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[00:00:58] required. Terms and conditions apply if rated PG. Hello everyone and welcome to Killawata

[00:01:25] podcast about electric vehicles, autonomous driving, renewable energy and much, much more.

[00:01:31] And this episode is going to come with oodles and oodles of command presence. There's only

[00:01:35] one person that will understand that joke. And I just threw it in there to see if he will

[00:01:40] mention it later on. We'll see. Anyway, let's move on to today's show. I'm going to be

[00:01:47] honest with you. This show was really hard to produce because I had over 80 articles in my queue

[00:01:53] just for this show. There are so many things that I want to talk about and I will be clear

[00:01:57] that some of those articles were covering the same story, but I still had to read them or

[00:02:04] at least read through them. Yeah. And I probably still have close to 50 left in the

[00:02:11] queue that I still want to cover. So expect more than two episodes next week.

[00:02:16] All right, let's go ahead and jump into our EV news. DC fast charger manufacturer FreeWire

[00:02:22] is closing its California corporate headquarters and laying off nearly all of its on-site

[00:02:27] employees, which is about 113 employees on June 24th. If you're not familiar with FreeWire,

[00:02:33] they produce these DC fast chargers with an actual battery pack inside of them,

[00:02:38] which allows ChargePoint operators who don't have enough capacity at the panel for a normal

[00:02:42] DC fast charger to install the FreeWire chargers because that battery pack will trickle charge

[00:02:48] while it's not in use. And then there's an added benefit of operators being able to sell

[00:02:53] back electricity to the grid during peak times. So it's a really interesting idea. Unfortunately,

[00:02:59] they're closing down or are they? I actually wrote this story up and then later there was

[00:03:05] a follow-up in Electrek that FreeWire just wanted to just kind of be transparent.

[00:03:11] And so they sent them this information. So here I'm going to read you the email

[00:03:15] as best as I can. As a company committed to transparency and open communication,

[00:03:21] we want to address the recent discussions regarding FreeWire's financial situation.

[00:03:26] The EV market is currently facing some headwinds and like many players in the industry,

[00:03:31] we are navigating these challenges. However, it is important to note that FreeWire's quality

[00:03:37] initiatives and production are better situated than ever before. Our dedication to quality

[00:03:43] improvement has strengthened our market position during these uncertain times. Additional capital

[00:03:49] is necessary to further support our growth initiatives and ensure continued success.

[00:03:54] Therefore, we are actively seeking further funding, a step that aligns with strategies

[00:04:00] pursued by many companies in the industry. Meanwhile, we are continuing operations and

[00:04:06] supporting our valued customers while we are making these efforts to right-size the company.

[00:04:12] We remain confident in our team, our technology and our vision for the future of clean energy

[00:04:17] solutions. We appreciate the ongoing support of our stakeholders and partners as we work

[00:04:22] to overcome these challenges and continue to drive positive change in the EV market.

[00:04:29] I read this as, hey, if we get more money, we won't have to close down. If we don't,

[00:04:34] we're probably going to have to close down, which sucks honestly because like I keep saying

[00:04:38] over and over and over again when it comes to these layoffs in the EV space, I hate seeing

[00:04:43] people lose their jobs. So good luck to FreeWire on finding more funding. If you are curious

[00:04:51] about FreeWire, I actually did an interview with Arkady Sosanoff who's the founder and CEO

[00:04:56] of FreeWire back last year in I think it was September of 2023. I'll find the show number and

[00:05:03] I'll put it in the show notes. So put a link to the show notes if you're interested in what

[00:05:06] they're doing as a company. I think what they're doing is really smart. All right,

[00:05:10] let's move on to Fisker. So I have three stories about Fisker. I think it's three,

[00:05:15] but let's start with a door ding. Okay. A Fisker Ocean owner, Joy, we'll call her Joy.

[00:05:22] That's because that's her name. Joy says her nearly $70,000 Ocean One was hit by another vehicle on

[00:05:29] the edge of the door. So Joy had the door open on the, I believe it's the passenger side,

[00:05:34] front passenger side and a car came by and hit the door and created what looks like a

[00:05:41] small amount of damage. It does not look severe in the pictures. An insurance adjuster

[00:05:47] from Joy's insurance company came out, estimated the damages to be around $900 to repair,

[00:05:52] but also noted that the repair might actually cost more money because the adjuster wasn't familiar

[00:05:57] with the vehicle, which makes total sense. There's not a lot of Fisker Oceans running around.

[00:06:02] So the car went to the body shop, the body shop called around and they were trying to

[00:06:06] find the correct parts to fix Joy's Ocean. And they weren't able to find the parts.

[00:06:12] They even reached out to Fisker's service centers and they were still unable to find

[00:06:16] the parts. So about a month goes by and the insurance company is like, okay, well,

[00:06:20] we're just going to total your car. And they cut Joy a check for $53,303.

[00:06:27] Now keep in mind, Joy paid close to $70,000 for this car, not all that long ago.

[00:06:33] I don't know exactly when she bought it, but it was not very long ago.

[00:06:36] So that's about $16,000 in loss and value. In the article, Joy said that she had many other

[00:06:43] issues with the car that I'm not going to go into here, but kind of line up with what

[00:06:47] Marques Brownlee had said when he did his Fisker Ocean review. And she did not have kind words to

[00:06:54] say about Heinrich Fisker. So I'm not going to repeat them here, but they weren't very nice.

[00:07:02] Next up we have a story from Business Insider. Fisker is closing its headquarters in

[00:07:07] Manhattan Beach, California. This is according to three different sources that confirmed that

[00:07:13] employees were asked to gather their personal belongings and take them to Fisker's research

[00:07:19] and development center or location in La Palma, California, which is about 40 miles away from the

[00:07:25] headquarters. It doesn't sound like anyone was let go, but Fisker was notifying employees that

[00:07:31] if they're unable to raise the necessary funds, then some, if not all employees would have to

[00:07:37] be laid off on June 28th of this year. And it's unlikely that if that happens, Fisker is

[00:07:42] just going to go out of business entirely on that same day. All right, I got one more negative

[00:07:47] Fisker story and then I'm going to end on a positive here. Fisker did file for whatever

[00:07:54] a bankruptcy is called in Austria. So as many of you know, Fisker uses Magne Steyer as a

[00:08:00] manufacturing partner. And that happens to be that plant happens to be in Austria. So Fisker

[00:08:06] filed for bankruptcy. They gave a bunch of reasons why they made this decision,

[00:08:11] which I'm not going to talk about a lot of them because I'm just not qualified to talk about

[00:08:17] the financial side of business because I just don't understand it on a, you know, a competent

[00:08:23] level. Magne Steyer did say that it doesn't expect to build any more Fisker oceans going

[00:08:28] forward. It doesn't sound like the contract between the two companies was canceled.

[00:08:34] It sounds like the next step in Fisker's de-evolution is really what it sounds like.

[00:08:40] Also in March, Fisker had something like 4,700 Fisker oceans just sitting around waiting to

[00:08:45] be sold or delivered. And based on their current position in the EV market, I'm guessing that

[00:08:53] people would be more hesitant to buy a Fisker ocean because of their unfavorable

[00:09:00] position in the EV market, even though they made huge price cuts on the ocean. Magne also

[00:09:07] said that they had to lay off about 500 workers who were working on the Fisker line.

[00:09:12] All right, let's end this on a positive note because I feel like I'm only talking about the

[00:09:21] negatives when it comes to Fisker and Tesla recently. And I don't like doing that. So

[00:09:26] YouTube creator Bjorn Nyland, who tests all sorts of EVs got his hands on a Fisker

[00:09:32] Ocean Extreme to test. He did a thousand kilometer road test, which is about 660 miles or so.

[00:09:40] And he said that the Fisker Ocean Extreme excelled in the long distance range test.

[00:09:46] Now I'm not going to go over all the numbers and the entire test. I'll put a link to the

[00:09:50] video in the show notes because Bjorn does a way better job than I could in explaining how

[00:09:55] his test works and his results. But I added this last story in here because I think the

[00:10:01] Fisker Ocean has a lot of potential and I really want to see either Fisker get the money they need

[00:10:09] to continue building these vehicles so they can support the people who've already bought them.

[00:10:13] And for the same reasons, I would like to see somebody buy Fisker so that they can

[00:10:18] continue. Like I think what the team at Fisker did was kind of, it was pretty

[00:10:26] remarkable. They just couldn't pull it all together with the money that they had.

[00:10:30] And in retrospect, and I don't have any insight into this, but in retrospect,

[00:10:34] it seems like maybe Fisker rushed things a little bit too fast. And maybe they should

[00:10:41] have taken another year and got their software developed and just overall produced a more fully

[00:10:47] formed project and not a beta, which is kind of what it seems like the Fisker Ocean is at the

[00:10:53] moment. But my point on this, all this is I want to see this company succeed. I know for fact,

[00:11:00] there are two Fisker Oceans in the area where I live. I see them all the time. And recently

[00:11:05] I saw a third one, which was a white kind of a cream colored one. It's a good looking car

[00:11:11] and it's got a lot of potential. All right. I'm going to end my Fisker rant here. It just

[00:11:15] hurts my heart for a lot of different reasons. The people who have bought the car, the people

[00:11:20] who worked at the company. And I mean, I don't really have a whole lot of sympathy for Heinrich

[00:11:27] Fisker. This is like his third automotive company and he's failed at all three.

[00:11:30] And it's not that I think he's a loser because he failed, but he's the one that took the risk.

[00:11:36] He knew what he was getting into. All right. I'm beating a dead horse here.

[00:11:41] Let's go ahead and get to our Patreon plug.

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[00:13:43] That's bombas.com slash a cast code a cast. If you like what this show is doing and you

[00:13:52] want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash kilowatt or

[00:13:55] support kilowatt.com and there you will get an ad free experience. So for as little as a dollar

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[00:14:27] check out patreon.com forward slash kilowatt. All right. Let's move on to our Tesla news.

[00:14:33] Tesla has removed job postings from Giga Mexico and many job postings from their North

[00:14:39] America sites. The removal of jobs comes right after Tesla laid off a whole bunch of people

[00:14:46] and they're even laying off more people. They let off people in the software department,

[00:14:49] service teams, engineering teams. They've decided that they're not going to do summer

[00:14:55] interns this year, which kind of sucks for people trying to learn and get into the

[00:15:00] automotive business. However, GM says that they're happy to take those interns. I'm sure

[00:15:06] James also happy to take any of the other employees that Tesla didn't want. Tesla is

[00:15:11] flooding the market with people with a lot of knowledge on how EVs works, how they're built,

[00:15:17] all that good stuff. Rich Otto, who's the head of product launches, he is also leaving

[00:15:24] the company and he wrote this on LinkedIn. Why leave? It's a company I love and that has

[00:15:30] given me so much, but has also taken a pound of flesh. Great companies are made up of equal

[00:15:36] parts great people and great products. And the latter are only possible when the people

[00:15:42] are thriving. The recent layoffs that are rocking the company and its morale have

[00:15:47] thrown this harmony out of balance and it's hard to see the long game. It's time for a

[00:15:52] change. So he was in charge, I believe with the Model S refresh launch, the Model 3 and the

[00:15:59] Model Y. He's probably the Cybertruck was probably in there as well. So Rich Otto out of the

[00:16:05] company, not laid off, not asked to leave. He just decided, you know what? I don't like

[00:16:11] the way this is heading. It definitely, whenever layoffs hit, it definitely has an

[00:16:16] effect on morale and the way that the Tesla is doing layoffs at the moment. I can imagine

[00:16:22] that morale is high at Tesla. So kind of staying on the subject of layoffs, we're trying to still

[00:16:31] figure out why Elon decided to cut the entire Supercharger team and I don't really have any

[00:16:36] additional info on that. There are rumors and probably the most prevalent rumor and

[00:16:41] the one I give the most credence is that the Supercharger team, I can't remember Rebecca,

[00:16:46] I can't remember her last name. She didn't want to do as deep of cuts when it comes

[00:16:51] to layoffs as Elon wanted. So Elon just let the team go. That's not proven. Nobody's

[00:16:57] been able to validate that as true or not, but that's kind of the running theory that

[00:17:03] everybody's or many people are going with I should say. But even a week after this

[00:17:07] happened, we still have a lot of questions like what's going to happen to the sites

[00:17:11] that Tesla was going to build on and they've decided not to? What happens with the existing

[00:17:17] Supercharger team? I don't have what I think are great answers for you, but I do have some

[00:17:25] answers for you and we'll try to piece this together as the weeks go on. So Elon did say

[00:17:31] on Twitter that Tesla will be spending $500 million on expanding the Supercharger network.

[00:17:37] So this is his tweet. Just to reiterate, Tesla will spend well over $500 million expanding

[00:17:43] our Supercharger network to create thousands of new Chargers this year. That's just on new sites

[00:17:50] and expansions, not including operational costs, which are much higher. Okay? And who's going to

[00:17:56] maintain them? Because I had actually thought that the team that Tesla laid off was just

[00:18:02] the team that was doing the designing and setting up the installs, that kind of thing,

[00:18:09] like the bureaucracy work and the design work. But it sounds like Tesla let go of some of the

[00:18:16] service technicians as well. So let's see, I think it was InsideEV spoke to some of those

[00:18:23] folks who were laid off and this is what they had to say. Here are some quotes.

[00:18:28] Two weeks before the layoffs, the Supercharger team was told that charging was one of the most

[00:18:34] important departments in the company. And that does make sense. So Tesla did a big

[00:18:41] round of layoffs and somebody decided, hey, we're going to get everybody together and say,

[00:18:45] hey listen, you're valuable to the company. And it turns out maybe not as valuable as they

[00:18:50] thought. All of these folks that talked to InsideEVs talked to them on the condition of

[00:18:55] anonymity, anonymity, anonymity, anonymity. They wanted to be anonymous. One employee who worked

[00:19:03] on the diagnosis and repair side said, we couldn't keep up. And now the network is even larger.

[00:19:10] Now guess what? There are even more consumers that are going to be a lot and there are going

[00:19:15] to be a lot more issues that could possibly come up. So he's referring to the Supercharger

[00:19:21] network obviously growing, but even when it was just Tesla's hitting the Supercharger

[00:19:24] network, they were really busy trying to keep the Supercharger network up and running.

[00:19:30] And now you have more customers because it's open to the Ford folks and the Rivian folks.

[00:19:38] And then you have those Magic Dock Superchargers with the CCS-1 adapters.

[00:19:44] So it's a lot. And all of those folks who are left to maintain the Supercharger network

[00:19:50] are going to be busier. I'm sure it's going to be an interesting next couple of months for

[00:19:56] them for sure. Here's what another employee had to say, what I'm hearing is there are still some

[00:20:01] guys in the field, but they're going to be pretty over-tasked. And for those employees who

[00:20:06] are left, they're kind of like worried and concerned about their positions as well.

[00:20:11] And that does make total sense. I'm going to read you one last quote here.

[00:20:17] I was pretty much available 19 to 24 hours a day. I had to stay connected to my phone

[00:20:23] all the time. I sacrificed a lot of family time. Now, I would imagine that this person,

[00:20:29] and I don't want to put feelings on them, but if I were this person,

[00:20:32] I would feel a little bit betrayed because you sacrifice anytime you go to work,

[00:20:38] you sacrifice the time with your family. And yeah, being on call 19 to 24 hours a day is

[00:20:47] pretty significant. Now, I will say that the Supercharger network layoffs, I feel anyway,

[00:20:55] like it's hit the North American market much more than the European market because the DC

[00:21:01] fast charging in Europe is a little bit of a different story. They use the CCS2 standard for

[00:21:06] the connector in all of Europe, I'm pretty sure. And that includes Tesla. Tesla doesn't

[00:21:11] use the Naxx adapter in Europe. I think they tried early on and they just gave up and started

[00:21:18] using CCS2 because Europe has different standards and laws that you have to follow. Yeah,

[00:21:24] even think at one point, they put both the CCS2 connector and the next Naxx connector next to

[00:21:28] each other if I'm remembering right. But anyway, in Europe, there are 390 companies

[00:21:34] that are operating DC fast charging networks and they installed over 13,000 DC fast chargers in

[00:21:43] the first quarter of 2024. That's compared to just under 4000 DC fast chargers in the same time

[00:21:50] period in North America. Not to say that it's not a big deal in Europe that Tesla did this,

[00:21:57] it's more to say they have other options. Now what their uptime is and how that all goes,

[00:22:03] I honestly don't know if you live in Europe, let me know what your experience is when it comes

[00:22:07] to fast chargers. At one point, the European Union wanted something like a charge point every

[00:22:14] 60 kilometers. Now whether that charge point was level 2 or level 3, I'm not really sure if

[00:22:19] they qualified that, but that was the goal. All right, let's move back here to North America

[00:22:25] because with the layoffs, Tesla sent out an email basically to their partners and we read

[00:22:34] that email last week. I won't go into it now because we're kind of running long.

[00:22:39] But it was basically like, hey, if you haven't started building anything, don't. If you are

[00:22:44] almost done, hold off until we contact you, that kind of thing. We don't know what we're

[00:22:48] doing at this point. A decision was made and now we're trying to figure out what the

[00:22:53] repercussions were. That's what it sounded like to me. And by the way, we don't know when you're

[00:22:56] going to get paid. So some of those sites that we talked about were just completely abandoned.

[00:23:02] Tesla is like, we're not building any superchargers here in this location.

[00:23:06] Well, British Petroleum is looking to actually purchase those abandoned sites or at least

[00:23:11] swoop in, maybe not purchase, maybe swoop in and make those partnerships with whoever

[00:23:16] owns or manages the property. And BP would like to install chargers at those spots, which makes

[00:23:23] a lot of sense because Tesla probably spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out

[00:23:27] where is the best place to put their superchargers. And BP can basically come in

[00:23:34] and say, hey, listen, I see that Tesla was interested in all these locations. We're going

[00:23:38] to come in and we'll put our chargers in there. And guess what? BP's chargers, in many

[00:23:44] of the cases, are Tesla superchargers. They use the Tesla supercharger hardware. BP bought

[00:23:51] like a hundred million dollars worth of Tesla supercharger hardware. So they're not going to

[00:23:57] with a hundred million dollars, they're not going to become a big huge player in the EV

[00:24:01] market when it comes to charging. But it is definitely a start. And I would imagine that

[00:24:06] they'll buy even more if they can find some success. All right, this is our last story.

[00:24:14] The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration is ordering Tesla to release

[00:24:19] internal communications on autopilot and full-stealth driving. So Tesla issued a recall

[00:24:26] because the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration did an investigation and said, hey,

[00:24:31] in order to comply with the results of the investigation, you need to make these changes.

[00:24:35] Tesla made those changes and there were more accidents that occurred after Tesla made the

[00:24:41] changes. And there were 13 deaths linked to autopilot. Now, the National Highway Transportation

[00:24:47] Safety Administration is questioning whether or not the changes that Tesla made were actually

[00:24:52] effective and they want to revisit the situation. And now Tesla has to hand over

[00:24:59] more extensive information, which is basically I think the way it was worded as all data and

[00:25:04] documents on full-stealth driving and autopilot. If Tesla does not comply, they could be fined up

[00:25:10] to a hundred and thirty five million dollars. Now that's one issue that Tesla is facing on

[00:25:16] one side of things. On the other side, according to Reuters, Tesla is being investigated

[00:25:21] slash probed by the U.S. Justice Department for securities and wire fraud by misleading investors

[00:25:28] and consumers over their claims on full-stealth driving and autopilot and what the capabilities

[00:25:33] are. This is according to three sources familiar with the matter. What this boils down to is Tesla

[00:25:40] might be in trouble for overselling the software packages' actual capabilities. What

[00:25:45] can they actually do? So the Justice Department believes that some of the claims Tesla has made

[00:25:50] could constitute securities or wire fraud. And again, this is autopilot and full-self driving.

[00:25:57] To my knowledge, Tesla has never officially come out and say that full-self driving can

[00:26:04] drive itself without a driver's supervision. I don't think Tesla's ever said that when you

[00:26:11] sign up for full-self driving. There are a lot of things that you have to agree to in terms

[00:26:16] of paying attention and you're still the person in charge of the vehicle and all that

[00:26:19] stuff. The bit that might get Tesla in trouble however is Elon has made many, we'll call them

[00:26:26] qualified statements about full-self driving and autopilot where he says, well don't quote me on

[00:26:32] this but I think this is where full-self driving could be in three months. And

[00:26:37] spoiler alert, it's rarely ever there. These statements coupled with the video that Tesla made

[00:26:45] in 2016 of the car driving on autopilot from an employee's house to the Tesla headquarters,

[00:26:54] that video was very doctored. It was cut to make it seem like it was one trip where the driver

[00:27:06] didn't have to take any interventions at all and I think this was in 2016, this would have

[00:27:10] been hardware too. And it turns out that that was a lie. They definitely doctored that video

[00:27:18] to make it look like the full-self driving was capable of doing something that it wasn't.

[00:27:24] Now if you remember, Trevor Milton who's the founder of Nicola Motors got in trouble

[00:27:30] for doing something similar. Basically he created a video of his hydrogen semi truck

[00:27:37] which was supposed to be powered on hydrogen driving down a windy road. In reality,

[00:27:43] there was a slight grade so this truck was just rolling down the hill. It wasn't powered by

[00:27:50] anything except for gravity because the truck didn't work and he was found guilty of misleading

[00:27:56] investors and he had to pay a bunch of money in fines although I think with all of the

[00:28:00] money that he made from Nicola and his claims ended up being more than what he paid in fines.

[00:28:05] So he definitely came out ahead for cheating in this regard but he also had to go to jail.

[00:28:10] So we'll see what happens when it comes to what they're going to do with Tesla.

[00:28:17] This is just a probe and honestly I'm not a lawyer so I don't fully know the difference

[00:28:24] between a probe and an investigation. I'm guessing probes lead to investigations but

[00:28:29] there are a few different outcomes. One could be criminal charges which is what Trevor

[00:28:35] Milton got. The other would be civil sanctions and then the third option is nothing. But there

[00:28:42] are some things that we might get out of this as EV enthusiasts and the folks that listen to

[00:28:47] this podcast and that is if it goes to court, if it goes to trials, some of these Tesla

[00:28:52] internal documents will become available to the public records so we'll get to see a little bit

[00:28:58] more in terms of the internal communication of what the Tesla teams were discussing

[00:29:06] when it comes to full self-driving and autopilot. So with the last two stories that we talked about

[00:29:12] you might be thinking well Tesla's going to mind their P's and Q's when it comes to

[00:29:18] full self-driving and autopilot. Well the answer to that is nope they're not. They may

[00:29:24] be getting rid of this steering wheel nag. So if you don't know what the steering wheel nag is,

[00:29:30] is when you are using autopilot or full self-driving you actually have to provide

[00:29:34] a little bit of torque on the steering wheel or you know turn the dials on the steering wheel

[00:29:41] like the volume up or down or something like that to show that your hands are still in the

[00:29:44] steering wheel and that you are actually paying attention. Tesla may be getting rid of this

[00:29:50] version 12.4 which might be released next week so when I say maybe and might be,

[00:29:59] what I really mean is Elon saying stuff on Twitter but who knows when this stuff's

[00:30:03] going to actually come out and when it will be released. Now is it in the end of the world

[00:30:07] that Tesla is getting rid of the steering wheel nag? Not really because they have an

[00:30:12] internal camera that can check in to see if you are actually paying attention or not. If

[00:30:17] your face is in your phone or looking in the back seat, the internal camera knows that you are not

[00:30:23] paying attention to the road. However based on the last two stories maybe this isn't the right

[00:30:29] time to roll that feature out or to get rid of that feature. So we will see what happens and

[00:30:34] I will definitely keep you posted. All right everybody that is it for me this week. All

[00:30:40] of the links to the things that we talked about will be in the show notes if you would

[00:30:44] like to learn more. I know I am getting this out a little bit late like I said. This one was a

[00:30:50] tough one to put together and I don't know why. Sometimes it is because my brain is tired and

[00:30:56] it is just harder to get things out. Sometimes it is because the stories are kind of dense and

[00:31:01] you are trying to figure out where the actual truth lies and I think this was a little

[00:31:06] bit of part A and part B and sometimes I am just an idiot and it could be a little part

[00:31:11] C as well. So all right I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you next

[00:31:18] week. I don't know what the shows next week will look like because like I said I have a lot of

[00:31:22] stories that I want to cover so next week there might be three shows maybe four. We will

[00:31:30] see. We will say three for sure. All right thank you everybody for listening. I hope you

[00:31:35] all have a wonderful week and I will talk to you let's just say soon. Hey it is Danny

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