Lucid Gains & VinFast Pains

[00:00:12] 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, I have to apologize because this is a very late episode. And I don't know if it's

[00:00:37] because it's hot outside or if there's a cold floating around, at least in the Phoenix area. I don't know what it is but I just have not felt my best the last couple of days. I won't go into

[00:00:51] the gross details but a lot of fatigue and just kind of tiredness which I guess is fatigue. But anyway, the point is maybe some body aches. The point is that I don't really have a good

[00:01:05] excuse. I just have not really had the energy to do much of anything. So I did write this over the last three or four days of this episode and it was quite difficult to get it all written.

[00:01:19] And that's not very typical. I can usually write these things in a couple hours, these episodes. So just laying that out there so everybody knows. It wasn't because I didn't want to,

[00:01:33] it was just that I didn't feel good and I don't feel good. But do you know what helps me feel better is when we get a new Patreon subscriber and we did, we have Brad. Brad, thank you so much

[00:01:44] for joining the Kilowatt Patreon. Brad went to patreon.com forward slash kilowatt and signed up to support the show for which I am eternally grateful. So Brad, thank you so much. I sent you a message through Patreon. If you need any help setting up your Patreon feed or

[00:02:00] just have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. I am more than happy to help you out with whatever you need. And again, thank you very much for doing that. Next up we have a

[00:02:10] little update a few weeks ago. I said that Tesla was replacing some of the drive units on Cybertrucks that had already been sold. So they're reaching out to owners and they're like,

[00:02:20] Hey, we want to replace this drive unit, bring it on in. And I thought that that might be suspicious. I didn't know if that was typical or normal in the automotive industry. Joseph sent

[00:02:31] in an email letting me know that Chevy actually offered him $500 to do some testing on his Chevy pickup. So this, this may be just a totally normal thing in the automotive industry. As a

[00:02:43] matter of fact, it looks like it is a normal thing in the automotive industry. So thanks to Joseph for giving us that update. All right, let's start with our EV news. Vinfast has delayed their North Carolina EV factory until 2028. The only reason they gave us was economic

[00:02:59] headwinds. That was that was the only reason. So we'll, we'll believe them and see what happens. I do like Vinfast as a company. I've driven their vehicle, the VF-8, and it was a fine vehicle. You know, it wasn't like blow you out of the water, but it

[00:03:16] was, it was fine. But I think more importantly, the more options we have here in the United States at different price points, the better we are as consumers and not just here everywhere. I shouldn't specifically just say the United States since this is an

[00:03:30] international show. All right, Electrify America is piloting a program to reduce congestion called the congestion reduction pilot. We'll build a little bit on the nose with the name there. The goal is to let people charge their vehicle to 85% and then boot

[00:03:47] them off. You do have a 10 minute grace period until you start getting hit with idle fees, but once you hit 85%, you're gone. And I know what some of you were thinking, what if you're

[00:03:58] on a road trip and you need that little bit of extra energy? Well, Electrify America is only using high utilization locations that aren't typically used for road trips. So think folks charging their vehicles who may live in apartments or don't have a

[00:04:12] charger at home for whatever reason, it's those chargers that they are there are targeting in this pilot program. That doesn't mean that somebody wouldn't use them for road trips. It just means the likelihood is much lower. It seems like they could have

[00:04:27] done something like this during high utilization times. I'm certain that there are times when these chargers in the pilot program are not at high utilization. There may be a time when there's nobody using them when you pull up or there is

[00:04:44] three or four open stalls. Maybe at that point, you don't kick people off at 85%. Maybe you say you can charge to 100, but when we're at 90% capacity, that's when we're going to kick people off at 85% because it doesn't make sense

[00:05:00] that 2am and you're the only person there and you want to charge your car so you can get to your next destination and you need 95%. It doesn't make much sense to kick you off at 85% in that situation. But I do recognize the need to reduce

[00:05:17] congestion at these charging stations. I've felt the pain myself and it's never fun to be honest with you. VULC's Wagon Group has pushed back the release of some of their upcoming EVs like the successor to the ID4, the Porsche

[00:05:35] Maycan SUV, the Audi e-tron Q6, just to name a few. And it sounds like the software is to blame. It seems like these vehicles were going to be based on their new SSP platform and the software for that platform is not ready.

[00:05:50] And it could be pushed back as far as 2029, which is insane. That doesn't mean that VULC's Wagon is not updating their platform. They do have the MEB Plus platform, which is obviously an improvement on the MEB platform,

[00:06:06] but the SPP platform was supposed to be their next generation. I don't have any idea if the Rivian and VULC's Wagon Group partnership would help out with the SPP platform or if that's something that it's... VULC's Wagon is

[00:06:20] developing in-house entirely. I have no idea on that, but as we find out more, I will let you know. Lucid announced their delivery numbers and they beat estimates for Q2 2024. So they produced 2,110 vehicles during that quarter, which is actually down 3% year over year, but they delivered 2,394

[00:06:50] vehicles, which is actually up 71% year over year. So the delivery is quite a bit better than last year. So not too shabby for Lucid. They were estimated to deliver 1,940 vehicles, so they beat it by a good amount, a good percentage

[00:07:08] when you compare low numbers to low numbers. It's still a good percentage. Their overall goal for 2024 is to deliver 9,000 vehicles and at this moment, I didn't write the number down, but I think they're a little less than

[00:07:28] half of that their goal. So they need to be at 4,500 vehicles for the first half of 2024. I think they're right around 3,900 something like that. I didn't write the number down, but they're not quite where they need to be to

[00:07:43] reach their 9,000 vehicle goal unless they really increase production and deliveries in the second half of 2024. And since we're on the topic of Lucid, they recalled 5,251 airs for airs, Lucid airs for a software issue that could

[00:08:03] cause the car to lose power. This is due to a high voltage interlock safety mechanism that could be triggered if the car is in driver reverse, which you know, that's the good part of the car's time spent moving is in

[00:08:17] driver reverse. This HVIL is used during assembly inspection maintenance and repair. So I don't know why it is causing this software issue, but it can be fixed by an over the air update. But if you happen to listen to this show and

[00:08:34] you own one of those Lucid airs, just know that this can happen. And there's a software update on the way. GM and Stellantis will receive close to $1.1 billion in funding that will go towards their EV efforts. So there's a

[00:08:52] total of $1.7 billion made available via the Inflation Reduction Act for automakers to update their factories. GM will get $500 million and Stellantis will get the other 600 ish million dollars. I think it ends up being a little bit less than $600 million, but if we're rounding up,

[00:09:12] we'll say $600 million. Stellantis and GM were given the lion's share of that government money. I do wish that this money would be given to smaller EV automakers like Rivian Lucid, Apptera, you know, I'm not sure that five to

[00:09:29] $600 million is a lot of money for companies like Ford, GM, Stellantis, Volkswagen, Hyundai. I mean, it's a lot of money. It's still $500 million no matter which way you slice it, but it's a lot of money for smaller

[00:09:41] companies and not as much money for these larger companies. So I would have liked to see that go toward the smaller companies. All right, let's talk about Chevy's new 2025 Equinox EV. More specifically, the fabled $35,000 version. Now the 2024 model of the 1LT, which is the base model, that

[00:10:06] is coming out at the end of the year. So this is next year's model 2025. So first I want to say 1LTF will drive, front wheel drive is not the greatest naming convention for their trims. I think that GM needs to get away from these

[00:10:26] terrible, terrible names. 1LTFWD is the name of this trim. That's just terrible. So come up with something more creative. I'm sure you happen to have a really great marketing team. So it's going to get a little more

[00:10:40] power, not much, but a little bit. It's going to go from 213 horsepower for the 2024 to 220 horsepower for the 2025. But here's the thing, 315 miles of range, which is really good. And especially when you're talking about a $35,000 car, which I don't think we know at this point

[00:11:04] whether or not it's going to qualify for the Inflation Reduction Act. But if it does, that gets that car under $30,000. That's pretty good. It's a pretty good number. And from everything I'm reading, the Econox EV, the 2LT

[00:11:18] that's out now is getting pretty good reviews. So the whole reason why I wanted to bring this up was not to highlight an increase in 7 horsepower, but we're actually getting the $35,000 version. And it's got really good range. We're not dealing with $35,000 and 240 miles, where it's

[00:11:41] $35,000 and 315 miles as long as GM keeps their promise, which I have no reason to believe that they won't. However, I also have no reason to believe that they're going to make money on this car. But I love that

[00:11:54] they are doing it. All right, staying on the topic of GM, Tim Levin at Inside EVs isn't bothered that GM is planning to do away with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Tim drove the new Cadillac Lyric for a week. And

[00:12:11] part of his testing included the new Android based infotainment system. And here are his thoughts. Actually, you know, before we do that, we should say that the Android based infotainment system that GM is using is a Google software package that is different than Android

[00:12:32] Auto. So it's not Android Auto is completely different than that. But this this Cadillac Lyric had GM's new infotainment system, which is Android based and CarPlay. So this is what he said about it. He used both infotainment systems. And he said that when he was

[00:12:49] using GM system, it worked great. And in some cases even outperformed CarPlay. And actually, I'm going to read a quote here from him. All in all the Lyric's interface is attractively designed straightforward enough to read at a glance and highly responsive

[00:13:05] to taps and swipes. It's polished feel and configurability give off some tech product vibes, even if it isn't quite as dazzling as what you'd find on a Tesla or an iPad. And then he goes on to talk about the actual system itself and how it's built on

[00:13:26] Android automotive and all that stuff. But we're not going to get into that. One of the things that I found interesting is that he mentions that it has a polished feel, you know, swipes and taps are responsive, but not as responsive as an iPad or a Tesla.

[00:13:43] And I would argue that if you are somebody that is used to that kind of responsiveness that you would find on, you know, really good Android phones, iPhone, iPad, Tesla. If you were used to having that responsiveness, it might feel sluggish

[00:13:58] to you. I'm not throwing shade at GM because when they first announced this, I said, if you don't do this really well, people are going to hate it. And they're going to hate you. And it looks like GM's done this really well. I'm just saying if

[00:14:12] you're comparing it to an iPad or a Tesla, for instance, and it isn't as dazzling as what you would find in a Tesla or an iPad, there's probably a little bit more work to be done. Does that mean it's bad? Absolutely not. It just means if you're

[00:14:26] used to those two systems or system similar to that, you might find it to maybe be sluggish or maybe not as full featured as you would like it to be. But he did say that when he was using the GM infotainment system, he didn't

[00:14:43] feel the need or didn't miss carplay. The apps he used the most were Google Maps and Spotify, and they were very useful. Some of the other apps that he highlighted were audible title YouTube music, plug share and ways. At this

[00:15:00] time, Apple Music wasn't available, but I would imagine will be available at some point. In order to use these apps, you'll need internet access. And this is where it gets a little bit confusing. And I know that we have

[00:15:14] somebody in our audience that just got a brand new Silverado EV, which I have seen three in the last couple of days, I've seen three Silverado's EVs one is at the dealership and two are on the road. And they do look very nice. But since we

[00:15:31] have a person in the audience, maybe they can correct me on this if I'm wrong, Bodi B O D I E at 918 digital calm. But this is how GM does their internet access. They have two classifications. The first and they call it connectivity. So

[00:15:49] we're going to call it connectivity from here on out instead of internet access. But connectivity for native apps like Google Maps or Google Assistant, things that come with the Android automotive base software that they've built their whole infotainment system on. So that is one

[00:16:07] category of connectivity. The other one is connectivity for third party app access like Spotify and audible. It sounds like there's going to be two plans. One is $15 a month and the other is $25 a month. But I will say I went to the on

[00:16:29] stars website to find the pricing for this because it all goes through on star. And there's a bunch of different plans. So I it's really hard for me to sort this out. If it is if there is a $15 month plan, which it looks

[00:16:42] like there is that's going to get you basic connectivity for your apps. So if you want to listen to Spotify, you're going to be able to listen to Spotify, but they might there might be a cap involved in that. But for $25 you could

[00:16:57] stream or not stream, you could connect seven different devices to the in car Wi Fi network. And you can you know, stream your movies, download games or whatever through the service that way. I'm not really sure that I would want to

[00:17:12] pay $25 a month just so my kids could have internet in the car. However, if I was part of a car pool and those employees wanted to contribute to the $25 a month, I would be down with that that wouldn't bother me much. But

[00:17:28] otherwise, I just don't think it's worth it to me. I will say that GM does give a specific amount of time for free when you buy the cars. I think it's, it's like eight years for the built in services like Google Maps and Google Assistant.

[00:17:45] And then it's like three years for just general app access like audible and Spotify and YouTube music and stuff like that. So you get a little bit of free time when you purchase the car just to get you started off. But

[00:17:59] eventually you're going to have to start paying. Alright, let's move on to our Tesla news. It sounds like Tesla may be delaying the Robo taxi event. Initially it was supposed to take place on August 8 2024. Bloomberg is now reporting

[00:18:13] that the Robo taxi team needs more time to build some additional prototypes. So we may be looking at an event in October. Although Tesla has not made an official announcement, Model Y rear wheel drive owners can now pay for an additional 30 to 50 miles of range. So for $1,000 or

[00:18:37] $33 a mile, they can get an additional 30 miles of range. If they want 50, they're going to pay $1,600 or $32 a mile for 50 miles of range. Honestly, I'm not sure I feel about this on one hand, trying to keep costs down and make

[00:18:57] vehicles more affordable. That makes a lot of sense to me, but that's Tesla is not losing money on the the rear wheel drive of Model Y. You know, whoever buys that car is paying for every single cell that's in the car, whether

[00:19:11] it's active or not. So I could see this biting Tesla in the backside because you know there's a fine line between gouging customers and making money. So if someone bought that car, and they paid for those cells that are in

[00:19:26] that car, and you're going to really have a hard time convincing me that Tesla didn't charge them for those cells, then I think this is a bad move on Tesla part. Tesla's part it's a bit like charging money for heated

[00:19:41] seats, you know, or charging a subscription for heated seats. The seats are already in the car. You've already purchased that hard that hardware in the car. Turning that feature on should not be a monthly service or an additional cost. It feels predatory to me this is not

[00:19:57] a software service. I am okay for paying services paying for services like connectivity, or you know, full self driving that kind of thing. I'm okay paying a little bit of money for that but I am not okay with paying money for hardware that you've already

[00:20:13] purchased and unlocking it. Now on the other side of things, a few years ago in Canada, some of Tesla's vehicles were bumping up against the threshold for some of the incentives they had for EVs. And in that situation, if Tesla was through software lock

[00:20:31] the battery let's say, let's say they took 50 miles out of the car and they dropped the price $1000 so that the owners could qualify for those incentives. Then I could see why you would do it in that situation because the person buying the car

[00:20:48] could pay the $1000 later and unlock that extra 50 miles or not, it's up to them. But the reason why Tesla is doing that is to bring the costs down to something that's underneath the threshold for those incentives. I still don't think that's a really good example but I could

[00:21:05] see doing something like that in the event that you're bumping up against those incentive thresholds but yeah, we'll see what happens. I think Tesla should just give these people their 50 miles and not charge them all this money. Tesla has launched a new Model 3 long range

[00:21:25] trim. Tesla already has a all wheel drive long range version but the newest long range version is a rear wheel drive model. Now I think Tesla needs to, like I said, GM needs to clean up some of their trim naming conventions. Tesla's

[00:21:45] if they're going to start doing this kind of thing they also need to do that as well on their side because you have a long range rear wheel drive and long range all wheel drive now. Anyway, this vehicle is 0 to 60 in 4.9 seconds, 363 miles of range which is really

[00:22:01] good and $42,490 before incentives. So right now Tesla has four Model 3 trims. They have the at the base they just have a rear wheel drive model. It is $38,990. It has 272 miles range and it does not qualify in the United States for any inflation reduction act money but the

[00:22:29] long range rear wheel drive, the one we just talked about for $42,490, it does qualify the long range all wheel drive which is $5,000 more, $47,490 with 340 miles of range also qualifies for the incentive money, the inflation reduction act money and then you have the performance which is all wheel drive

[00:22:55] cost $54,990, 303 miles of range but it is 0 to 60 in 2.9 seconds. So having four trims, four different trims for the Model 3 seems a little strange for Tesla simply because they've always only had three. Like at one point in time they had a ton of different things you

[00:23:17] could customize on the Model S and they said you know what we're going to simplify this because it's costing us too much money all these customization options are just costing way too much money so we're going to make it super basic and super compelling. I wouldn't

[00:23:33] be surprised if Tesla looks at the sales numbers over the next few months and drops one of these lower-end trims. The Tesla Fremont factory has been ordered by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to correct some air quality violations it seems like most of these violations are

[00:23:53] in reference to the paint shop. The violations date back to 2019 and there are over 112 violations that have yet to be corrected. Each violation could be contributing hundreds of pounds of pollutants into the air. Sounds like the issue has to do with the thermal

[00:24:13] oxidizer and some of the other pieces in the abatement system. The problem is that these pieces readily break which causes emissions to be automatically vented directly into the air without any sort of abatement and that is an issue and again been going on since 2019 so

[00:24:31] Tesla was ordered to implement a two-step plan. I'm just going to read it directly here. First, hire a third-party consultant to do an evaluation and make recommendations. Tesla must then develop a proposed implementation plan to implement the recommendations which it will file with the hearing

[00:24:51] board for approval. Second, execute the implementation plan as approved by the hearing board to stop the avoidable release of uncontrolled emissions except where it may be absolutely necessary for safety reasons. So yeah, I mean this totally makes sense and if this has been going on since 2019

[00:25:11] shame on Tesla. All right our last story isn't really a Tesla story but it it kind of related to what Tesla does. A report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Highway Loss Data Institute studied information on crashes from BMWs in Nissan's and they found that

[00:25:37] features like adaptive cruise control and lane centering what they're calling partial automation systems offered no measurable safety improvement when it comes to car accidents. In fact these systems could actually be more dangerous according to IIHS president David Harky. This is what he had to say.

[00:26:04] Everything we're seeing tells us that partial automation is a convenience feature like power windows or heated seats rather than a safety technology. Partial automated systems can induce driver complacency and distraction. Now I know that there are some of you that there's like steam coming out of

[00:26:25] your ears and you're ready to email me and light me up about what a nonsense story this is. Hold on one second. What they did find was that the crash avoidance systems like front automatic braking, emergency braking, like somebody slams on the brakes in

[00:26:41] front of you and your car slams on its brake, blind spot warnings and lane departure prevention all of those increased safety. Of course in any of these studies further research is needed to assess newer vehicles and their safety impacts so let's just

[00:26:58] kind of get that out there. But the reason why I chose to do this story today is not because that this information is particularly like groundbreaking because that makes a lot of sense to me. You know things like lane keep assist and things like

[00:27:17] that, that's more for your convenience. I get that. The reason why I brought this up is because these systems are all kind of like shoved together in the autonomous driving field and they're all kind of matched up under one category. And I think what we need

[00:27:34] to be looking at is these features as convenience features and safety features. And I know for me as somebody who's done a podcast for the last eight years, for this I'm coming up on eight years in August there'll be eight years.

[00:27:50] I match all of these, match all of these features together as autonomous driving features. And in reality I should be looking at them and we all should be as convenience features versus safety features because these are all different systems but they tend to be packaged together as one

[00:28:15] system. Like here's your you know level three if you're Mercedes autonomous driving system pilot or whatever Mercedes calls it. And that's great except for from a more if we're going to look at it from a more critical perspective, we should be

[00:28:34] looking at it oh this is a convenience feature and this is a safety feature. Obviously I don't want a convenience feature being unsafe but if we're going to talk about how safe a system is we shouldn't be measuring that by how well it stays in a lane. Obviously

[00:28:52] we don't want it to go outside of a lane and fail and cause a crash but we should be looking at the actual safety features versus the convenience features. So this kind of opened my eyes a little bit I'm kind of curious as to

[00:29:04] what you think on this if you want to email me it's bodi.bode.ie at 918digital.com. You can also find me on x at 918digital but again I really want to know what your thoughts are on this because honestly when I

[00:29:18] saw the headline I was ready to rip it apart on the show and then when I read through this I was like maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way so I'm curious about your thoughts. Alright everybody that is it for me I've already

[00:29:30] given you my email in my x account you can also oh hey brand new episode of Beyond The Post released last Wednesday and Lamar Wilson is on the show. Lamar Wilson is a social media and YouTube personality he is the CEO

[00:29:48] of unboxing and he's a heck of a nice guy so if you're curious as to what it's like to be a successful creator don't ask me because I'm not one. Ask Lamar. It was so good we had to turn it into a two-part episode.

[00:30:02] Alright everybody that is it for me today I will talk to you for sure on Tuesday.