FSD Trial for Most, Blazer EV, and Fisker Update

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[00:01:22] Hello everyone and welcome to Killawada Podcast about electric vehicles autonomous driving

[00:01:29] renewable energy and much more almost forgot what my podcast was about.

[00:01:33] My name is Bodie and I am your host and we're going to cover EV news on today's episode.

[00:01:41] Before we do though, I want to recommend a website.

[00:01:46] It is cars with cords.net. Patrick does a great job on this website.

[00:01:52] It's just one person doing it and his latest article six sent electricity is worth a read if you're interested in solar power, renewable energy, battery backup, all that stuff.

[00:02:04] He also talks a lot about EVs on the site so I give cars with cords.net my full recommendation.

[00:02:13] By the way, that's not an ad. I genuinely read this site often so go check it out.

[00:02:19] All right let's move on to our EV news workers at Volkswagen's Tennessee plant have filed to vote to unionize.

[00:02:27] We've talked about in the past how UAW is making a big push to get non-union auto workers to become union auto workers here in North America

[00:02:37] and we'll see how this vote in Tennessee goes. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, who knows.

[00:02:42] Moving on, Stellantis will lay off 400 salary employees which is about 2% of their workforce.

[00:02:48] The employees being laid off are from engineering technology and software divisions.

[00:02:54] We'll keep it eye out for this. We'll see if they lay off anybody else throughout the year.

[00:02:58] Hopefully they won't. I hate it when people get laid off and hopefully all of these folks find a soft landing with another company.

[00:03:07] Ford is planning to build an affordable small EV pickup truck. I would guess, you know, like the Ford Maverick or maybe the Ford Ranger that size.

[00:03:19] And by affordable, I mean like $25,000. Ford has a special skunk works that was secretive and Jim Parley let that out of the bag.

[00:03:29] We heard about that a couple months ago.

[00:03:31] We'll see if it actually hits $25,000. I'm very skeptical that it will. I'd like it to start at $25,000 but I don't think it will.

[00:03:40] Speaking of affordable vehicles, if you live in California, you can now pick up a new Chevy Bolt EV or EUV for as little as $8 or $9,300 respectively.

[00:03:53] The EV for the Bolt is a little bit bigger if you didn't know. The article from Inside EV's Wade Malone breaks this down for us.

[00:04:03] And this is best case scenario, not everybody's going to get this price. You have to meet specific income residency and vehicle requirements to make this work out.

[00:04:15] But if you can, it's a pretty good deal. So the starting price of a Chevy Bolt just regular EV is $26,500.

[00:04:24] The starting price for a Chevy Bolt EUV is $27,800.

[00:04:31] So the first thing is the federal tax credit here in the US which the Chevy Bolt qualifies for $7,500 off of that car.

[00:04:40] So that brings the price down. The next step is California has a clean cars for all incentive programs.

[00:04:47] So if you upgrade to an EV or plug-in hybrid, you can get up to $95,000 off of the car again up to.

[00:04:57] And then California also has the Consumer Assistance Program Retirement Incentive which you'll get up to, again up to $1500 off of that price.

[00:05:08] So you apply all of the best case scenarios to this example.

[00:05:15] And you can pick up a Chevy Bolt for $8,000 or like I said, $9,300 depending on which one you want, which is still a pretty good deal.

[00:05:25] Even if you take a, even if you only just do the federal tax credit, it's still a pretty good price.

[00:05:31] So you can still find Chevy Bolt's even though GM stopped building them in December of 2023.

[00:05:39] You can still find a few out there that are sitting at dealerships.

[00:05:43] So if you're looking for an EV and you're looking for something that's affordable, maybe for you or maybe for somebody in your family, definitely check this out.

[00:05:52] Even if you don't live in California, you still get the $7,500 federal tax credit if you qualify.

[00:05:59] All right, that brings us to the Chevy Blazer EV. It's on sale again.

[00:06:04] If you remember Chevy halted sales two months ago or actually four months ago, they halted sales in December of 2023 for software issues and issues with DC fast charging capabilities.

[00:06:18] Not only have they started selling the Chevy Blazer EV again, they're now selling it at a much lower price.

[00:06:26] The starting price for the Chevy Blazer EV was $56,175.

[00:06:34] It is now just over $50,000.

[00:06:36] So we got a just about a $6,000 price decrease.

[00:06:41] That's great.

[00:06:42] The all-wheel drive RS trim was just over $60,000 and is now just under $55,000.

[00:06:51] The Chevy announced that the base model for the Blazer EV will come out later this year and that will start under $50,000.

[00:06:59] Now, what if you've already purchased a Chevy Blazer EV and you're like, wait a second, I bought this thing back in November and the price has decreased?

[00:07:11] Well, you may be eligible for up to a $6,500 reimbursement from GM.

[00:07:19] They were supposed to be sending out letters to current Chevy Blazer EV owners which there wasn't very many of.

[00:07:25] But as long as you own the car prior to March 1st, 2024, you will be eligible for up to a $6,500 reimbursement.

[00:07:35] And while we're on the subject of getting a cheap EV, Hyundai will lease you an Ionic 6 SE for $239 a month and there's no down payment.

[00:07:46] This is a 24-month lease and it is also eligible for the $7,500 federal tax credit.

[00:07:54] My guess is the $7,500 federal tax credit is your down payment but I don't know exactly how it works.

[00:08:01] So do your research for sure.

[00:08:04] The Ionic 6 SE has 225 horsepower and a range of 361 miles.

[00:08:10] This is just for the United States.

[00:08:13] If you want a SE all-wheel drive, that will be $319 a month with a range of 270 miles.

[00:08:23] And if you want the SE L, that will be $349 a month with 316 miles of range.

[00:08:33] Boston Consulting Group is estimating that when an automaker sells a $50,000 EV, they lose $6,000 for that sale.

[00:08:44] Like it costs them $56,000 to make that car they sell it for $50,000, lose $6,000.

[00:08:51] And that's accounting for the tax credits that the automaker may or may not qualify for.

[00:08:57] $6,000 is not a universal number.

[00:09:00] You know, it goes up and down depending on the automaker.

[00:09:03] And we should say that this is a consulting group so and they're estimating so let's not put too much into this.

[00:09:10] Some automakers may be making money at that price.

[00:09:13] Not a lot. This is what I'm saying, this is universal.

[00:09:16] Some of the reasons they give are high battery costs, the electrical powertrain, incremental investments.

[00:09:25] And they use Tesla and BYD as exceptions because Tesla and BYD are leaders in the market.

[00:09:33] They've figured out the manufacturing.

[00:09:36] You know, they figured out the efficiencies in the car to make all of this work out so that they make money.

[00:09:42] They also mention luxury brands that can still make money by selling EVs because the luxury brands usually sell their EVs or their vehicles at a much higher price which has more margin.

[00:09:54] So they're making money.

[00:09:56] They're likely comparing companies like Lucid Fisker and Rivion.

[00:10:00] And we'll talk about Lucid and Fisker here in a second.

[00:10:03] But there is a path to profitability according to Boston consulting group.

[00:10:09] And that path of profitability includes reducing material cost, increasing efficiencies not only in the car but in the manufacturing process through automation and then improving energy density in the batteries.

[00:10:24] And speaking of Lucid, Lucid Motors just received an additional $1 billion investment from the Saudi public investment fund.

[00:10:34] And to be more specific, it wasn't specifically from the public investment fund.

[00:10:40] It was from some offshoot that manages part of that fund.

[00:10:45] So I don't know how that all works and I don't even know if that's important.

[00:10:48] But Lucid got a billion dollars and they're using that billion dollars to launch the Lucid gravity.

[00:10:55] And now speaking of Fisker, Fisker was in talks with a large automaker for a potential investment and that deal has reportedly fallen through.

[00:11:04] So that large automaker we thought was Nissan but now it's no one.

[00:11:09] We talked last week about a existing investor who had committed $150 million but what we didn't know last week was that $150 million was contingent on the deal with the unknown automaker.

[00:11:23] That is a real bummer for Fisker and I really hope that they can find their way out of this mess.

[00:11:32] Let's see moving on to Lordstown Motors.

[00:11:37] In 2020, Lordstown Motors got into a bit of trouble for inflating the number of pre-orders that they had for their electric pickup truck.

[00:11:45] And by the way, this was around the time that they were going public and announcing these pre-order numbers which were not true.

[00:12:22] So I think that's why I think that was around the time and then later bought back some of the company's assets in a bankruptcy sale.

[00:12:29] I very much wonder if Steve Burns has plans to try yet another time for an electric pickup truck.

[00:12:37] Initially he had some involvement at a high level with workhorse and I think he was kicked out a workhorse or asked to leave.

[00:12:47] But workhorse allowed him to buy the intellectual property for the pickup truck that they were working on and that's how we get to Lordstown Motors.

[00:12:57] And then he resigned from Lordstown and you know the rest of the story at this point.

[00:13:02] So we'll see what he does with that maybe he does nothing, maybe he just wants to own it and just live out his golden years in peace.

[00:13:12] I have no idea.

[00:13:15] So the next point is taking orders for new NACS cable retrofits on March 18th, charge point posted on X.

[00:13:24] NACS cables for Express 250 are available for order today and are easily retrofitted by our experts in the field.

[00:13:33] And then it gives the information to get in touch and then some information on frequently asked questions.

[00:13:40] So the Express 250 that is a DC fast charging.

[00:13:44] So if a company bought these from charge point or is you know operating them in partnership with charge point,

[00:13:51] then you know that's not going to be for normal people like you and me.

[00:13:55] That's a that's a tweet for businesses.

[00:13:58] However, charge point does have level two charging at apartment complexes and then they also have home chargers.

[00:14:07] So I would imagine that it's possible that you could get a level two charging cable NACS charging cable from charge point at some point in time and upgrades your home unit.

[00:14:21] I have no idea how much this would cost if it would be more expensive than just buying a whole new charger if you bought a vehicle with the next connector on it, but it seems like at some point it would it would be an option available to you.

[00:14:34] Hi, this is Craig Robinson from ways to win and support for this podcast comes from Invesco QQQ.

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[00:16:10] Hey everyone, Craig Robinson here.

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[00:17:04] Okie Doke, that is our EV news this week.

[00:17:08] I do want to remind everybody that we do have a Patreon, the links in the show notes.

[00:17:12] It's patreon.com for it's such kilowatt or support kilowatt.com.

[00:17:16] If you want to support the show for as little as $1, you won't get ads.

[00:17:21] And all of the money contributed by our patrons goes back into the show.

[00:17:26] None of that money goes into my pocket.

[00:17:28] So this is not extraordinarily expensive to run but it's not cheap.

[00:17:34] It's several hundred dollars a month and we still lose money.

[00:17:37] So if you'd like to help offset the costs go over and check us out on Patreon.

[00:17:42] Support kilowatt.com or patreon.com for it's slash kilowatt.

[00:17:46] Alright moving on to our Tesla news.

[00:17:49] Tesla has started supplying third party charging networks with version 4 DC fast chargers.

[00:17:55] So these are basically super chargers that are branded by some other company.

[00:18:01] And UK company EV point has just installed V4 super chargers with CCS2 connectors in the UK.

[00:18:11] So the next connector if you are not familiar is not used in Europe or in the UK.

[00:18:20] It is the CCS2 combo connector.

[00:18:24] Back here in the US BP pulse which is British petroleum EV charging efforts.

[00:18:31] They ordered a hundred million Tesla super chargers some of which if not all could be outfitted with CCS1 adapters.

[00:18:41] I'll keep you posted as we get more information on this.

[00:18:43] Now in the same realm of things Tesla exec Rohan Patel has clarified some details when it comes to non-teslas with the NAX connector.

[00:18:53] Having access to the supercharger network.

[00:18:58] So companies like Ford and Rivion at the moment will have access to 16,000 supercharger stalls that will be opened up to them.

[00:19:07] And we talked a little bit about that right now they have to have an adapter but at some point there will be a next next connector actually on the vehicle itself.

[00:19:16] Now there are 11,000 superchargers that are just reserved for Tesla owners but Tesla owners don't feel too terribly special because these 11,000 stalls are mostly version 2 superchargers.

[00:19:31] And third party NAX enabled vehicles they're not compatible with V2 superchargers.

[00:19:40] So yeah you have exclusive access to the slower chargers.

[00:19:50] And really this doesn't bother me I just think it's funny how it's phrased.

[00:19:56] Alright let's move on.

[00:19:59] Tesla has started rolling out its updated auto parking system for vehicles without ultrasonic sensors.

[00:20:06] I didn't know this but for the last two years Tesla's equipped with Tesla Vision only so it's the camera only.

[00:20:13] Lacked the auto parking feature but now that's all changed or at least for some it's currently changed for others you got to wait for your update but Tesla's rolling this new feature out to Tesla Vision vehicles.

[00:20:28] The new system highlights different parking spots on the screen and the driver selects one and then the car parks itself which is really cool.

[00:20:37] And it parks itself it backs into the parking space at least in the video that I saw this feature may turn into a you know tap and park type of a feature where you find the parking spot you want

[00:20:51] to tap where you want the car to park and then you just get out and go in the grocery store or movie theater whatever you're going into in the car will park itself.

[00:20:58] There's some code in the test lab that indicates that that might be the case but yeah I mean I don't know how often this feature would actually be used.

[00:21:12] I can't think of a reason myself to do this but still cool that it can do it.

[00:21:17] Let's move on and I'm going to let you know before we even start I'm going to butcher these names I'm going to do my best.

[00:21:23] Clouse fluke bill and you long show have been charged with allegedly trying to sell battery manufacturing trade secrets and to be more specific it's it looks like they're they were trying to sell Tesla battery manufacturing trade secrets although we

[00:21:39] don't know because in the court paperwork it just says you know company number one or whatever doesn't name Tesla specifically but the overall evidence is that it's Tesla in the court paperwork.

[00:21:53] Now Clouse is a resident of the people's Republic of China but he is also a Canadian national.

[00:22:00] Yolong is a Chinese national.

[00:22:03] Clouse has been arrested Yolong is still out in the world somewhere he's he's fled nobody knows where he is at the moment as this story develops I will definitely keep you posted.

[00:22:16] All right that brings us to our final story today Elon has mandated and I mean when I say mandated I mean capital letters mandated that Tesla employees will install in demo full self driving beta for

[00:22:29] every new vehicle delivery in North America.

[00:22:33] This comes as Tesla's rolling out the latest version of full self driving which is version 12 powered by neural nets so before if you bought a car you could you know go pick it up drive away go home and enjoy your car.

[00:22:48] Now a Tesla employee has to take you want to drive and demo full self driving for you before you can leave I would imagine if you told me you didn't really want to do it and you put your foot down they're not going to make you

[00:22:58] but Elon is pretty adamant about this so you should probably have a very good reason why you didn't do it now I am a big proponent of education and showing people how to use things in their vehicles so that they can get the most out of it.

[00:23:14] However if you didn't order full self driving for a variety of reasons one you didn't want it or two you couldn't afford it.

[00:23:21] It doesn't make sense to make people go through this whole process again just because you think version 12 is cool.

[00:23:29] This is one of those things that management comes up with and expects the rank and file to implement and follow through on and it makes their jobs significantly harder.

[00:23:43] Elon did admit that this would slow down deliveries but deemed it a hard requirement which in my mind I read that as you don't get a choice you have to do this which I'm not a fan of as a rule and I'm going to tell you why I'm not a fan of it in just a moment but first they need to tell you that as soon as I got done writing the show notes for this episode.

[00:24:07] Pat gave us yet another tip now I don't know if Pat wants me to use her last name or not so I'm not going to but I do appreciate all of the information that she posts alright so moving on pat posted that Elon posted on X that all cars that are capable of full self driving will be enabled for a one month trial and that will start happening this week.

[00:24:35] Now I have a hardware three model why I've been checking all morning and all of last night to see if I got any sort of update I have not but I am assuming that when Elon says all cars capable of full self driving he's saying hardware three or better if he's saying hardware four.

[00:24:53] Then that's concerning to me and everybody who bought a hardware three vehicles should immediately go to Tesla and try to get your money back because you were sold something that's that's not going to happen with your vehicle with your particular vehicle but anyway this is a really cool way of.

[00:25:11] Tesla allowing people who don't currently have FSD to experience it the other thing that we were talking about with forcing people who have just purchased.

[00:25:23] Just a car to do an FSD demo I'm not okay with that and here's why enhance auto pilot is like $6,000 and full self driving is $12,000.

[00:25:35] When you go and pick up your vehicle you have already financed your vehicle like a lot of people don't have six and $12,000 just laying around for an impulse buy that is that is a big impulse buy so if you know you enable full self driving on their car they come up with a

[00:25:52] yeah this is great what do you think's going to happen if they don't have the money like they've already decided that they're not going to be spending that money at this point because they did purchase the car without either of these two features at best Tesla might get people to pay for the $200 subscription but I think it's going to be hard.

[00:26:17] That's a hard push like my car payment is $800 a month and my car payment is high because I want to pay it off as soon as humanly possible and I should have a paid off next year.

[00:26:32] I don't like car payments but most people's car payments for Tesla is going to be between let's say depending on how much you put down five and $800 a month I don't think that's going to be I don't think that's controversial.

[00:26:45] Adding another $200 a month for a subscription is a lot and that's a lot of money so I don't know how many people are going to jump on this just because they got a demo that was that may or may not have been impressive.

[00:27:01] Full self I haven't experienced version 12 full self driving but I have experience version 11 and there are some moments with version 11 that I was not I did not feel comfortable with in certain situations so hopefully all these demos go swimmingly if they go poorly you just kind of shot yourself in the foot.

[00:27:25] Now as far as take rate on full self driving is we don't know what that is because Tesla's never given us a number but there are some organizations that track this stuff and it's estimated that full self driving take rate is less than 20% which is if true not great Bob it's not a great number.

[00:27:47] So what happens after a few months of Tesla doing these demo drives with customers and giving us unwashed dirty people who have about FSD a trial version for a month.

[00:28:05] What happens if that take rate percentage doesn't move any so let's say Tesla's take rate is X percent and after let's say six months of this program that take rate doesn't go up at all it stays the same what happens because I truly believe that these features the enhanced autopilot and full self driving are way too much money.

[00:28:31] I think enhanced autopilot $2,500 and full self driving $5,000 and if that happens people like me who don't currently have FSD that becomes a little bit less of a no brainer it's still not exactly an impulse buy but that's something that you can manage $12,000 is pretty expensive.

[00:28:54] And if you live in California as we illustrated earlier you can buy a whole Chevy Bolt for $8,000. $12,000 is a whole subsidized Chevy Bolt that's a lot of money I just I think Tesla is going to have better luck lowering the price but Elon is over valuing what full self driving means to Russ regular folks and ask like honestly I think that he's probably

[00:29:24] I think he's out of touch with how much money $12,000 actually is that is that's a lot of money like people can do a lot of home renovations for $12,000 there's a lot you could do with $12,000 in your life and pain for a feature that's still in beta and doesn't quite work the way it was advertised six years ago seven years ago.

[00:29:49] Oh 2016 eight years ago almost eight years ago it's almost eight years from the time that Tesla announced hard word to and we are not that much closer to full self driving in the grand scheme of things Elon talks about the March of 9s I don't even think we're at 99% yet I don't think we've began the March of 9s in terms of full self driving.

[00:30:16] And if you're not familiar Elon says that you can get a product 99% there but the rest of that 1% to 100% is the March of 9s that takes infinitely longer I don't think we're at the 99% yet.

[00:30:31] I would also say that if Tesla lowered the FSD subscription price to below $100 I think they'd get a higher take rate with that as well.

[00:30:43] All right everybody that is it for our show this week I hope you all enjoyed it if you have questions you can email me or comments Bode Bode at 918 digital calm you can also find me on X at 918 digital.

[00:30:58] I hope you all have a wonderful week and I will talk to you on private.

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