Nikola Files Chapter 11 Bankwuptcy

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[00:00:27] Egal ob sie gerade erst beginnen oder ihr Sicherheitsprogramm erweitern, herausragende Sicherheitspraktiken zu demonstrieren und Vertrauen aufzubauen ist wichtiger denn je. Vanta automatisiert die Einhaltung von ISO 27001, SOC 2 und mehr, spart ihnen Zeit und Geld und hilft ihnen das Vertrauen ihrer Kunden zu stärken. Darüber hinaus können sie Sicherheitsüberprüfungen vereinfachen, indem sie Fragebögen automatisieren und die Sicherheit ihrer IT-Infrastruktur

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[00:01:40] Hallo und willkommen zu Kilowatt, ein Podcast über elektrischen Fahrzeuge, renovationsenergie, autonome driving und viel mehr. My name is Bodi and I am your host and on this episode of Kilowatt, we have a short episode for you. Not a lot of news, not a lot of news that doesn't involve politics. So it's a shorter episode. Hopefully Friday's episode will be a little more beefy.

[00:02:09] Let's go ahead and get into it. It is official. Nicola is headed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and they will be selling off their assets. I honestly thought this was the least likely thing to happen. Well, I guess the least likely thing to happen was they will just, you know, completely cease to be a company and nobody will buy their stuff or they won't even try selling their assets.

[00:02:36] But I figured that they would be able to do some sort of restructuring and continue being a company because they had enough value in what they were doing, you know, in their IP, but apparently not. So we'll keep an eye on the story as it develops. Hyundai is planning to boost production in the U.S. to avoid a possible 25% tariff proposed by the Trump administration. Hyundai actually has two factories in the U.S., one in Georgia and one in Alabama.

[00:03:06] The Alabama plant produces currently about 350,000 vehicles per year. They're going to boost production there, but we don't know by how much exactly. But we have heard that the Georgia plant, which currently is about 300,000 units per year, they're going to boost another 200,000 to 500,000 units per year. And then I told you this is going to be a quick episode.

[00:03:31] Our final EV story of the day, VinFast has launched their mini SUV, the VF3 in Indonesia and India. Now, we actually have quite a few people who listen to this podcast in India. I don't know how many we have in Indonesia, but India is in the top 10. All right. I actually just stopped the podcast and went and checked. We have no listeners in Indonesia and India is not in the top 10. And it's in the top 15. All right.

[00:03:58] If you're not familiar with the VF3, it is a $14,000 EV that is rumored or actually I think VinFast said they will bring it to the U.S., but they haven't yet. The VF3 is a $14,000 EV with a range of about 215 kilometers, which is about 180, 190 miles. You can charge from 10% to 70% in 36 minutes. It'll come with a seven-year, 160,000-mile warranty.

[00:04:28] And the battery has an eight-year warranty on that. So pretty neat and good news for India and Indonesia. Speaking of India, Tesla is reportedly set to open two stores. Its first two stores in India. And the first location will be in the Aero City area of New Delhi.

[00:04:54] And the second location will be in the Bandra Kurla complex in Mumbai, which the Mumbai location is more of like a shopping area. It is also by an airport, but it's more of a shopping area. Whereas the Aero City, it seems to be a little bit more industrial. Now, I've never been to India. I did have a chance to go about 12, 13 years ago. No, shoot. It was closer to 17 years ago. But I had a family. And a friend of mine was getting married.

[00:05:24] And then he wasn't getting married. And then he decided, well, since I'm not getting married, I'm going to travel to India. And he invited me to go with him. But I had, you know, a family. So I couldn't go. But I did want to go. It sounds like an amazing trip. He had a lot of good stories from that trip. And here is our final story of the day. In 2024, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Matthews International Corporation. We actually talked about this on the show.

[00:05:53] It was like June of 2024. Tesla alleged that Matthews stole trade secrets from Tesla related to battery technology and then shared those trade secrets with Tesla's competitors. And to be more specific, the technology that or the patents or the trade secrets that Tesla says that they stole had to do with the dry electrode technology that Tesla uses with the 4680 battery cells.

[00:06:22] Tesla says that Matthews owes conservatively owes Tesla a billion dollars in damages in excess of a billion dollars in damages.

[00:06:33] A U.S. court judge, Edward Davala, I think I said that right, denied Tesla's request for a temporary restraining order against Matthews on the grounds that Matthews had a patent for dry electrode technology that actually predates Tesla's patent. So as of right now, Matthews can continue selling that technology to Tesla's competitors.

[00:07:03] And I'm sure this is not the last we're going to hear of this story. So when it comes back up, I'll make sure to update you. All right, everybody. Um, so I am actually recording this on Wednesday. So I did what I said I was going to do, but this is only a six minute episode. I still have CES interviews, but it is 11 o'clock at night and I'm going to go to bed because I'm exhausted.

[00:07:29] So I will I will add a an interview to this tomorrow when I wake up in the morning on Thursday and I'll release it then. So through the magic of editing, you're going to hear an interview, possibly two interviews. We'll see. And then the show will just go to the outro music. Thanks, everybody. And I will talk to you on Friday. And this is Etcetera. Yes.

[00:07:57] So Etcetera is the innovation arm of BT Group. And we're we're closely aligned to the core of the business, but we sit just outside in order to have that freedom to incubate new ideas and bring things to the market. So what we have here is active intelligence. Active intelligence takes the data from our 24 million handsets in the UK and we anonymize that data and aggregate it. And then we process about 25 billion data points to turn that into insights.

[00:08:24] And those insights are used by retailers, transport companies, road operators to really understand what's going on in their world. So to give you an example, we help the national rail operators in the UK understand how many people are on a train at any given time, how far they travel to a station, how long they will spend in a station at any one time. And that's all about then helping them improve their own customer experience.

[00:08:51] And if ultimately societal change comes as a result of improving that activity. Our data is also used for retailers to, again, understand footfall in their location, catchment and how far people come to their area, the demographic of the people that come to their area. So they might be thinking, actually, I'm targeting a particular audience, but actually the type of customer I'm really getting is, you know, I'm understanding through that data.

[00:09:17] And equally, retailers are also using the data to decide where to put their next store because we're able to provide that kind of holistic overview of that information. So it's all about trend and analysis as opposed to, you know, individual information because we don't process any personal data at all. What we then do is this data can power things like where to put EV charge points.

[00:09:39] And our innovation around EV is we spent the last 12 months effectively taking our green cabinets, which in the UK, they're kind of a famous thing where British Telecom have those cabinets. They power most of the broadband connections and phone connections in the UK. And we were repurposing that the cabinets into EV charge points. And our data helps identify what volume of EVs are being used on any particular link road.

[00:10:08] So where is the trend of that activity and where are we seeing growth in EV to appropriately put either a charge point or a connectivity point? Because one of the problems in the UK being a small country is not everyone can park near their house. So they're requiring a over-the-air update and we're then repurposing our cabinets for Wi-Fi connectivity within there so you can get over-the-air updates to your vehicle even if you're not near your phone. So that's the innovation in EV that we're driving right now.

[00:10:38] That's really cool. You know, obviously, when did you say you started this? So we started Etcetera about three years ago. And so in Active Intelligence, we built a data platform first so that the data can be reused. And then we built an insights platform, which means that we can support two types of customer. You get, let's sort of, the highly experienced user. They've got their own data scientist teams.

[00:11:07] They just want to take the data on an API basis and integrate that with their own data solutions. But the 80% out there would actually just like to have access to the data. So we built an insights platform that enables them to kind of grab access to more commoditized data. And then we can create custom solutions on top of that. Okay. And so for the most part, your folks are the back end. You're not developing necessarily any solutions at this point? So the EV team are developing solutions.

[00:11:37] So we're a back end for the data to provide to customers who then help their customer. So, yeah, there's kind of a power behind almost. On the EV side, we are absolutely creating solutions for the customer on the street. Okay. And British Telecom operates these EV cabinets then? Okay. I didn't realize that. Gotcha. All right. Is there anything up and coming like future-wise you want to talk about?

[00:12:03] I think the connectivity over the cabinet for the over-the-air update is the next thing that's going to come. So that's probably the most exciting thing we're seeing is how do we solve that problem for the almost 3 million users that we'll see who can't use, I guess, an over-the-air update over time. Yeah. When my daughter lived in an apartment, she would bring her Tesla over to my house just so she could update. Yeah. Very good. She knows how to do it properly, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then free charging as well. Free charging.

[00:12:33] I doubt British Telecoms give her not free charging. No, not yet. I also don't have the data you have, so I guess we're okay. We're even. All right. Steve, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with me. Thanks very much. Really good to meet you today.

[00:13:03] Um Kaluabo. Unaussprechlich, aber ausgesprochen gut. Zu Risiken und Nebenwirkungen lesen Sie die Packungsbeilage und fragen Sie Ihre Ärztin, Ihren Arzt oder in Ihre Apotheke. Egal, ob Sie gerade erst beginnen oder Ihr Sicherheitsprogramm erweitern, herausragende Sicherheitspraktiken zu demonstrieren und Vertrauen aufzubauen ist wichtiger denn je. Vantor automatisiert die Einheit von ISO 27001, SOC 2 und mehr. Spart Ihnen Zeit und Geld und hilft Ihnen das Vertrauen Ihrer Kunden zu stärken.

[00:13:32] Darüber hinaus können Sie Sicherheitsüberprüfungen vereinfachen, indem Sie Fragebögen automatisieren und die Sicherheit Ihrer IT-Infrastruktur mit einem kundenorientierten Trust Center demonstrieren. Über 9000 globale Unternehmen wie Atlassian, Flow Health und Quora nutzen Vantor bereits, um Risiken zu managen und Sicherheit in Echtzeit nachzuweisen. Erhalten Sie ein spezielles Angebot von 1000 Dollar Rabatt unter vantor.com.

[00:14:13] We're with Sunny, with Bionic M, and you are the founder and CEO, and you have a Bionic leg. Yes, yes. Yeah, we're making this robotic prosthesis called Bionic. Okay, and let's kind of start with the story. So I've actually talked to some of the people who have already interviewed you, so I already know some of the story. But why don't you tell people the story of why you started the company? Yeah, so I got my right leg amputated when I was 9 years old.

[00:14:43] At the beginning, it was difficult for me to afford a prosthesis. So I worked with a crutch for 15 years. And then I got my first prosthesis in 2011. It's a passive knee. It's great. After I used it a lot, I also found some issues. I was a mechanical engineer and solid at that time. So I was wondering if I could design better products for myself and other people.

[00:15:10] So I created my job from a company and then came back to Taki University as a PhD student. And then began to design this robotic prosthesis. Okay, so how does that... I mean, listen, this is a sense of subject. I'm sorry, but what problems are we solving? Obviously, I don't have a prosthetic leg. So what kind of things are you trying to solve? What weren't you happy with?

[00:15:38] Yes, so there are many products available on the market. Most of them are passive, which means there's only bone and joint without muscle. So you can imagine, if you're losing muscle, what will happen? That's terrible, right? If you don't have muscle, you cannot walk. So this one has muscle. That's not different. And I would imagine that with this bio leg versus the other regular prosthesis,

[00:16:06] that it's probably less energy, a lot less wear and tear on your body, that kind of thing. Yes, yes. Since this one has muscle, this muscle can help patients do something they couldn't do before, or it's current product, and also can reduce energy consumption, can help patients work more easily and more naturally. Let's make a big difference.

[00:16:33] And when you say muscle, are you talking like gears and counterbalance and that kind of thing? Yeah, it's not real muscle. It's some kind of actuator motor which works like a muscle. So, and maybe I'm totally off basis here, but does it work kind of like a gimbal? Like it's going to keep things aligned no matter like whether you're walking on uneven dirt or whatever.

[00:17:03] It kind of keeps everything lined up where it's supposed to be, even though what you're walking on is uneven terrain. Yes. So this can work everywhere. So even though it's not uneven ground, still, it can work very well. It can help patients. Okay, and then what's the specific, like what are the smarts in this?

[00:17:30] Like what makes it a bioleg with a microprocessor in it? Since, you know, everyone works differently, right? So it's very difficult to control this software. So to adapt everyone, different patients. So we have this bioleg which can adapt the patient very intuitively and very smooth. Okay.

[00:18:00] So if I was, if you gave me one of the biolegs today and I was to use it, it would adapt to me. Yeah, of course. We have one hardware, but the software can be customized by application. So we have an app. This app can be used to adjust to adapt different patients according to their preference. Okay.

[00:18:27] And so this is, this is actually really beneficial because right now, if you want a prosthesis, I have a friend who, he makes prosthesis. That is a, that is a custom product for each individual person based on where you need, like how long it needs to be, how much, you know, where, where it is sitting on, on your leg or arm or whatever prosthesis you have.

[00:18:52] So in this case, it's, it's not one size fits all, obviously, but it's, it's one product can be used by many people. Yes. One product, it can be customized based on different patients' preference. Okay. And Sonny, is there anything that maybe that I should have asked you that I didn't ask you? Uh-huh. Yeah.

[00:19:17] So right now, we're a Japanese manufacturer with books on U.S. market. We got FDA registration and we also got insurance approval. Last year, we launched a product in the U.S. last September. We got a very good sales and we also got a very good feedback from market, from patients. Okay. And if somebody wanted to purchase one of these, how would they go about doing that? Yeah. We have a sales post in the U.S.

[00:19:46] You can reach out to our homepage. We have a homepage, so you can give us inquiry and say, we will send our sales hosting to the trail with a patient. Okay. And what's your website? Our website is www.bionicam.com. Okay. www.bionicam.com. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Perfect. Sonny, thank you so much.

[00:20:15] Thank you so much. Thanks again.

[00:20:54] Umkaluabo. Umkaluabo. Umkaluabo. Umkaluabo. Umkaluabo. Unaussprechlich, aber ausgesprochen gut. Zu Risiken und Nebenwirkungen lesen Sie die Packungsbeilage und fragen Sie Ihre Ärztin, Ihren Arzt oder in Ihre Apotheke. Umkaluabo.