Snack Sized EV News

[00:00:20] Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving, and much, much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host. We don't have much, much more on this episode, but lordy, this is going to be a short episode, folks. And there's a couple of different reasons why. The first reason is I don't have very much time and putting together a super long episode just isn't in the cards for me.

[00:00:47] But the second reason is, and I don't know if it's because it's the Easter weekend or whatever, but there's just not that much compelling news, right? When I look through my Instapaper, which is how I bookmark all the stories I want to talk about, there's a lot of stories about the Cybertruck.

[00:01:08] You may, you know, inventory piling up and, you know, people saying that Tesla's not taking trade-ins with the Cybertruck. There's odometer gate, which, you know, it's not necessarily a negative story, which is people are saying that Tesla is fudging the numbers on the odometer. So they, you know, the warranty goes, it goes out of warranty sooner. I don't know if that's true. It should definitely be investigated if it is.

[00:01:37] But I don't know if it's true. So, you know, do I talk about that? I don't know. You know, there's, let's see here. What was the other thing? There's some political stories that, you know, about Tesla and Elon. And I was like, well, you know, as far as odometer gate goes, that's worth mentioning. But that's about 30 seconds that I've pretty much mentioned all I would talk about.

[00:02:04] And the Cybertrucks, we've talked about that before in the past, you know, they, it sounds like they're slowing down production on the Cybertruck because they've got so many in stock and they are moving some of the people off the Cybertruck line to other places in the factory in Texas.

[00:02:23] I don't know if that's true, but that's the rumor. So yeah. Well, I mean, what else do we talk about? The Tesla insurance premiums going up because of vandalism. That's definitely happening.

[00:02:37] And to be quite honest, I'm not looking forward to seeing what my insurance is going to cost here in, I think it's a month that I have to pay for insurance again. I haven't got my updated premium yet, but I can't imagine that the next six months of insurance is going to be cheap.

[00:02:55] So yeah, I mean, there's all of those things to talk about when it comes to Tesla. None of them are, I think, have very much substance to them. And Tesla's earnings call is going to be on Tuesday, April 22nd.

[00:03:11] So, you know, we'll have plenty of Tesla information on Tuesday, but for right now, um, really don't have any Tesla stories to speak of that I find to be credible is not the right word. Um, but warranted to talk about, there's lots of stories that are about Tesla. It's just hard to pick the ones that aren't just kind of like either maybe a little unfair or maybe

[00:03:41] a little too glowing about the company. So trying to find a healthy medium there. Um, so the, I have four stories for us was what this comes down to. And, um, these are just regular EV stories. It's not even four. I have three stories for us. Um, and hopefully, you know, EV news will pick up again next week, but this just wasn't a very exciting news week before we get to the stories though.

[00:04:10] So I do want to give a shout out to James at true North EVs. James's last two episodes, uh, have been really good. And I would highly recommend that you go and check them out. Um, in the very last episode that he did, and I don't know if I, there's a number on this, but in the very last episode, he spoke with Matthew pointer about EV fires for batteries.

[00:04:35] And I think that's worth checking out if that's something you're interested in. And then James also talks about the Hummer EV that he got a chance to drive as well as, uh, the Tesla being removed from the Manitoba EV rebates. So go check them out.

[00:04:54] The, uh, the, uh, battery episode is about an hour and a half long. The, uh, the, uh, battery episode is 20 minutes long. I put a link in the show notes. Uh, please go support James. He's a good friend and, uh, he supports the show. So, uh, whatever we can do to give back, uh, I'm, I'm happy to do. So go check out what James is doing.

[00:05:13] And if you live in Manitoba, check out the Manitoba EV association or in and around Manitoba, I should say. All right, let's start with our news. Tesla's former senior vice president of power training injury injury energy energy drew drew baglino baglano baglino drew. I think it's baglano. Anyway, he's looking to raise up to $50 million in series a funding for his new venture.

[00:05:40] Heron power. Heron power will produce the, well, this is what they call it. The next generation of transformers for electrical grids. They are using solid state transformers to regulate the fluctuations caused by solar panels and wind turbines. And then with these transformers, they'll be able to switch back and forth between different power sources, uh, really fast. I think this type of technology is really interesting. I don't know a lot about it.

[00:06:10] But based on the earnings calls and the presentations that Tesla gave that drew was a part of, he's a really smart feller. And I think this is something we should all keep an eye on, uh, going forward. I don't think he's going to have a problem, uh, raising money at all. As a matter of fact, one of the articles I read said that, uh, he would have investors lining out the door.

[00:06:32] If he was just going to, uh, if he was just going to open up a street taco shop, like that's, that's how in demand this gentleman is. So good luck to him. And, uh, hopefully we'll learn more about what they're doing.

[00:06:45] Next up, we have the VW ID everyone. I've seen it written two different ways or the V, uh, V, VW ID one, which is Volkswagen's smallest and most affordable car. It is built on the MEB platform, but it is the first Volkswagen model with technology and software from Rivian and VW's joint venture.

[00:07:10] So very first one, uh, VW gets it even before Rivian's R2 lineup comes out. Uh, it's about the size of a mini Cooper. So it's a subcompact. According to Volkswagen, it's going to be front wheel drive, have a range of 250 kilometers, which is about 155 miles. It'll sell for around 20,000 euros, which is, uh, fairly affordable and they won't have to pay tariffs on it because they're going to build it in Europe.

[00:07:39] You can expect to see this bad chicken in Europe sometime in 2027. So I'm looking forward to seeing what people think of this. Subaru unveiled the trail seeker EV. The trail seeker is an off-road ready EV. That's a little bit bigger than the Solterra. Obviously it's off-road. So it's got more ground clearance.

[00:07:59] The final specs have not been announced. You know, they, we got the, the New York auto show Solterra or excuse me, uh, Subaru specs, which are, you know, what they hope it'll be able to do. Um, and maybe it will, but we're looking at a dual motor, all wheel drive, 375 horsepower, zero to 60 in 4.4 seconds.

[00:08:22] Estimate a range of around 260 miles, and it'll have, uh, right from the factory. It'll be come equipped with a next port. So you'll be able to just easily pull up to a supercharger network or any other NACS equipped, uh, charger and, uh, charge car up.

[00:08:40] The other thing is, uh, we should mention is this is going to be built in Japan. And right now we don't know what's going to happen with tariffs. So they didn't release any pricing for this vehicle. Uh, I would imagine it's probably going to be more expensive than the Solterra. I think Subaru sold around 12,000, 12,500 Solterras last year. And I don't know if that's worldwide. That might be in the U S or that might be worldwide. I'm not sure.

[00:09:08] But it's not, you know, a super high number. I wouldn't imagine that the trail seeker is going to sell that much more. I mean, if it's sold double, it's still a success for Subaru. Um, but, uh, yeah, one of the things that Subaru is doing really good on the Solterra. And I would imagine that this will transfer over to the trail seeker is that their leases are really affordable. So that might be something if you're interested in a vehicle like this, uh, that you might want to take a look at.

[00:09:36] However, if you lease it, you may not want to take it off road because you might get penalized for some things. Anyway, uh, the vehicle's coming in 2026 and I'm, I'm looking forward to seeing what Subaru's final product is on this vehicle. So, all right. Uh, that is it for me, folks. I want to thank everybody for listening. Thank you again for being patient. Almost all of the things that are keeping me busy right now end at the end of April.

[00:10:02] So I am, I am ready for this month to be over with, but, uh, again, I just really appreciate how kind everybody is the emails of support and, uh, the emails talking about, uh, whether we should go with a super cast or sub stack. Keep those coming. If you want to email me and weigh in, uh, which, uh, community, uh, platform you like best. Uh, so far, it sounds like sub stack might be edging out super cast, but we have some pretty valid reasons.

[00:10:31] For people, um, asking me to go to one or the other. Um, but yeah, so you can email me. It's Bodie B O D I E at nine one eight digital.com. You can find me on X at nine one eight digital. And if I haven't responded to your email yet, cause I found a couple of people today that when I was going through my email and cleaning stuff out that I hadn't responded to that were a couple of weeks old.

[00:10:55] If I haven't responded to your email, just send me a, send me a prod. Okay. I don't want you to be, uh, I don't want you to think that you took the time to email in and I didn't respond to you. That's really important to me. So if you emailed me and you're like, man, this joker didn't even email me back.

[00:11:13] You're right. If I find it, I will email you back. If I haven't found it, please email me. Cause I want to hear from you. All right, everybody. You have a great, uh, week and, uh, I will probably talk to you on Wednesday because the earnings call is coming out on Tuesday. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get the episode out by Tuesday evening, but I'll try. All right, everybody. Thanks so much. Have a great week. And I will talk to you soon. Bye-bye.