gonna be a big step.

Still not gonna be anywhere near the promise

of unsupervised self-driving, but still an improvement.

So they're gonna use all the momentum of that,

of Q3, FSD, V14 and all that

to secure Elon's performance package,

again, composition package and cement him really

as a take away the last chance

that shareholders can get him out,

basically, which is to vote against that,

vote against the two director board members

that are up for a reelection.

So this is gonna be the last chance

and they're gonna, shareholder is gonna

let that happen easily.

And then what is going to happen is that

there's gonna be more mispromises,

more delays on autonomous driving,

more delays on robots,

EV cells are gonna keep going down,

but how Tesla needs to do is keep the illusion going

for as long as they can,

until they can actually solve autonomy,

which I think they will probably

within the next two years or so,

but it won't be faster than the current players

in autonomy like Waymo, like Zooks that announced this week

to launch over commercial service in Las Vegas.

Like there's already companies ahead of Tesla there

and then Tesla is carrying a giant liability

of having promised full self-driving unsupervised

on millions of vehicles that it cannot deliver.

So, but as long as they can keep the OPE going

until they can actually solve it,

they're gonna survive is just probably in a state

that's gonna be a lot less impressive

than shareholders think right now.

Yeah.

Like I'm moving on from this,

we also have a little update on the Cybertruck.

So you mentioned this last week,

when we talk about Porsche releasing

wireless driving on some wireless charging

on the new Cayenne electric coming,

you said, hey, wasn't Tesla supposed to do that?

They had unveiled this image here

where they said that the wireless charger was coming

and then the Cybertruck was also equipped with the receiver,

the connector for the receiver for a wireless charger.

Well, now Wes Morrill was the lead engineer

on a Cybertruck as confirmed

that Tesla has given up on bringing that.

Yes, they were preparing for it,

but on a Discord post, he said,

nothing planned there,

wireless charging for something

as far off the ground as Cybertruck is silly.

You need a base station that's like six inches tall.

The main reason we didn't make the trunk tub,

well, then you explain why people thought

where the receiver will go,

but I mean the connector was there,

but there was also another reason to make it

not leave an empty space there

because people were not gonna be able to reach it anyway

if you use it as a trunk tub.

But anyway, so giving up on wireless charging

for a Cybertruck, I guess kind of still alive

for RoboTaxi, that was also linked,

the product was also linked to wireless charging,

but at the same time, I wouldn't give it so much hope.

Honestly, I don't really understand Morrill's excuse here

for not actually releasing this on Cybertruck.

I think the reason's a little bit different

is because this sounds like a very solvable problem.

Honestly, you can make a taller base station,

the Cybertruck's gonna drive over it anyway.

So if your goal is to reduce the space

between the receiver and the ground wireless charger,

just you can make it taller, very possible.

Now that said, I think the real reason behind it

is it's not worth it.

Like it would have been worth it

to make a product like that for the Cybertruck

if the Cybertruck was selling

the hundreds of thousands of units per year

like this that was planning it to,

but now that they can barely sell 20,000 units a year,

it doesn't make that much sense to release something

for such a small market

that would be probably super expensive.

Like we talked about with the Porsche Cayenne 2,

it's not a product for everyone,

it's really expensive to do.

So yeah, I think that's probably the main reason.

And also like we always sell,

wireless charging for electric vehicle,

it solves a problem that's like very small.

It's a very small problem of just having to get up your haste

and like plug the car, it takes a second,

it's not that big of a deal.

And so it's just, you know,

there's not that much value to be added

while solving this issue.

Yeah, you know, and I feel like they could do

some more elegant things.

Like, what if you had like a magnet,

you know, like on the top of a charger

and like it was dangling,

you just drove your car in and the magnet

was just like, you know,

there's lots of ways to do it that, you know.

I know what you mean.

I would be concerned if like it hits

like the paint or something.

Like it could be a bigger problem.

Even just like a more like low level robot

that just robot arm that just plug it in,

if you need to.

Like I just already showed that way back when.

Already that made a little bit more sense to me

than wireless charging.

And you know, maybe like cost wise,

it was a little bit more difficult back then,

but nowadays, like these type of arm robots

are a lot cheaper.

So I'm sure there's something to be done there.

Yeah, I mean, there's gotta be a better way, I think.

And you know, you think about like, all right,

so you got the induction charging, that's fine,

but then you lose all the heat and all the,

you know, the inefficiency is like below 90%.

Mm-hmm.

So you're losing a lot of electricity

over the years that you use it.

It's worth the extra effort

to make it direct line charging,

which isn't rocket science.

Like you can do that.

Yeah, very doable.

I mean, I've been owning EVs, driving EVs

for like almost a decade now.

And I think I can count on one hand

the number of time that I actually forgot

to plug in the car.

Yeah, difficult.

Speaking of charging, the Tesla Supercharger,

Volkswagen or VW more specifically is kind of the lone wolf

out of the game for the Supercharger Access

in North America, but they did comment this week.

So with earlier this month with Porsche and Audi

getting access to the Supercharger Network

in North America, both of them being part

of the Volkswagen group with, all right,

probably getting closer because now

of all the major automakers,

only VW is not onboarded in the program.

And this week, they said that they released a statement

to PCMag, they said Volkswagen looks forward

to making it possible for ID buzz

and ID four vehicle owners to gain access

to the Tesla Nax partner Superchargers.

The timeline has been delayed by technical challenges

and we ask for customer's patience.

We still expect to deliver access this year.

So they're still aiming for the end of the year

or just like, it's just over three months left.

So they have to hurry up to make that timeline,

but they didn't go into the details

of what technical challenges are talking about.

We know a lot of automakers have ran into delays

with being onboarded in the program,

mainly because like Tesla fired the entire team last year

and that created a lot of delays and everything.

But Volkswagen seems to be not just like caught in that,

but like there seems to be a lot of problems

on their end too.

And that's not too surprising

because the company has had a lot of issues

with software, so I wouldn't be surprised

if it's on their hand for that.

They're supposed to get better with the software now.

They had their partnership with Rivian

and Rivian's gonna take over a lot of their software.

I think that's probably gonna be a good thing.

Can't be worse.

Yeah, exactly.

At IAA in Munich this week,

there was a bunch of new vehicle on Vealing,

including the ID Cross,

which is gonna be the

the W-2nd entry-level EV after the Polo

that we talked about last week over a few weeks ago.

Now this is basically a T-Rock

as an electric version,

an entry version of the T-Rock

and it's called the ID Cross.

Wasn't there not another ID Cross back in the day?

Yeah, I feel like that was Cross

and it was more like a station wagon.

Is that right?

Yeah, it was a station wagon.

And it was a ZZ, not a SS.

Ah, yeah, Cross, right.

I think you're right.

Yeah, the on-village, this is still a concept,

but they say it's pretty close to the production version

and to be honest, it looks like it.

There's a few design accents,

a little bit more concept-y,

but for the most part,

it looks like this is gonna be it.

And it looks basically like a cross between a con,

like a little, there's no, I hate when that looks like a cross

between an adgeback, a compact adgeback

and a low crossover kind of thing.

So I'm not that familiar with a T-Rock, to be honest,

which you have, yeah.

Gassing version.

Here's the interior, very minimalist,

simple interior, but it looks nice.

Yeah.

I do like the latest steering wheel for Volkswagen

and it's similar to in the ID buzz.

Well, I don't know if I like the buttons on these seats,

though, but other than that, it looks really good.

Do they have on specs here?

Specs, so using the AMD platform drive system,

208 horsepower, 155 kilowatts front-mounted,

front-wheel drive motor, okay.

A range of 420 kilometers, 260 miles,

that's on WLTP, that still should be over 200 miles on EPA

if it ever gets to North America,

which again, I have doubts.

It's gonna go into production or no,

debut first half of 2026.

The price will be revealed closer to launch,

but it is expected to be below the ID four,

which starts at the equivalent of 41,000 in Europe.

So it's gonna be probably closer to a $35,000 vehicle,

but again, with that and everything is inside Europe.

And it's probably too small for an North America

according to Germans.

Right, it reminds me of the Kia Soul a little bit,

which of course they can't bring here.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it would be probably a bold TV competitor

in North America, like there's a market for this,

they should give it a shot.

Yeah, like a Volvo EX30 a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

Moving on, we have the new GLC from Mercedes,

that's also been unveiled at IAA.

So it's a fully like next generation electric power train

for Mercedes, the design accent

have been changed a little bit too,

it's straight away from what we've known

from the EQ lineup.

It's a little bit more traditional for Mercedes

and it packs quite the power train,

94 kilowatt hour battery pack on an 800 volt system,

10 to 80% in about 25 minutes,

that's 160 miles of range added over that period of time,

or up to 160 in just 10 minutes

if you use the WLTP standard.

You have the dual motor version

and that does zero to 60 in 4.4

and then you have the rear wheel drive version

that does it just under six.

There's a two speed transmission on this,

which is interesting,

it's something that's not really common for EVs,

but they decided to do with it

to have a little bit more efficiency at high speed

while having a little bit more torque at launch

and for towing capacity.

So it's a 11 to one first and second,

five to one gear ratio.

Yeah, Porsche goes that with the Taycan,

I think it makes sense for Autobahn cars.

Yeah, probably a specific use here,

high speed for longer distances.

Charging that work well,

it's gonna be max native in the US,

towing capacity up to 5,300 pounds, nice.

There's the big hyperscreen in there.

There's some of the images.

I really like the design,

I think they nailed it a lot better

than the EQ era vehicle.

I think it does a little bit more luxurious,

a little bit more Mercedes.

Charging 330 kilowatt peaks,

very good through 2025 EV.

The air suspension,

you have the aromatic Mercedes suspension

that you can have in there,

but it's gonna be optional,

they're all gonna be quite expensive to have to the vehicle.

Range, they shared a 713 kilometers,

143 miles range for the WLTP cycle,

and they do expect EPD to be around 350 miles,

so that's pretty good too.

The interior here,

I showed it with the AMG version here

in the kind of brown beige,

which I think is pretty nice.

As you do get an AMG version on this,

you have the giant hyperscreen here,

39 inch screen, visible.

Some people think that the front fascia,

the grille is a little bit over the top,

it's a pixelated grille with lights in it.

It is a little bit. I do enjoy it.

It's a lot. It's big, it's a lot, it's a lot.

But I just had the Cadillac Escalade for a week

and it also has a similar type of

lighting grille, fake grille inside,

and I ended up liking it quite a bit.

With Mercedes, obviously the logo is now,

but that's the thing that they've been doing

for a little bit now, just a giant logo in the front.

I think that maybe, that feels a bit much more,

like the combination of that plus the pixelated grille

makes it a bit much.

I understand the complaints there,

but honestly, it's kind of a, you know,

it's subjective, it's insane.

And yeah, and this is basically gonna be

the other big competitor for the iX3

that was unveiled earlier this month from BMW.

So also gonna kind of go after the,

maybe the higher hand of the Tesla Model Y,

especially like maybe the new Model Y L.

So it's gonna attack the higher end of that lineup.

Obviously the Model Y starts a lot cheaper

as maybe a little bit less luxurious than this.

All right, we also have the Polestar 5 GT

that was unveiled this week with the full specs.

And you know, I really like the design language

from Polestar where they're going with this.

It's, you know, it kind of looks a little bit,

reminds me a little bit of the Audi that we saw,

the new Audi that's supposed to bring clarity

to the Audi brand concept that was unveiled a few weeks ago.

Kind of a similar vibe here,

but it looks like a very sporty sedan.

Look at that.

I like it.

Yeah.

It's almost weird seeing sedans, you know,

as an American, like you only get to see it.

Like why is that SUV so short?

Yeah. Oh yeah.

I was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming this week

and it's just pickup trucks and SUVs, literally.

Nothing else, right?

We were being shut all around in a towel

and it was like still like a normal car there

when the towel was like a huge SUV.

Yeah.

All right, what specs do we have on this?

Also age on the old platform, 250 kilowatt charging,

0.24 drag coefficient.

Nice.

You know, similar interior that you're familiar

with Polestar with the Android base automotive system

for 14.5 display.

It comes with a zero motor, 112 kilowatt hour battery pack,

550 kilowatts of power, 0 to 16, 3.8 seconds.

The level two charging is up to 19 kilowatts.

I already shared the fast charging at 350.

Then you can have the performance version too,

which increased the motor capacity to 650 kilowatts

on 100 kilowatts more

and the zero to 60 comes down to 2.1 seconds.

There's a full ADAS system powered by 11 camera

plus a driving monitoring camera,

one minute range radar and 12 electronic sensors.

Starting price, 119,000 euros, $139,000.

It's not a cheap vehicle,

but it's a nice looking GD from Polestar.

Obviously like kind of a MOL-S competitor type thing.

All right, moving on from that Ford,

it shook up a little bit,

it's lightening lineup this week.

So I didn't follow this news too closely.

I just shipped it to Pierre,

but it's the new STX,

which gonna replace the XLT.

Yeah, okay, so it's gonna get a bit confusing.

STX is the new 2026 mid range, I guess,

variant of the Ford lightening replacing the XLT.

And the new variant brings some service upgrade,

including the new dual motor system for 436 horsepower,

so almost 100 more than the XLT,

775 foot pound of torque.

Now it use a feature of 123 kilowatt hour

extended range battery pack for an estimated

a PTA range of 290.

The previous XLT was featuring only the 98.00 hour pack,

so you have a bigger pack now on the mid range version.

What else is different?

You also get the off-road upgrades on this,

which I think were optional for the XLT.

You have some new badging in the inside.

You can see it's not the most luxurious inside

from the lightning lineup,

but it's an upgrade from the base version.

And then the pricing,

oh, pricing is starting at $63,245.

So there's the same price,

you get a much bigger battery pack.

So not a bad deal.

Not bad at all.

Yeah, certainly get this over the base Cybertruck,

which is kind of completely voided of important features.

All right, we have two more news item

we want to discuss before we jump into the comment section.

I see we have a lot of comments today.

I appreciate that.

I know that we haven't been back to a regular time

in a long time.

So I guess a lot of the usual faces are here.

We, I see Dan, I see Skeptik here.

Appreciate you guys for tuning in.

So if you have any question for us,

it can be about any of the topics that we discussed today.

Put them in the comment section right now

when I get to it in just a few minutes.

Or it can be about anything else

that you want us to discuss in the EV world

or the renewable energy world.

We'd love to talk about that stuff.

Is that right, Seth?

That's right.

All right, all main times I've said it

in the last few months that I think

it's happening for solid-state batteries.

I think finally it's not the technology of the future now.

It's gonna happen by the end of the decade.

And it's in the next three to five years

we're gonna get full production vehicle

with solid-state battery.

And this week we had two big,

I don't know if I didn't catch the Wheelie podcast

this morning, but was it QuantumScape

that did it with Ducati?

Now there's gonna be a Ducati

that's gonna have a full solid-state batteries in it.

So they actually did that, full prototype.

And now Mercedes had outfitted an EQS

with a solid-state battery

and they drove it over 750 miles on a single charge

and there was still some left, right?

Yeah, from Stugger, Germany to Malmo, Sweden

covering 750 miles, 1,205 kilometers

and the Modify EV, so production EV,

but with a battery pack with solid-state battery,

still at 85 miles left.

So you're getting very close to basically 900 mile vehicle

with the same form factor.

Now I don't know if they,

I hope they didn't hyper-malage this,

but they talk about a 25% increase in usable energy with this.

And this is what's done with the help of Factorial,

which is Mercedes's partner from four plus-state batteries.

Yeah, someone in the comments on the electric

did mention about the speed of it and everything.

Yeah, it would be useful to have

the exact methodology here.

What did they say here?

The position, yeah, there's no,

there's no methodology on the actual speed that they drove.

But 25% increase because 750 miles with 85 remaining

does sound like more than a 25% increase

in the range from the regulatory QS,

but again, they might have drove a little bit slower there.

Finally, we have an update on Hyundai.

I talked a little bit about it last week.

ICE did a whole raid on the factory in Georgia,

where they plan to build electric vehicle batteries.

Huge investment from the Korean,

used investment for Hyundai in the U.S.,

creates thousands of jobs,

and then ICE raided them and detained

400 and 75 employees, a lot of them from Korea

on business travel in the U.S.

It basically helped everyone set up the factories

to create those jobs.

It created a lot of problems,

diplomatic problems with Korea itself,

you know, still terrible.

And I want to be clear,

because I think there's a lot of misconception

about this issue like Hyundai is not completely

not to blame here.

There was some issues there where

some of these employees were on site

with a travel tourist visa rather than a business visa.

So technically that's wrong, but to be fair, everyone does.

Like it's not like completely rare,

like especially sometimes it's not even their fault

where the way that you apply for your visa

between countries that have agreements is automatic.

And basically if the border agent doesn't really ask you

and just like stamp it with whatever B,

I think it's a B1 versus a B2 visa, whatever it is.

I remember which one is for like tourism

and which one is for like regular short-term business travel.

It doesn't really matter.

So it's on a technicality that felt targeted for no reason.

You know, we know that ICE is under a lot of pressure

from the Trump administration to,

you know, bump up IRS and deportation like crazy.

It's the rent on that.

And they kind of ran out of bad people to deport.

So now they're deporting literally people

that are in the U.S. to train us on how to build batteries

and battery factories to create jobs.

It's completely counter-intuitive.

And for Hyundai, it has a direct impact

where Hyundai CEO Jose Munoz announced that

the factory would be delayed by at least a few months

because of this rate, which makes sense.

Because, you know, you had hundreds of workers

and like critical workers that were detained

and then shipped back to Korea because of this.

And I don't know if they're gonna be willing

to come back anytime soon because they were sent to,

you know, a holding facility, a prison basically

for a week or so, it's terrible.

It's very bad policies from the U.S. here,

but it's poor for the course these days.

All right, let's jump into the comment section.

All right.

So we got some new ones from

VoltConnect.io on Twitter.

Thanks, Electrek, for always keeping the industry informed.

I love this over bubble bands.

Take that one.

Design, yeah.

Yeah.

Good evening, 2, 3 p.m. here,

but need to hear IAA news, can't get enough of Polestar 5.

Design is solid.

Yeah.

I can't wait to drive that thing.

That's gonna be fun.

Braindrain picks up pace, but stock is up 7% today.

Yeah, the stock really has not a lot to do with reality.

It seems like.

What do you think it's up 7% for today?

Probably a kind of option buying program

by some shady people.

There's literally no reason for it to go up right now.

All right, our friend Skeptic says,

saw that Zooks, which is the Amazon autonomous vehicle,

started offering Robotaxi service.

So I guess they're worth a trillion dollars now.

Yes.

That's how it works.

By the way, Zooks Vans are my favorite form factor

so far for Robotaxi.

Yeah, they're the kind of like square things.

Yeah, like van type doors, easy to get in, easy to get out.

It makes a lot of sense for that.

Yeah, they started operation in Las Vegas.

They've been testing them there for years.

Now they are officially starting commercial operation.

So they are technically ahead of Tesla

because Tesla is trying to start operation in Nevada.

They just obtained their first permit for it,

but they are not nowhere near lunchtime yet

for a real driver less, supervisor less service

like Zooks, like Waymo.

All right.

Dan says, I agree with Giorgio.

I was frustrated with Elon,

but due to the line of being frustrated with Tesla,

the company's mission statement still is something I can support.

I think, you know, maybe not the latest,

what is it?

Master plan?

Yeah, that kind of went off the rails a little bit.

I wonder, as Tesla officially now,

like what's the Tesla's official missions now?

Mission statement.

What's that?

If we good.

Accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy.

Yeah, it's still that.

Still that.

They haven't, they haven't changed it to the like the abundance,

like all AI utopian nonsense that was in the master plan part four.

All right.

A lot of Zooks love here.

Maybe we can need to dive into that a little bit more.

Zooks are amazing.

Proper robo taxi with intelligence design.

They can go either way.

Yeah.

That's one of the designs.

It's like Ford Backward.

Just seven works for Amazon.

I've been hearing and seeing discussions about Zooks for a while.

Super cool to finally see them come to fruition.

Hopefully the rollout and expansion come quick.

It's funny how there's a lot of, you know,

Bezos, Musk, like, you know,

rockets and robo tax.

Rivian?

Yeah, Rivian, all that stuff.

All right.

The slate is pretty cool.

Yeah.

Let's see.

Number one, they need more cars than the three in the Y and get

rid of the cyber truck.

Okay.

That's when we were, you were asking me like,

what's the way out of this?

Yeah.

In my own master plan part four that I posted,

like after you get rid of Elon,

you make things right with customers regarding FSD.

Like one of the main thing is like,

you need to expend the lineup,

you need to use your expertise in ultra efficient

electric powertrain, make affordably and extend the lineup,

update the lineup,

be a little bit more adventurous when it comes.

And I, you know,

what we hear from Tesla is like,

it's difficult for them to update the model Y,

to update the model three,

because there's such high volume programs

that they don't want to disrupt production.

At one point you have to,

otherwise you lose the men.

And this is what's happening right now.

So you have to do it.

Okay.

Let's move on.

Uh,

it's Tesla going to become B2B business to business

company, mega packs,

robot taxis and robots aren't consumer focused products.

I don't see that.

No.

I think they're saying they are robot taxis.

It's this is all network.

So it's kind of a Uber in that sense.

Uber is a consumer product.

Uh, then you have robots,

they plan to actually sell them to consumer.

I don't know who's going to buy it right now.

But anyway.

Uh, so no, I think, I don't see this.

I think energy is.

Definitely this is fast as growing.

Um, segment right now.

And that's, yes, that's business to business for the most part,

because most of that capacity is coming from mega packs.

I mean, the power wall is a consumer product.

Uh, so yeah, there's some of that.

But I think this is going to remain a consumer,

consumer product company.

All right.

Question.

So what's the lux package is being done to boost FSD numbers?

Do you think the lux package will eventually go to model Y and three?

The lux package is a group of, um,

you know, add ons to model S and model, uh, model X.

Like FSD and some.

I don't know.

Supercharger and.

Right.

Premium connectivity and all that.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know because I don't think so because.

What's, uh, maybe, maybe as a, as a package as an optional package,

maybe they do that.

But like what's, what's most interesting about the lux package on model S and

X is that it is, it has been made standard plus next.

So it's like, it's now, it's not even clear what they call it.

The lux package because.

That's, you have to buy it with it.

So it's not an option.

So maybe the bundle everything in offering an option,

but I don't think they can just make it the standard.

Like they did with model S and X for all three and Y.

All right.

Yeah.

That would be great.

Uh, chicken and the egg though, like.

You know, the big investment though.

Yeah.

You have to.

Put that in the ground.

On the streets.

Um, yeah, I don't see that happening.

Yeah.

The, uh, in, in Montreal here, we have, uh, these flow street

charging station that are hanged up.

I don't know.

Street charging station that are hanged up high and you,

like you pull them down and you plug them in and they are out of

the way for passerby and everything and everything fits in a

single pole.

Uh, it's, uh, I think it's a great solution.

It makes sense for street parking for all this or for,

for charging on the street.

I don't think yet.

I think, I think wireless charging on the street would be

too costly.

All right.

Uh, James says the wireless charging pad should be able to

raise up when it identifies that a Cybertruck is charging.

Seems like it would should be easy for Tesla to make.

I mean, if, if you're doing the raise up thing, you might as well

just do the magnet thing.

Like at that point, like just magnet charge port right into

the thing.

Yeah.

It's connected.

It's not, it's not wireless.

It's like, it's induction, but, but, but connected

induction reducing the, the, the loss.

Yeah.

And I mean, you could even have it like the magnet, like

it could just raise up and then conk, you know, connect to the

car and like, you know,

I think, I think like a charge port underneath the car that

that's clicking next.

Yeah.

Take it to you.

All right.

Did we see Monroe visited Kempower Durham factory.

Kempower is a charging company.

Not the boss, but at least it didn't seem not the best

probably seem to be paid commercial like the auto one.

That was terrible.

I haven't been watching.

I don't really watch his stuff.

No, I don't, zero trust in Monroe.

That's with you.

Like he's a full on Elon super fan defender and all that.

I don't think, I don't think he used to be trusted personally,

but Kempower is pretty cool.

Yeah.

I've talked about it quite a bit.

A friend of mine owns a station of them and he's extremely

satisfied with it.

He's doing his own like every charging station that exists on

there.

He's a, he's a good source on that.

And yeah, I was impressed with their artworks.

Pretty cool.

All right.

The cross became the ID seven for Mari station wagon.

That's kind of what we're thinking.

Ronald Garrison says eventually charging must automate.

It's the obvious way to go.

Maybe wireless or maybe just quick connect, no robot arms

minimize the connecting hardware.

Oh, I have to stop here.

WTF.

Wait, he doesn't stop here.

No, no tombstones, no cables, no captive drivers while charging.

Let's charge our hardware more chargers, more obsessing about

range and charging speed.

If you have enough chargers pronto.

Yeah.

I mean, I share a lot of that sentiment.

I think the charging infrastructure is a big part of

removing range anxiety and improving just EVA adoption

in general.

And yeah, technically with autonomy coming, you need,

but the wireless charging is so with advanced autonomy,

you don't need wireless charging.

You need automated charging.

That's the only thing you need.

And like we just discussed, there's, there's other option

and wireless charging for it.

Dan notes that nobody demands hands free fueling of an ice

vehicle.

It looks good.

Yeah, but those are going away.

Yeah.

Mercedes logo is almost as big as VW micro bus in the 1970s.

Yeah.

I saw that.

I'm reminded you of that too.

Hands free fueling is not just worth the trouble.

On the other hand, you could go for full service and there's a

case to be made for it.

50 years ago, they gave me a job for a while.

Then I really needed one.

I think we're just kind of rambling at this point.

We need to bring back full service charging station

because I need a job.

I think the real reason to go hands free charging is

because it's yet another advantage for disabled drivers.

If you're in a wheelchair, the fueling process has got to

be a nightmare.

That's a good point.

I mean, I don't think it's that hard.

If you have a magnet, a strong magnet and you bring the charge

port anywhere near the magnet, it just clumps on.

Then when you're done, you just pull away and the

magnet just pops off.

It doesn't seem that hard.

Definitely plenty of solutions capable.

Dan says whenever battery advance doesn't publish the

spider web graph showing all the advantages and disadvantages,

I assume they're hiding something.

I mean, the biggest disadvantage from what you're talking

about solid state I would assume here is cost right now.

It's going to be more expensive, but we're going to see it

come first in products like we saw this week.

The Ducati makes sense there.

Electric motorcycle needs more energy density now.

It's the biggest, it's the only ground transportation vehicle

right now that has trouble being electrified now because

of range because it's hard to pack.

There's riders I want to ride for 200 turn on miles and

one go before stopping.

To do that, you need to be able to pack a lot of

capacity in a very small format, a two-wheel format.

For that, it makes sense.

Obviously, a Ducati price is not really an issue.

Mercedes, people want the 1,000 mile vehicle.

I don't see that much value in it personally, but people

want it unless you have a pickup truck.

We're going to see also these crazy pickup trucks with

1,000 miles and 500 miles towing.

You're going to see these things like that being

enabled by solid state batteries first at a higher

cost because that's probably the biggest disadvantage

of solid state right now.

Then it's going to come down market over time.

I wonder if the weight and those kind of advantages

will come when solid state kind of matures.

Skeptic says, I know they can't do it, but if I were

CEO of Hyundai, I would shut down all U.S.

operations, including sale of ICE cars.

I don't know if that's a financially responsible

move.

There's probably a better way to complain and I

think probably they're doing plenty of that behind

the scenes.

Even Trump right away after it happened, he

realized that that was probably not the

greatest move.

He saw the issue.

I think Korea played it well so far.

Electric appliances with Zooks going either way.

My wife would have to switch seats every time it

changes to not get carsick, riding backwards.

Yeah, that can be a problem for some people.

Small price to pay for that kind of fun stuff.

But I think Zooks right now is focusing more

like low speed to see the kind of environment.

It's a different type of product and a lot of

the otherable taxi service.

I think it's probably not the biggest issue.

All right, well, that's it for all the comments.

I appreciate everyone of you that joined us for

this electric podcast this week.

If you did enjoy the show, if you can give us a

like, a thumbs up, whatever it is on the

app you're watching right now, it helps us

show it on.

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

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See you next week.

Have a good one. Bye-bye.

Tesla unveils Megablock, bunch of new EVs at IAA, Hyundai's plant, and more

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