From Budget EV to Luxury Spaceship

[00:00:21] 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 and on today's episode we're going to talk EV news. I'm still on vacation, only got one more day here though, and then I'm back home. We've had a really good time, got to do some cool stuff, we'll talk about that in later episodes.

[00:00:49] But I met some really nice people, so yeah, cool, very excited. We have a new Patreon supporter and that is Michael. Michael went to supportkilowatt.com and became a patron. So Michael thank you so much for supporting the show. As all of you know when you do support the show, that money goes back into the show, none of that money goes into my pocket, so you are literally making the show better.

[00:01:18] So Michael thank you so much, I really appreciate it. And if you need anything please reach out. I'm more than happy to help out where I can. All right. Let's move on to our news. And I don't have any recording equipment here, so I'm just recording off of my laptop. So sorry if you can hear me make small movements and adjustments on the bed here.

[00:01:46] Starting with the EV news, the new Chevy Bolt isn't long for this world, unfortunately. We know that Chevy is only going to make a certain amount of them and then they're moving on to other things that don't include affordable EVs in the way that, you know, maybe they thought about it two or three years ago. So fortunately though, Kia is bringing the EV3, actually EV3 is here in the US to fill that

[00:02:15] bolt size hole in our hearts. That sounds weird. To fill that Chevy Bolt size hole in our hearts. So the Kia EV3 is going to start at $29,890. That is right in line with the Chevy Bolt in the Nissan Leaf starting price. But they, you know, there's five trims of the Kia EV3 and the highest end trim tops out around $45,000.

[00:02:45] So you can definitely go affordable on this car or you could, you can spend a decent amount, almost model Y money on this car if you want to. Now it's going to come in a front wheel drive or all wheel drive versions. You have 400 volt architecture. Normally Kia's and Hyundai's are 800 volt architecture, but this vehicle is 400 volts.

[00:03:11] It has a NAX charger with plug in charge, which is cool. You could charge from 10 to 80% in about 30 minutes. In terms of battery packs, we're looking at a 58.3 kilowatt hour battery pack in the base models or base trims, which would give you about 221 miles and an 81.4 kilowatt hour battery

[00:03:37] pack in the higher end models, which would get you 321 miles. The car will also feature over the air updates. In the article that I read, it said CarPlay, but not Android Auto. But I would imagine it's CarPlay and Android Auto. Let's see. It'll have apps like Netflix and YouTube, which that's cool. People are really reviewing this car well.

[00:04:03] Lots of positive feedback in terms of the overall look of the car, in terms of how roomy the car is. Like quite a few people, even though it's a smaller car, have said the back of the car is quite roomy. So that's good. And it's pretty affordable. You get a lot for your money. One of the things that I read across multiple reviews, though, you probably want to go for

[00:04:31] the Kia EV3 wind trim, which starts around $35,000 to get the best value for your money. Some of the starting trims, you don't get quite as many features. So if you really want the best value, get that wind trim and that gets you the bigger battery pack and that kind of thing. So if you're in the market for an affordable EV, check out the Kia EV3 for sure.

[00:05:02] Now, next up, we have not exactly an electric vehicle, but kind of an electric vehicle. We've talked about Pebble in the past, which is a company that has an electric travel trailer. So they came out around 2025 and now they're updating the 2027 version of their Flow electric travel trailer.

[00:05:25] So this version is going to have a 45 kilowatt hour LFP battery and up to four kilowatts of solar to charge the battery, which is cool. Uh, the company says that it can produce, the solar can produce more energy than you'll typically use in a day of camping. I don't, I would like to see them try with my family. That doesn't seem possible, but we use a lot of electricity.

[00:05:53] It seems, um, the trailer has in-wheel motors that help it move when it's being towed. So that's beneficial for EVs, which typically do not have great range when they're towing. So that's, that's the benefit. You can charge the Flow with, you know, just like you charge an EV or you can use the solar.

[00:06:16] Um, and it will charge if you, if you need to charge your EV in a pinch because you are very, very low, it will charge, but it has an output of like 12 kilowatts. So it charges very slowly. If you're curious, the Flow's gross vehicle weight is, let me, I just clicked off of it,

[00:06:39] 6,800 pounds, which means that if you're towing with an EV, uh, there's only a few options you can go with. So let's start with the easy peasy lemon squeezy, uh, category, which would be your Chevy Silverado or GMC Sierra EV pickup trucks at their, their best at the max, they can tow 12,500 pounds.

[00:07:06] Not every model or every trim of those, of these vehicles can tow that much, but at its max, you're looking at 12,500. The Cybertruck all wheel drive is around 11,000 pounds. The R1T, uh, from Rivian, you'll need a dual tri or quad motor. That'll get you around 11,000 pounds and the lightning will get you around 10,000 pounds. Now there's some other vehicles.

[00:07:32] We have four other vehicles here that could possibly tow it, but it starts to get a little bit sketchy. We don't want to be right up on that gross vehicle weight or that total weight of the trailer, but the Escalade IQ is, uh, 8,000 pounds. The R1S is, you know, just a little bit below that. The Escalade IQL and the Hummer EV pickup are just barely, uh, haven't just barely enough ability to tow this.

[00:08:00] I wouldn't, those last four, I just wouldn't even try. Um, but that's just me. In terms of some of the cool add-ons, um, the Flow has a lot of automation. So it's got cameras and an NVIDIA processor and the Flow will line itself up with the tow hitch. It can even hitch itself up to the truck or whatever vehicle's towing it, or you can remotely drive

[00:08:29] it into a campsite using an iPad app, which I think is really cool. Um, there is definitely a price, uh, for having all this convenience. So to start off, you're looking at $159,000. That's the, that's the starting price, but you can get the founder's edition for $189,000.

[00:08:54] So, you know, this is for a specific customer, not for me, but a very specific customer who happens to have a lot more money than I do. All right. Uh, let's see. Oh, her, her final EV story. This is a weird one. Cause I saw this headline and I was like, this isn't based on the headline alone. This isn't something I wanted to talk about.

[00:09:23] Um, but then I clicked on it cause I was like, no, I should probably be fair. And I saw the car and I was like, oh my goodness, this is amazing. I got to talk about it. So here's the headline that did not interest me at all. The Jaguar type zero one is a thousand horsepower beast, but it isn't for everyone. So let's, first of all, let's talk about the beast.

[00:09:49] It is, it's a, it starts at $130,000 more things that I can't afford, but it starts at $130,000. It is a big four door and four seats, not, not five seats, but a four door four seat Jaguar is calling it a GT, not a sedan, but it has this retro feel luxury.

[00:10:19] Almost to me, um, a callback to the seventies. If the seventies had a touch of modern, um, style, I don't even know what to tell you. It looks like this car was chiseled out of like a block of steel. I, I'm, I'm just struggling to describe the look of this car.

[00:10:44] I'll put the, uh, I'll make sure that the, the show notes has a picture of the car in it. It is clean. It is metallic. It is, you know, geometric. It is imposing. I just, okay, let's, let me, let me just start off here. Starting at the front, it's got this broad squared off nose with these thin headlights that almost kind of make it look like the eyes in the Iron Man helmet.

[00:11:12] And then it's got this long hood, a very long hood for even, you know, EVs. It's just a long hood. That's what makes the, the feel of the car. Like those 1970s cars that just had those big, long, um, front ends on them. And then there's a slight arched roof that kind of goes into like a fast back rear end. And the rear end is, is very modern looking, but also kind of boxy.

[00:11:41] The door handles are flush with the car. It's just, I think this is just a great looking car. In terms of the interior, we're looking at a very sleek, minimalist interior. The steering wheel is not quite a circle, but it's, it's kind of a circle. It has very few buttons on the steering wheel. There's, there's a stock. It looks like there's a stock on the right side and the left side of the steering wheel.

[00:12:11] Big infotainment screen behind the steering, behind the steering wheel. I mean, like a massive screen. The article didn't say how big this screen is, but it is massive and it's not an infotainment screen. I should have said it's a big instrument cluster behind that screen. And then kind of more down towards where the console is, there's an iPhone size, maybe a

[00:12:36] little bit bigger than an iPhone size, uh, infotainment screen that the driver and the passenger share. It might be like an iPad mini size. The, the, the article said phone size, but to me it looks a little bit bigger, but I do know there are bigger phones out there. And there's a similar size screen in the rear for the passengers, but just, I mean, a really great looking car.

[00:13:02] Kevin Williams was the one who wrote this article from Inside EVs and he reviewed the car. He said, it's a bit cramped in the back. Not a lot of leg room, which is surprising considering how big this car looks. He said, there's not a lot of leg room in the back. He did say that there's like a, you know, even though there's this gigantic hood, Jaguar says that the frunk is tiny. So not a lot of storage space in the frunk.

[00:13:30] Uh, they would not open it up for him to let him look for some reason. Uh, and then he said the actual trunk of the car would, you know, that where it comes down in that fastback shape is, is actually quite small. But I'm guessing we're not getting this car for long road trips or we're not getting it for the storage abilities or capabilities. Um, in terms of specs, we're looking at 800 volt architecture.

[00:13:57] It's got a tri motor, uh, which gives it a thousand and 15 horsepower, 118 kilowatt hour battery, 400 miles of range. According to Jaguar, uh, we don't have any more details. And as far as that goes, uh, again, it starts at $130,000, but I just love the look of this car. I love the Jaguar was like, you know what? We're going to make something that is going to be pretty polarizing.

[00:14:27] And then we're going to charge him a lot of money to own it. Um, you know, I started off with, with the Kia EV3, the affordable part of the show. And then after that, um, at least in the EV section or a segment, no more affordability. I mean, we're talking over a hundred thousand dollars. This is, I don't know, just a great looking car. Uh, let me know what you think. It's Bode, B O D I E at 9 1 8 digital.com.

[00:14:58] All right. That concludes our EV segment. I'm trying to get through this cause I'm having to stop multiple times cause I'm losing my voice. So I apologize. My voice sounds a little trashed. All right. Uh, let's move on to our Tesla section. Let's talk about Tesla's deliveries and production numbers, which came out last week, but I didn't get that chance to talk about it. So starting off, we're just going to talk about, um, the energy business real quick.

[00:15:27] Tesla deployed 13.7 gigawatt hours of energy storage, which is a record for them apparently, which is great. Congratulations. Now let's talk about the delivering production numbers of their vehicles. So if we're looking at model three and model Y, they produced 457,387 vehicles and they

[00:15:53] delivered 478,232, which is super impressive, especially when you consider where we're at, um, in, in the EV space, especially here in the U S but, you know, sentiment around Tesla around the globe, cause these are worldwide numbers. Uh, Tesla still killing it.

[00:16:15] Now in terms of other models, which would include Cybertruck, Tesla semi, possibly a few model S and model X's, but probably not. Um, but in other models, they produced 7,004 and they deliver at 8,295.

[00:16:36] So in terms of Tesla, not, not great numbers. We're going to assume the bulk of these deliveries and production is made up of Cybertruck. But if you compare that to the other vehicles in the segment, in terms of the Silverado EV

[00:17:02] and the Sierra EV, actually we'll just use the Silverado EV in Q3, 2026, the Silverado EV was, uh, they sold 1,655 Silverado EVs in Q3 of 2025. They sold more than double that 3,940.

[00:17:29] So we're looking at a 58% year over year decrease, but still, you know, the Cybertruck, and we have to assume that most of that, you know, whatever, uh, 8,000 plus deliveries were, most of those were probably Cybertrucks compared to the Silverado EV, not doing too bad.

[00:17:57] But anyway, uh, Q3, 2026 total production was 464,391 total deliveries was 486,532. So all in all, um, I think a pretty decent quarter for Tesla. They took a little bit of dip when it comes to deliveries overall, they, you know, 2.1% when

[00:18:24] compared to Q3 2025, but I, I don't know. I see that in some of the headlines or in, in some of the, you know, right at the start of the articles, it's not, it's not that big of a deal. It's a pretty small hit. Okay. Okay. Okay. Doke.

[00:18:46] You can now power your home with a model three or a model Y with a caveat with, with some exception. There's a catch. So you need a power wall three, at least one, you need a compatible wall connector or universal wall connector.

[00:19:12] Um, you need to have ordered your car after October 20 or October 1st, 2026. There is a possibility that, you know, um, newer model threes and model Ys that were ordered before that might still be able to do this, but there are no guarantees.

[00:19:36] So just pretty much thinking your head after October 1st, 2026, Tesla says that a model three or model Y that has a 90% charge can provide around two additional days of backup power for your home. If you're using around 30 kilowatt hours per day.

[00:20:02] And this system can deliver up to 11.52 kilowatts continuously. So if you already have a power wall and wall connector, you don't actually need to do, or a compatible wallet connector. I should start over. If you already have a power wall three and a compatible wall connector, Tesla says that you don't need to install any additional hardware.

[00:20:26] All you have to do is contact Tesla support and they will enable it for you in terms of limitations. A can't, can't, cannot send a power back to the grid. Um, model S and model X vehicles are not supported. If you have a power wall two or power wall plus support is listed as coming later, but there's

[00:20:54] no support for it this time at this time for power wall two or earlier. And yeah, I mean, I think this is cool. Tesla is finally bringing vehicle to home backup to model three and model Y. Uh, of course there are other companies that have done this in the past, but you know, Tesla is doing it now. They have an ecosystem already in place to support it.

[00:21:20] I mean, I don't know how many people out there right now are going to be able to take advantage of this. Probably a very few, but eventually that number will grow. All right. Uh, this is our last Tesla story. Tesla has added a new feature called emergency drive away. And what this will do is if you are at it plugged in at a supercharger and you feel unsafe,

[00:21:48] like threatened, not just like, Oh, I'm uneasy. But if you feel like you're in imminent danger, then you could put your car in a drive and basically drive away with the charging connector still plugged into your car. Now, up until now, if you tried to do that, you'd get a little chime and it says that you can't drive away because you're plugged in. So this is how the new feature works.

[00:22:18] And again, very much a last resort feature here. I just want to be clear. This is not a, this is not one of those things that you should be testing out only using it in an emergency. All right. This is how it works. If you put, if you hold your phone on the brake, a warning screen will come up and alert you that if you put it in drive and drive away, you could cause damage to your car or the charger.

[00:22:47] You can select activate on the screen, and then you can now put your car in drive and drive away. Again, you could potentially, almost certainly you're going to break the charging connection on, on the supercharger, but you could also damage your car's charging port.

[00:23:13] And Tesla says that if you use this irresponsibly, then you could be charged up to $25,000. In the video that I saw of this being demonstrated, there's like this coolant inside the supercharger line and you can see the coolant spill out. So it definitely causes damage.

[00:23:39] So maybe you wouldn't get a full $25,000 fine, but I would just assume that you're going to get a $25,000 fine if you are using this inappropriately. Now, Tesla has thought about people who might try to test this out.

[00:24:00] And what happens is when you drive away, Tesla will automatically record a short video verifying that there was an actual emergency and not someone just abusing the feature, right? So that verification is sent to Tesla and then they get to determine whether or not you were in a true, you know, emergency. emergency.

[00:24:31] Um, in terms of vehicles, it works on all newer Teslas, older model S's and X's before 2021 are excluded for now. Uh, but yeah, I mean, I don't think this is a bad idea. There was that shooting in Idaho at a supercharger, charger outside of a Sonic. So, you know, if you, if, if Tesla has to, you know, to have a little bit of a downtime and

[00:25:01] damages to the supercharger so people can get out and be safe, I think that's a good thing. You sure certainly shouldn't, you certainly shouldn't abuse it though. That could be very spendy. Now, uh, I have one more quick supercharger related story before we go. And it's very fast.

[00:25:23] Tesla has now has over 9,000 supercharger locations with 85,000 stalls worldwide, which is just huge. Over 5,000 stalls have been installed since April of 2026. That's not stations. That's actual supercharger stalls, but it's a lot. And over half of those were installed in Q3 2026.

[00:25:54] So very, very impressive. Uh, especially when you consider that, you know, Elon laid off half of the supercharger team more, more, probably more than half and redistributed, you know, uh, that responsibility to other departments inside of Tesla. So anyway, congratulations to Tesla. All right, everybody, that is it for me.

[00:26:21] Before I go, I do want to thank again, I want to thank Michael for supporting the show. I do appreciate it, Michael. I, I, I'm serious. If you need anything, reach out. It's Bodie, B O D I E at 9 1 8 digital.com. Um, and, uh, yeah, if you have questions, you can email me. Anybody can email me those. If you want to follow me on LinkedIn, it's Bodie Grimm on LinkedIn and I can feel my voice going.

[00:26:50] So I'm going to, I'm going to go ahead and end it here. I am recording this on Tuesday, but I am very tired. So I might not release it until Wednesday morning. All right, folks. Thanks so much. I will talk to y'all soon.