EV incentives are discounts or money offered by the government to make electric cars cheaper to buy. Here, California is offering them to help first-time EV buyers.
First-time EV buyers are people buying an electric car for the first time. The host says the program is aimed at them and has specific eligibility rules.
Car
Lucid Sapphire
Lucid Sapphire is a pricey electric car from Lucid. The host is using it to explain that California’s EV money has price limits, so expensive EVs won’t qualify even if they’re electric.
Rivian R1S is an electric SUV. The host brings it up to show how the incentive rules might treat different EV brands differently, depending on where the company is based.
FSD means Full Self-Driving. It’s Tesla’s software aimed at making the car drive more on its own, and the host plans to talk about it in the context of robotaxis.
A geofenced area is a restricted zone where an automated service is allowed to drive. If it goes outside that boundary, it may have to stop or switch to a different, more controlled mode.
Place
new orland in louisiana
New Orleans, Louisiana is where the host says Tesla began running its robotaxi service. It’s part of the rollout expanding the service to more states.
The Tesla Cybercab is Tesla’s planned robotaxi-focused vehicle. The host is saying it’s built with certain EV systems and navigation hardware that are meant to support self-driving in limited conditions.
Instead of using a typical 12-volt electrical system, the car uses a 48-volt system. That lets it power certain electronics more efficiently, which is useful for modern EVs and advanced features.
The Chevrolet Volt is a plug-in hybrid, which means it can drive using electricity and also uses gas when needed. The podcast mentions it has a “48 volt” electrical setup. That’s part of how the car’s electrical system is designed to manage power.
4680 refers to a specific size/type of Tesla battery cell. Using a larger cell can help the battery store more energy and may make the battery pack cheaper or easier to build.
Steer-by-wire means the steering wheel isn’t directly connected to the wheels with rods or cables. Instead, it uses sensors and motors to steer electronically.
Tesla’s Cybertruck is a unique EV from Tesla, and it’s known for using electronic steering (steer-by-wire). The host is bringing it up as a reference point for what the Cybercab might share.
A 400-volt battery pack means the car’s high-voltage electrical system is set up around 400 volts. That can help the EV move power more efficiently and often supports faster charging.
Dual GPS positioning means the car uses two GPS inputs to figure out its location more accurately. That can help it navigate better, especially when driving itself.
Full self-driving is Tesla’s name for its advanced driver-assistance software. The idea is that the car can do more of the driving tasks on its own, though the exact capability depends on the system and conditions.
“Level four” means the car can do the driving on its own in certain situations. You don’t have to constantly watch or be ready to take over like you do with lower automation levels.
“Level two” means the car can help with steering and speed, but you’re still the driver. You have to stay alert and be ready to take over at any moment.
The Dodge Ram is a pickup truck. The podcast is talking about the truck’s onboard computer having more memory than usual. More memory can help the truck’s software run better, especially for driver-assistance features.
“Hardware four plus chip” is basically Tesla’s next-generation computer chip for self-driving. More compute means the car can run more complex driving algorithms.
“AI four plus chip” is the next-generation AI computer chip for the self-driving system. The point is that it should make the autonomy software run with more capability.
Private property refers to areas not open to public traffic, where vehicle operations can be restricted by law and safety rules. The host claims these vehicles can’t be driven outside private property, which frames the robotaxi’s current deployment limits.
The driver seat is the seat where a human would normally sit to drive. In this segment, they’re pointing out where the passenger sits compared to where a driver would normally be.
Climate controls are the car’s heating and air-conditioning settings. The interesting part here is that the app can adjust them without you having to reach for physical buttons while you’re waiting or watching something.
The Tesla Model Y is an all-electric SUV from Tesla. Here, the host is talking about how the car’s app/connectivity can control things like climate settings for people in the back seat.
Term
AC
AC means the car’s air conditioning. The host is talking about cooling the back seat and how it can be annoying if you have to ask the driver to change it.
Term
robotex app
The “robotex app” sounds like the phone app used to control parts of the vehicle remotely. The host is saying it might let you change more than just the temperature.
A first responder guide is a set of instructions that car makers provide to emergency crews. It helps them know what to do and what dangers to watch for when they arrive at an accident.
This is the car’s visual message that tells you it’s in self-driving mode. The point is safety: responders need to know the car might move on its own, even if it looks like it’s stopped.
Wheel chocks are blocks you put in front of (or behind) a tire to stop a vehicle from rolling. Here, they’re used as a safety measure so the car can’t move unexpectedly while responders are working around it.
“In Park” is a gear setting that helps keep the car from rolling. For a self-driving car, it’s one of the first safety steps before anyone gets close to the vehicle.
An autonomous vehicle is a car that can drive on its own using cameras and sensors. Even when it’s “self-driving,” people still have to follow safety steps if something goes wrong.
The B pillar is the metal support post between the doors. Here, the speaker is saying the car’s emergency-related cameras and microphones are mounted there.
Emergency lights and sirens are the flashing lights and loud sounds that first responders use. The car is described as detecting those signals so it can pull over safely.
“Autonomous mode” means the car is in self-driving mode. The speaker is explaining how responders should shut that mode off before getting close for safety.
“Vehicle senses” means the car can detect what’s happening around it using sensors. Here, the speaker says it can detect when it’s plugged in to a charger and use that as part of disabling self-driving.
The Dodge Charger is a car model that’s known for performance. In the podcast, it’s described as having a feature where your phone can detect that the car is plugged into a charger. When it knows it’s charging, it can turn off certain functions.
“Plugged into a charger” means the car is connected to a charging station. The segment says the car can detect this and use it to shut off self-driving for safety.
“Chalk the wheels” means marking the tires with chalk so you can tell if the car moves. It’s a simple way to double-check the vehicle isn’t rolling while responders are working.
Airbags are safety cushions that pop out in a crash to help protect your head and chest. They’re triggered automatically when the car senses a serious impact.
First responders are the people who show up to emergencies, like firefighters and paramedics. With EVs and self-driving cars, they need clear, safe steps to handle the car after a crash.
A pyrotechnic device is a safety mechanism that uses a rapid, controlled charge. In an EV crash, it helps quickly disconnect the high-voltage parts to make the car safer for responders.
Autonomous driving means the car can drive itself using sensors and computers. For emergencies, that raises questions about how responders should interact with or stop the vehicle safely.
Term
robotexy services
Robotaxi services are ride services where a self-driving car carries passengers. The point being made is that emergency teams need a consistent way to deal with them.
Waymo is a company that works on self-driving cars and robotaxi rides. Here it’s mentioned as one of the real-world players emergency teams might encounter.
Concept
voice-to-car driving commands
It’s the concept of telling the car what to do by speaking to it. Instead of typing an address or micromanaging, you’d just say what you want—like which driveway to pull into.
Grok is an AI the hosts are talking about that could understand what you say and help control the car. The question is whether people would trust the AI to handle driving instructions.
Automatic lane keep helps your car stay in its lane. It uses sensors to see the lane lines and can gently steer to keep you centered, but it may not work as well when the road markings are hard to see.
“Autopilot” is Tesla’s name for a set of driving helpers. It can steer and manage speed in certain situations, but it usually doesn’t mean the car is fully self-driving without you paying attention.
Term
robotexy app
The “robotexy app” is the app you use to request a robotaxi ride. Here, the host says it can tell you whether someone is watching or sitting in the car for safety.
A “safety driver” is a person in the car who watches the automated system and can step in if something goes wrong. The host likes knowing in advance whether someone will be there.
A “safety monitor” is a person watching over the robotaxi’s driving. They may not be in the driver’s seat, but they’re there to help if the system needs intervention.
A “three-year pilot program” is a trial period where a government allows a new technology to operate under special conditions. After the trial, regulators can decide whether to expand or change the rules.
Lidar is a sensor that shoots laser beams around the car to build a 3D picture of what’s nearby. It helps the system understand distances and shapes more precisely than cameras alone.
Radar is a sensor that uses radio waves to detect things around the car. It can help the car figure out how far away objects are and whether they’re moving toward or away.
A “camera only” setup means the car mainly uses cameras to understand the road. Instead of lasers or radio sensors, it has to figure everything out from pictures.
LIVE
Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowata podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy,
autonomous driving and much much more. My name is Bode and I am your host and I've got a big show
for you this week. So I've decided I'm splitting the weekend to different pieces because you know
I'm often the show is supposed to be released on Tuesday and Friday and I think I'm going to change
my philosophy a little bit because I tried to record this episode like three times yesterday
and I got interrupted every single time so I need to have a different strategy
and I think what my strategy is going to be is there's going to be a weekly show
which could happen any day between Monday and Thursday. That's the weekly episode or weekly
edition and then there's going to be a weekend edition which could happen Friday, Saturday or
Sunday and that kind of gives me time to put together a decent show for you honestly you know
there's just like between my full-time job, my part-time job and doing all the podcasts that I do
including this one I just am not it's really hard to hit Tuesday and Friday. Now in a year and a
month or so when I retire that should be a lot easier so to hit those days but for right now
we have a weekend edition and a week edition weekly edition of this show because that's really
like I'm dedicated to doing the show just getting the show on time just based on all of the things
that are going on right now it's just really difficult to be on time so weekend edition
and weekly edition this will be the weekend edition and the last time we talked we actually
covered the EV news stories this time is going to be Tesla news stories I do want to say like
when I started this whole process off we had like in the queue for shows for articles for the show
we had about 147 articles in the show queue that doesn't mean I'm going to cover 147 articles and
a lot of those are repeat articles and so on and so forth but that's a lot to get through and so
last episode I decided to do just EV only stories to try to kind of clear that queue out and as it
stands in the EV only queue we have about 28 stories so that's good in the Tesla queue we only
have four stories that I haven't covered yet so that's good and I plan on covering all four in the
future and then we have autonomous and renewable queues there's about seven stories between those
so yeah I mean I am very much somebody that needs to complete things and not have stuff
stuck in the queue so this makes me feel very very good I covered today we're going to do
Tesla focused episode like I said and we have 12 articles that I pulled from for today's episode
normally in a show we have like six or seven so 12 just to kind of like I said clear those queues
out so that they're manageable because there's lots of stuff that I want to talk about some of
the stuff becomes irrelevant because we find out new things some of this stuff becomes irrelevant
because just enough time has passed and it's not important anymore so yeah that's where we're at
with the show let's go ahead and dive into our first story California put aside 135 million
dollars in in EV incentives and the purpose of these incentives is to help first time EV buyers
no application is required you just got to be a first time EV buyer and you qualify
but there does need to there are caps on the vehicles you can't just go out and buy a
lucid sapphire for instance keep that in the back of your head because that's not exactly
true what I just said so the caps on new vehicles will be $50,000 and $25,000 now there's a there's
you know a number of EVs that are under $50,000 for a new vehicle and there's a number of EVs
that are under $25,000 for a new vehicle excuse me used vehicle Tesla in general does have some
vehicles that are under $50,000 they have a couple of trims I think it's three that qualify
but here's the thing Tesla is a little bit at a disadvantage and the reason why is California
based automakers so look at Rivian and look at Lucid they don't have any limit on the purchase
price so if you go out and you buy a $250,000 lucid sapphire you would qualify for whatever
the EV incentive is if you go out and buy a Rivian I don't know let's say but R1S for $120,000
there's no cap because Rivians and Lucid are based in California even though their factories
aren't in California now Tesla was based in California and decided to leave California
for a variety of different reasons and they are now a Texas company and
you know not California based and actually I think they're a Delaware company so even still
but yeah overall this seems to be like on the surface targeting Tesla but you know
Rivian not Rivian excuse me like Hyundai and Chevy and Ford selling EVs in California they
fall into the same thing it's not specifically a jab necessarily at Tesla but if you look at
just the headlines it certainly sounded like Tesla or California wrote this to exclude Tesla on a
lot of different levels and in reality I'm not saying that that's not true but it's not wholly
true you know Chevy, Ford, Hyundai, any other company out there that's building an EV that's
in California they're just you know just so happens that Lucid and Rivian happen to be in
California so they're like no max on that one on those two but I don't think I don't like it when
government I feel like this is kind of picking winners and losers because neither Lucid nor Rivian
do any of their manufacturing in California so it does feel to me like it might be a little bit
of a snub towards other automakers I would even I don't know I have a problem with this kind of
thing just in general I would feel more comfortable about it if Lucid and Rivian had an actual
manufacturing presence in this in the state but they don't so anyway it's it stills to me it
still feels very much like they're picking winners and losers all right most of the rest of this
episode is going to be about robotaxis and cyber cab so let's start off with robotaxis and then
we'll get into cyber cab and I think we end up let me see here I think we end up with talking about
fsd and a little bit extra robotaxi stuff so I want to be specific like robotaxi just has to
do with the service cyber cab has to do with the the car itself I do see some people online
using those things interchangeably they're not cyber cab is the little bitty two-seater car
and the robotaxi is whatever is operating on the robotaxi network for tesla
all right so tesla has launched a few unsupervised robotaxis in miami florida
they're operating in a geofenced area so as far as we can tell that the geofenced area is about 10
to 14 square miles we have no idea how many unsupervised robotaxis are currently operating in
miami although we can reasonably expect that there's just a handful and then in terms of robotaxi news
tesla started operating their robotaxi service in new orland in louisiana so that's cool so we got
we know we just recently added florida and louisiana to the robotaxi network
i don't think any of the ones in louisiana or norlands are unsupervised rides at this point
i wouldn't be surprised to see that they are in the future now my problem is this way back in
february i went to an event with four first responders for firefighters and tesla reps
we were out there talking and it sounded like robotaxi was just right around the corner here
in arizona and i live in the land of robotaxis and i haven't seen any yet i've seen cybercaps
i've even seen a model y that had robotaxi written on the side right outside my neighborhood at a
little restaurant for breakfast place however i'm not a hundred percent sure that would belong to
tesla that might have just been a fan that put that on there because it that's what it didn't
look like it was professionally done but that doesn't mean it wasn't tesla so just i don't know
my my general feeling on it was like this looks like a sticker uh that you know somebody just
threw on here but what do i know i didn't stick around to ask all right let's get to our cyber
cab news we have a little bit more information on the cyber cab specifically uh and some of this
is not surprising like for instance it's gonna have a 48 volt architecture tesla's doing this on
as far as i know all of their new vehicles so that's not new it's gonna have 4680 battery cells
that's not a huge surprise it'll have steer by wire which the cyber truck has let's see 400 volt
battery pack um also not a huge surprise tesla other than the cyber cab or not the cyber cab
excuse me other than the cyber truck tesla's vehicles aren't aren't we're not talking like 800
900 000 volt like hundays are or lucids it's the this is pretty common for tesla
and then dual gps for better positioning this makes a lot of sense if you're gonna be
selling a vehicle that's exclusively level four and i'm using air quotes for level four i mean i
would imagine that it is level four but we'll talk about that more in just a moment but uh why i'm
using air quotes for level four and you can't see me do it so yeah the dual gps positioning makes sense
as well okay so we've kind of talked about some of the not superficial but you know kind of g is
sort of interesting hardware that's going to go into the cyber cab let's talk a little bit more
about fsd uh full self-driving and the cyber cab because again if you are running a vehicle
that is supposed to be level four not have any sort of human inputs in terms of you know being
able to you know hit an accelerator or tap a brake or whatever steer if you don't have any of those
functions then you're definitely gonna want to make sure that you're running the the highest tech
possible so currently whether it's hardware three ai three ai four we're we're still sitting at level
two autonomy we have not reached level three in the consumer version of fsd now tesla will be in
the cyber cab according to not a tesla app they talk to a very reliable source i don't know what
that means in other than not a tesla app thinks that they're trustworthy but i don't know them
personally is what i'm saying so they may be wrong but i don't think they are and and by the way i
think not a tesla app is a great site for tesla news they are bend a little bit
pro tesla but in general i think they do an amazing job so according to not a tesla app the cyber
cab the production version of the cyber cab and again i'm production is important here and i'm
using air quotes there as well but the production version of the cyber cab will be running a more
powerful version of tesla's fsd computer which makes total sense again level four need to have a
more powerful version more powerful than level three than model three or model y or what the
cyber truck's running at the time and really what this comes down to according to their source is
it's going to have a lot more ram than what comes in the standard uh fsd package right now it's
almost certainly going to be running ai four plus chip the ai four plus chip or hardware four plus
chip and that's supposed to give a lot more compute headroom this is you know
something that tesla or elon talked about i think in the last earnings call but it might have been
the one before that so we know that this is coming and again it makes total sense that tesla would
um we're not sure how much ram tesla is going how much extra ram tesla is going to be adding
in this system and since we don't know i'm not going to speculate i do think not a tesla app
they kind of went through and they're like well it's got this much now it's probably going to
need this much blah blah blah it really doesn't matter in in the grand scheme of things it's going
to be beefier than what the model y the three or the cyber trick has at the and until you know
those vehicles catch up uh uh technology wise now on to something that i thought was very funny
that this even became on somebody generated an article multiple people uh created an article
out of this but there was a there's a video uh that tesla actually deleted but the video shows
and you can go to not a tesla app and you can watch the video and i'll put a link in the show
notes but there was the the these people are standing outside uh presumably teslas uh austin
texas headquarters the giga or not headquarters but the giga factory in austin on on tesla property
let's put it that way and there's some people standing out there the cyber cab comes and picks
them up there's no steering wheel no pedals no brake they get in the car and they are traveling
wherever they're going again still on a tesla property property because these vehicles cannot
be driven outside of private property and while the the car is driving they put on a movie which is
cool and um one of the people uh in the in the seat they're actually sitting in what would be the
driver seat of the right side of the car they have the tesla app up and you can see the animation
that uh is shown when you're adjusting the vents for the for like the ac or the heat
and that caused quite a stir because you'd be able to change you know the the climate controls
basically we can assume inside the robo taxi app and i thought well that's really silly that people
are you know making kind of a big deal about this but in reality when i started to think about it i
was like you know when i'm sitting and waiting for my kids to get done with one of their what seems
like endless activities that they're doing uh now that they are going into high school and such
when i'm sitting there waiting for them i'm in my car i usually am working on my laptop and i have
something on the screen like you whether it's a youtube video or netflix or hulu or whatever
and occasionally especially in uh the summertime the air conditioning will be on long enough where
i actually start getting cold and i would like to be able to adjust the climate controls without
getting out of the screen now i know you can kind of minimize the screen down and you can do the
climate controls and then come back up but being able to do that in the app actually kind of makes
a lot of sense and honest even going further than that right my kids do not have control
of the ac in the backseat of my model y i don't have my model y is older so they don't have that
little screen back there giving them the ability to connect to my tesla and change the climate for
them in the back would be fantastic now i don't know because i i have not always said i have not
always agreed with what elon has said in the past i don't know if this is something that i could go
on twitter and and post about or x and post about and maybe get that to to be a thing but i that would
be so cool if my kids didn't have to ask me to turn it up two clicks or turn the fan up two clicks
or down one click or blah blah they could just take care of it in the back and and if they're
going to fight about it they're 14 the almost 14 years old they can fight about it amongst themselves
and not take my attention away from driving and really it's honestly silly that you know adults
or anybody in the backseat would have to ask you to turn in today's day and age to turn the air
conditioner up or down so yeah and in my case air conditioner because you know i live in
what is a very uncomfortable place heat wise in the summertime uh let's see um
yeah so that that's all i had to say about that um i'm sure that there would be other
things that you could change via the robotex app as well i don't know why what the reason
for tesla deleting the video was but you can watch the full video on
on not a tesla app on their website it's not it's not crazy i wouldn't know like if they
didn't mean to send it out i wouldn't be mad about it being out there so i don't know
okay let's dig into some cyber cab first responder guide stuff so if you don't know tesla
and other automakers and battery makers like whole home battery makers and things like that
they have these first responder guides so that tells us as first responders how to interact
with the vehicle well the cyber cab has some cool features and i have not read the first
responder guide that is something that i will be doing over the next couple weeks so i'll bring
you updates but i haven't read the first responder guide yet but i have um i read a couple articles
that you know had little bits of tidbits fun tidbits for the general public in there
the first thing is a neat little note that is in the first responder guide it says a cyber cab
equipped with a steering wheel brake pedal and acceleration pedal is typically an engineering
or test vehicle and operates at SAE society of automotive engineers level two autonomy
so if i didn't say it before these are test or engineering vehicles that does not mean
that all cyber cabs are going to be operating at level two autonomy according to the guide
if the cyber cab does not have human input in terms of steering wheel brake pedal and accelerator
then that cyber cab is has level four autonomy and it's you know not certified under any state
as far as i know other than texas of self-certified at level four under the new texas law so
when when the vehicles are operating in autonomous mode it'll actually display
self-driving at the top left corner of the screen this is important because it's in when it's
operating under autonomy in full autonomy mode or in level four autonomy mode it is in that mode
whether it is sitting still and idling or waiting at a light or whatever so that's important for us
as firefighters to know because we do not want to inadvertently step in front of this vehicle
when it's deciding to go or we don't want to be you know interacting with it when it could drive
away now will it drive away i don't know but we certainly as firefighters will make sure
that a car is disabled or disabled enough before we start interacting with it so in a normal
like car accident type of a situation what we'll end up doing is we'll be like
let's just say somebody's asleep at a light for whatever reason maybe it's because they had some
sort of diabetic emergency maybe you know they're really sleepy or maybe you know there's something
drug related which are all pretty common we would go up we would before we interact with that car
we're going to make sure one that the driver is not really going to wake up so nobody's
going to walk in front or behind the car we're all going to stay to the side you know we might
knock on the window if the car does not if the person does not like ride you know if we can't
get them to wake up easily then we're going to put like these big old wheel chocks that we use
for the fire truck underneath the tires we're going to make sure that before we open up the door
we can kind of see inside and we're not going to accidentally get yeeted somebody doesn't have a
weapon we're going to make sure you know once we open up the vehicle no matter how we do that the
first thing we're going to do is we're going to put the car in park how do you do that with an
autonomous vehicle other than chalk in the wheels and Tesla's tires you know Tesla's got like 30
inch wheels for that massive that little teeny tiny car just these massive wheels so we're we're
going to want to make sure that we can disable this vehicle well according to the guide when the
vehicles operating in this mode the cameras and microphones there are cameras and microphones
in the B pillar that will recognize emergency lights and sirens and the vehicle will actually pull
over in that situation now it's supposed to at some level not take off if the lights and sirens
are behind it but again this is not something we're going to trust our lives to because we do not want
to be dead or injured and at this B pillar first responders will actually be able to chat make
hand gestures and you know basically robotaxi support should be able to see them and hear them
if for some reason you know they can't then that's where the hand gestures come in but the support
folks can communicate back to the first responders via a speaker system that's underneath the chassis
of the vehicle so for firefighters and what I'm going to teach the folks that I work with is that
this is how we interact with the support people I'm sure there'll also be a phone number but
for some reason if there's an accident or an emergency or whatever inside the cab for whatever
reason that we're interacting with it we want to make sure before we start putting our bodies
in harm harm's way that that vehicle is disabled to disable according to the guide to disable
autonomous mode there's only four ways to do it one is a tesla rep has to disable it which would
be the person we're talking to at the B pillar maybe on the phone to the car senses that it is
plugged into a charger and then that will disable it and there's actually a device for this that
first responders have and I'll talk about that in just a second and then the other way to disable
it it says is if a first responder pulls it over but you know again this is not something that is
not a thing we're going to trust well the tesla rep saying that it's disabled and the fact that it
pulls over for us we're not going to trust that implicitly we're still going to chalk the wheels
and we're going to exercise caution around that vehicle the other is when the airbags goes off
or detects a crash that's the last way it will detect and in that situation I would probably feel
fairly comfortable that it was disabled but we're still going to chalk the wheels we might even
cut the first responder loop anyway just to make sure that everything is good
or operate around the vehicle but this this device that I was talking about it's like a
little handheld device and on one end is a next connector and on the other end is a ccs connector
and when you plug that into the um we plug that into the charging port it it actually
disables you can't put it in drive and go so that would be a way and might be a reason for having
one of those I do know that there has been some concern expressed in this device because if the
battery is like are weak or could we potentially could be causing more danger by plugging it in
I don't think so because of a bunch of different reasons but um some people are like was it going
to reactivate the batteries are going to do this is it going to do that and my response to that is
if you cut the first off the accident is is big enough right and you're concerned about it reactivating
the battery the battery is already activated no matter what if the car detects it there's a
pyrotechnic inside that that separates the high voltage battery from the rest of the components
and you can always cut the cut loop as as first responders so I don't think it's that big of a
going to cause the battery to catch on fire or something like that I'm not concerned about that
but anyway um I kind of thought that was interesting hopefully you thought it was
interesting and incredibly boring um but yeah it is going to be like all of this no matter if it's
zooks or moa uh not moa what's the other one the uh the Volkswagen one uh brunt link and I but anyway
all of these moa anyway all of these uh robotexy services that are out there
Waymo and such interacting with them when there's autonomous driving it's just gonna
there's just going to have to be like one a standard way for first responders to interact with them
it doesn't mean there has to be a standard way for to to necessarily disable them because you know
every one of these companies has a different vehicle and that's going to require different
disabling you're going to have to work through the different ways to disable it it's more like
how do we get in touch with support how do we make sure we're doing the right things before we put
firefighters or even pedestrians operating around the vehicle in harms away because the first thing
when there's an accident uh you know you have people with the best intentions that have that
decide to go and help and I have been on plenty of calls where we were dispatched to the initial
call of an accident and then we're then now sending more units because a good Samaritan
was struck or you know something else happened to them maybe they got cut when they were trying
to get somebody out of a car or something to that effect right they got injured in some way
so what we don't want obviously is for an accident or something to occur and then a robotex no
matter who's operating it injures somebody else that's trying to be a good Samaritan
okay look we're down to our last few stories here starting off with a post from on x from
chris gbt it's chris standard spelling with two s's gpt like chat gpt on x had this to say
fsd would be twice as useful in neighborhoods if i could actually talk to my car and tell
it which driveway to pull into the same way i would a person driving me home and a shock
a swami who is in charge of fsd at tesla said working on it now in order for this to happen one
i i do believe and correct me if i'm wrong because i don't have full self-driving but doesn't
your tesla know where you live when you set it at home or doesn't your tesla know where you're going
when you put in an address to maybe a friend or family member's house wouldn't it automatically
put you at least in the in the area of where the driveway is maybe it doesn't drive you
straight up onto the driveway but according to the article that i read that put this whole
thing out there that would mean a tighter integration with grok because basically you
were saying to your car hey uh pull in here on the right and um i know there are some people
out there who listen to the show who have some concerns with um talking directly to grok and
having grok uh in charge of your car how do you would people out there feel about
this would it be something that would be really useful would you use it would you be worried
because it is grok i don't think grok you know tesla already knows where you are so i don't think
that's the like your personal information is a is a problem i think it's you know more of people
are literally kind of apprehensive about grok you know tesla elon said publicly that grok you
know they they kind of got it wrong in the beginning they're gonna have to rewrite a lot
of it if not all of it you know he's gone on to say that um anthropic you know elon's gone on to
say that they were wrong about anthropic and stuff like that so you know do we think grok is there
in to that to that level yet i i talk to grok sometimes in my car i don't have a problem
specifically with grok and i think it does okay i don't ask it to do anything hard it's more mostly
like huh how old was michael landon when he died and that kind of things just like random things
that pop up in your head when you're driving um and it does find it that kind of stuff uh what
does everybody think about having it you know obviously tesla is definitely pushing to have grok
have more um more capabilities in the car so um and interactions with the car so
just kind of thought or whatever you think body b o d i e at 918 digital dot com
all right uh pierre furegu of and i'm saying the name terrible i i kind of said pierre right
but i definitely butchered his last name of new street research thinks that self driving
or fsd could be tesla's iphone moment and his argument is that when the iphone launched people
were complaining because it was 600 dollars and they didn't really see a use for it and
admittedly when the iphone launched it did have more capabilities or maybe fuller features than a
lot of other phones in its category had but it wasn't like what we have today right i didn't have
gps maps it didn't have apps in general you know it it did a few things it did a few things well
and that was about it it was slow it was like on 3g or something like 2g so anyway but the his
thought is that fsd is about to have its fsd moment um and or not fs iphone moment excuse me
and that is when people realized that it wasn't just a phone it was a camera it could be a gps
it was a music player it was a web browser are you getting it this computer in your pocket
the are you getting it part is a throwback to steep jobs if you don't know anyway um
consumers saw value right after a time and it wasn't after the first iphone came out really it
was after several iterations of the iphone that they started really see value in it
ferragu believes that tesla is on a similar path his argument is that people currently
evaluate tesla as if it's just another car but once they can experience the capabilities of
what tesla has to offer in terms of autonomous driving they'll be they'll see it as something
that is much more than just transport although that's exactly what also driving is is transport
but that's fine and the higher price which is $99 a month here in the united states will feel
justified he also says that tesla has roughly two more quarters of development or they're
excuse me they're rough tesla is currently two more quarters of development away from things
really changing in terms of you know having its iphone moment
while i do think this is an interesting analogy i think it's been seeing some important details
for instance initially the iphone cost $600 that's you know not nothing 15 years ago or
whenever the iphone came out but it's not $37,000 or $100,000 is what it is which is what a tesla
costs now depending on which model you go with and trim so you know it could be even more depending
on what you add to it so even if full self-driving is as impressive as pierre thinks it's going to be
you still have the financial hurdle of buying or leasing the car and then paying another $99
a month on top of that phones you know like iPhones or android phones are often subsidized
by carriers not always you can buy it outright but in a lot of cases they're subsidized you
can also go like if you don't buy an iphone and you don't like AT&T you could
because you're paying too much money you could go to a company like visible who up until recently
was my phone carrier and i love visible i only went to cox cell phone plan because it still uses
Verizon's network like visible does and it costs about the same it's about $30 a month per phone
that i have on my plan and cox offered me a better subsidy when i bought my iphone 17 so that's the
only reason why i'm with cox but the the point is is you can you can go for a brand like AT&T
and pay more money or you can switch and you can go to a brand like visible and pay $25 a month
you know we don't have that same kind of thing with full self-driving
so i don't think i i see where he's going but i do not think that is
what's happening here with full self-driving at some point in time people will recognize that
full self-driving is beneficial i 100% agree with that i do not think that it's a even a close
comparison to the iphone or or smartphones in general if you want to include android in there
it's just not there's the money's not the same you have way more choice in terms of like you
can't say you can't buy a tesla and decide that you want waymo to be your full self-driving option
and i do see that at some point in time full self-driving whether that's through
waymo tesla or somebody else right for personal use i do see that as you know people seeing that
as like oh this is way better because now i can do whatever in my car sleep watch tv work on stuff
um and they they can reclaim a little bit of their time or just stare at the window you know
that there is value in that so i do see that as as being a benefit and i do see that that will
carry people over to vehicles that offer level four level five autonomy but in the the situation
that we're in right now i just don't i think we're two quarters away from this
really changing one and two i i don't necessarily see this as i don't know there's just a lot there's
a lot riding on this one particular analogy and i it doesn't track with me but i overall i see
his point like at some point in time people will see the value in full self-driving and when once
they see that it will be they'll be willing to maybe pay a little bit more although i do think
we're getting to a point now where other companies are catching up to where tesla is now where they
might be in three months or four months or six months who knows but right now companies are getting
pretty close um or or close enough i should say like my wife's car but we didn't pay any extra for
the features that my wife's car has and it has automatic lane keep it has you know basically
cruise control and then you can tell it i want to stay this far away from the car in front of me or
whatever and it's basically autopilot maybe a little bit more advanced than what i have in my
tesla for autopilot because tesla stopped developing autopilot but it maybe it works pretty good you
like it uh it works for a lot of what i would use it for is it close to full self-driving
no but neither is tesla so um as of right now maybe in a couple months they'll be closer
anyway all right i'm going to stop bullying that uh let's see oh and this is a another
neat robotexy app feature and you know when i wrote this i did not anticipate having 40 minutes
worth of content so you'll have to forgive me if i'm going back and forth a little bit
but with the robotexy app when you hail a robotexy you will now get a message whether or not your
car has a safety driver or not i like this i like to be able to one know that the car
or will have somebody else in it or not but also i kind i kind of want to know just because
i'm i'm a friendly person and i like having conversations with people but sometimes i just
want to sit in silence and somebody like a waymo showing up with a driver in the front seat even
though waymos in my area don't usually have drivers or ever have drivers in the front seat
anymore it's kind of nice to know that i can just get into that car and just not think about or
interact with anybody and kind of recharge just by being by myself so uh i don't know from from
my perspective i kind of like that it doesn't look like it notifies you if there's a safety monitor
in the car so in san francisco for instance there has to be a safety driver in austin there's a safety
monitor monitor some of the cars and that safety monitor sits in a passenger seat it
doesn't seem like it tells you whether or not that person's there but i think they should
i definitely think they should uh let's see this is our final story thank you everybody for
hanging with me for this long more uh information is coming out about the new jersey robotexy bill
that we spoke about a few weeks ago basically if you if you're not familiar the bill was written
in a way that doesn't match up with how teslas is doing autonomous driving it's a three-year pilot
program teslas like they're they're um purposely targeting us in this bill i don't think they are
but it definitely isn't the way teslas doing things so i can see why maybe they would have that take
um but we have a little bit uh extra information and i don't know if i mentioned this or not
that's why i'm mentioning it here but the robotexy bill from new jersey says that you need a camera
plus two other sensing modalities in addition to a driver um and those other sensing modalities could
be like a radar and lidar for instance now tesla doesn't use radar or lidar and hasn't for a number
of years they're a camera only system but teslan does you know where they do use like lidar and
stuff like that they use it on their validation or test vehicles when they're or maybe even mapping
vehicles so what i think tesla should do is embrace this new jersey bill as an opportunity
for testing they can try all sorts of weird things to comply that would comply with the
bill right they can just try like just a random stuff just use it as a play an area to to experiment
in new jersey while still operating your test robotexy service and you know just get weird
and when people are like hey i saw this model y equipped with lidar and i don't know like a
sarcastic pelican that you would find on like the flintstones you could just go back and be like
hey we're required to have two different sensor modalities and that sarcastic pelican they are
they graduated top of their class you know it's a living as they would say so my my general thought
is tesla should use this to their advantage and just get weird and try weird things and even i mean
elon is goofy enough to do this just just do the weirdest stuff maybe it has no advantage at all
in terms of advancing your path to self-driving maybe it's just silly just go out and do silly
things i i rather than complain about it embrace it and make it weird that's one of the things that
i liked about tesla early on is they have like a everything well not everything a lot of what they
do has a wink and a smile to it so just go in here follow the rules and and be silly i think
that's the best way to kind of deal with this particular bill all right everybody that is it
for me as you can see uh that this was a longer episode i hope you all enjoyed it
coming into this week i do have one interview that i haven't played yet and that's with
shawn from new zealand so we will play that this week i can't i haven't decided if i'm going to play
in addition to the two regular shows that we do the weekly edition and the weekend edition
i haven't decided if i'm going to do that or if i'm just going to put it out there as a third
episode this week uh we'll we'll kind of see and play it by ear all right everybody if you want
to email me it's bodeye at 918digital.com i am depending on when you listen to this i'm going
to be on the carstuff podcast on july 13th so i would highly encourage you to go subscribe to
tom and jill and you'll get to hear me there if you're interested and um you can follow me on
linkedin it's just bodicrimbodeye g-r-i-m-m thank you everybody so much for listening and i will
talk to you for our next weekly edition whatever that may be and whenever it may be
so
if you like the show please take a moment to rate review and subscribe it really does help the
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About this episode
The episode kicks off with a new release cadence and a focus on Tesla news. It connects California EV incentives to how eligibility caps could disadvantage Tesla, then pivots into robotaxis and Cybercab expectations—geofenced unsupervised operations, app-based passenger experience, and what Level 4 would mean. The hosts also walk through first-responder guidance for autonomous-mode shutdown, wheel chocks, and emergency interaction standards, before debating whether FSD will get an “iPhone moment,” alongside Grok voice/AI ideas and $99/month pricing.
In this weekend edition of Kilowatt, I chat about a new production philosophy to balance his full-time commitments, shifting to flexible weekly and weekend editions. This Tesla-focused episode dives deep into the hardware blueprint of the highly anticipated CyberCab, highlighting its ultra-efficient powertrain, 48-volt architecture, 4680 battery cells, and an exclusive upgraded AI4+ FSD computer with expanded RAM capacity. Bodie provides critical context for emergency personnel by breaking down the newly released CyberCab First Responder Guide, mapping out the specific protocols, chocking requirements, and sensor modalities needed to safely disable Level 4 autonomous mode on active scenes. The episode also tracks the expansion of Tesla's autonomous footprint with new unsupervised deployments in Miami and supervised networks in New Orleans. Finally, the show analyzes California's controversial new $135 million EV incentive structure, discusses a teased Grok assistant integration for precise driveway navigation, and breaks down an industry analyst's prediction that full self-driving is rapidly approaching its historic "iPhone moment."
