Nikola’s Struggles

[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 have news. Now, I happen to be in a really good mood because we've been hanging out with friends and I stopped hanging out so that I could come to my car and record this episode because I wanted to make sure it gets out on Friday or at least what's left of Friday.

[00:00:50] But I'm going to deliver news as a happy person instead of my normal demeanor. So we're going to talk about some bankruptcies and some other things so please don't take my jovialness as pleasure that some of these companies are falling upon hard times. I just happen to be having a lot of fun today so I might not sound as somber as I normally do.

[00:01:18] So let's move to our first story. General Motors and LG Energy Solutions have renewed their partnership to develop battery cells but in this specific story it's prismatic battery cells and they're going to do that with a variety of different chemistries like LFP, NCM, nickel, cobalt, manganese batteries.

[00:01:42] You know, this is not necessarily news. The biggest part of this story that's news is they renewed their partnership.

[00:01:51] GM has said in the not too distant past that they plan on using prismatic cells primarily over cylinder cells but the overall goal is to use the right technology or the right form factor I should say with each product that they're working on.

[00:02:11] And I say product because GM is doing home energy storage now as well as the EV stuff.

[00:02:20] Moving on to Lucid Motors. Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson said that Lucid is in talks with a couple, a couple, air quotes, of automakers about supplying them with Lucid EV technology.

[00:02:37] I'm going to say this. Lucid has extremely good tech, like maybe one of the best in the EV business.

[00:02:46] They don't sell very many cars but they have incredible tech.

[00:02:49] Peter Rawlinson is a very good carnival barker.

[00:02:53] I'm sure that they are currently talking to a lot of different automakers.

[00:02:58] We'll see if anything comes of it.

[00:03:01] Like, the story here is why is Peter Rawlinson bringing this up right now?

[00:03:07] He's said this in the past that they are in talks with other automakers.

[00:03:11] He has, and I think the only deal that they have currently is with Aston Martin.

[00:03:17] He's said this a lot lately, or I should say recently.

[00:03:22] He's said it quite a bit.

[00:03:23] So why is he bringing it up again?

[00:03:27] Is he trying to raise more money?

[00:03:29] Is there some kind of pressure he's trying to put on some of these companies?

[00:03:35] I'm not suspicious.

[00:03:37] I don't want to make it sound like I think he's doing anything nefarious.

[00:03:42] But why?

[00:03:43] Like, we already know this.

[00:03:46] What is the reason why you're bringing this up again?

[00:03:50] Moving on to Nikola Motors, another Arizona company, or at least manufacturing an Arizona

[00:04:00] company.

[00:04:01] Nikola Motors is going through another round of layoffs.

[00:04:05] They are currently losing about $200 million a quarter.

[00:04:08] In fact, at one point in time, at its peak, Nikola was worth $34 billion.

[00:04:15] And now it is currently valued at $100 million, which is not great, Al.

[00:04:21] Not great in the least.

[00:04:24] It sounds like Nikola currently has a bit more than a month and a half left of runway in their

[00:04:32] bank account at their current spending rate.

[00:04:35] So yeah, there's a very real chance that we might be saying, you know, rest in peace,

[00:04:41] Nikola soon.

[00:04:42] Which is unfortunate because I don't like seeing any of these companies go out of business.

[00:04:46] And I don't like seeing people lose their jobs.

[00:04:48] Like, that's the biggest thing that bugs me is when these kind of things happen.

[00:04:52] And you know, it's going to happen to some companies.

[00:04:56] I don't want to see anyone lose their jobs, especially around Christmas.

[00:04:59] That sucks.

[00:05:00] Or even be worried about it around this time of the year.

[00:05:03] That just absolutely sucks.

[00:05:05] So hopefully Nikola is able to pull themselves out of this rut.

[00:05:09] I do not think that hydrogen powered vehicles as a general rule is going to make it, right?

[00:05:20] It just, I just don't think that that's the right fuel for going forward for clean energy

[00:05:32] vehicles.

[00:05:33] Number one, it's not exactly clean because most hydrogen is broken from natural gas, but it's

[00:05:39] not taken from water.

[00:05:41] Like some people will say it is, it's just not in any great percentage.

[00:05:46] Most of the percentage is currently coming from natural gas.

[00:05:50] So, you know, that's kind of problematic if you're trying to promote your clean energy

[00:05:55] vehicle that is powered by hydrogen, but runs off electricity, you might as well just have

[00:06:00] a battery, right?

[00:06:01] Where I will put in a little caveat is things like semi trucks or these big heavy duty vehicles.

[00:06:10] I do think that there is some reason or some use case for hydrogen powered vehicles.

[00:06:20] So I want to see Nikola succeed.

[00:06:22] I, I, again, don't want to see anybody laid off, lose their job, stressed out around the

[00:06:28] holidays.

[00:06:29] That sucks.

[00:06:30] Uh, so fingers crossed that Nikola is able to recover and recover soon and be worth $36

[00:06:40] billion or $34 billion again.

[00:06:42] That'd be great.

[00:06:42] Okie doke.

[00:06:44] Moving on to our final story in our EV section, hybrids and EVs played a part in dropping new

[00:06:54] vehicle emissions in 2023.

[00:06:57] So internal combustion light duty vehicles are responsible for about 57% of the transportation

[00:07:05] sector's CO2 emissions.

[00:07:07] And tailpipe emissions have directly been linked to respiratory illnesses and different lung

[00:07:15] diseases.

[00:07:16] Putting the environment stuff, you know, aside climate change stuff, putting that aside, we

[00:07:23] can all agree that tailpipe emissions are not healthy for us as humans, not, not environment

[00:07:32] stuff.

[00:07:32] I'm not getting into that discussion.

[00:07:34] It's just, we don't want to be huffing on, on tailpipe exhaust.

[00:07:39] You know, that's, that's not a thing for us.

[00:07:41] Uh, we're going to get cancer and a whole host of other problems.

[00:07:45] But back to the story, if hybrids and EVs did not exist, the total new vehicle emissions

[00:07:52] would have been around 357 grams per mile driven.

[00:07:58] With EVs and hybrids, we're looking at 319 grams of CO2 per mile driven.

[00:08:05] Again, this is for model year 2023 vehicles.

[00:08:09] This isn't for the transportation sector as a whole.

[00:08:13] This is just that those new model year 2023 vehicles.

[00:08:17] Now, the difference between, you know, 357 grams per mile driven of CO2 and 319 grams isn't

[00:08:28] a lot.

[00:08:29] But let's see where we end up with 2024.

[00:08:33] Maybe we could drop that another 30 points and we're trending the right direction.

[00:08:39] So that, that is a positive.

[00:08:42] All right, everybody, that is it for our EV news.

[00:08:45] If you want to support the show, go to patreon.com forward slash kilowatt or support kilowatt.com.

[00:08:51] You can also support the show through ACAST.

[00:08:53] If you just look in the show notes, there's, there's the directions there, the link in the

[00:08:58] show notes.

[00:08:59] And that's all I'm going to say on that.

[00:09:01] I'll keep the Patreon plug nice and short today.

[00:09:05] Moving on to our Tesla news, this Cybertruck has been spotted in China.

[00:09:10] So what's it doing there?

[00:09:12] We don't know.

[00:09:14] Tesla did fill out some regulatory paperwork involving the Cybertruck in China.

[00:09:19] I would imagine if I'm putting my imagination hat on, I would imagine that they're going to

[00:09:25] build some version of this Cybertruck specifically for the Asian market.

[00:09:31] That would not surprise me.

[00:09:32] Something that I found pretty interesting was that the Cybertruck was actually spotted at

[00:09:39] a BYD factory in China.

[00:09:41] I do not know if Tesla, you know, drove the Cybertruck to, um, BYD's factory or if BYD actually

[00:09:52] bought a Cybertruck and is trying to reverse engineer some of the tech.

[00:09:56] I don't know why it was there, but it's kind of cool that, uh, Cybertruck has landed in China.

[00:10:05] Now I'm going to pronounce this name and completely butcher it, but Zhang Gao used to be the head

[00:10:13] of Tesla's autopilot hardware engineering program.

[00:10:17] He worked at Tesla for more than eight years and he held the position of head of autopilot

[00:10:23] engineering, hardware engineering for the last three years.

[00:10:27] He has since left Tesla and now works for Amazon owned Zoox.

[00:10:33] Zoox is a self-driving car company.

[00:10:36] It's kind of, uh, their, their self-driving car looks like a cross between a, uh, like a subway

[00:10:44] and a people mover or a train and a people mover.

[00:10:46] It's a rectangle car where the doors open up and you just get in and you sit down.

[00:10:51] There's no steering wheel.

[00:10:53] So yeah, uh, that's a good kit by Amazon for sure.

[00:10:59] I'm sure he's going to bring a lot to the table for Zoox.

[00:11:04] And let's see here.

[00:11:06] This is our final story.

[00:11:08] I told you there wasn't a lot of news today.

[00:11:09] We're getting close to Christmas.

[00:11:11] These episodes might start getting shorter and shorter just because of that.

[00:11:15] But Tesla released the official API pricing for third-party apps.

[00:11:21] If you don't know what an API is, it's a set of instructions or rules that allow different

[00:11:26] software applications to interact with one another.

[00:11:29] It could be third-party applications.

[00:11:31] It could be first-party applications.

[00:11:33] But anyway, it's just allows, uh, programmers to be programmers and develop apps like developers

[00:11:40] for the iPhone and Android use different APIs like all developers do.

[00:11:44] But to bring it home, if you don't know what this is, they use APIs to get their apps on

[00:11:51] your phone.

[00:11:52] So, uh, APIs are important.

[00:11:55] But until last year, Tesla didn't have an official API for developers.

[00:12:00] Now they have APIs internally, right?

[00:12:03] So these developers were just kind of using gray market APIs.

[00:12:07] Like they didn't have official permission to develop, uh, to use these APIs, but that

[00:12:13] they, Tesla was allowing it.

[00:12:15] And then sometime last year, right around this time, Tesla released official documentation

[00:12:21] on the APIs, which was good news.

[00:12:24] Um, and then just recently they released the pricing information, which also seems like

[00:12:30] good news because we could see some really cool apps for our cars in the near future.

[00:12:35] But here's the bad news.

[00:12:37] The developer of Tessie app, which is, does analytics and automation.

[00:12:42] I've never used it, so I can't tell you if it's any good or anything or any recommendations.

[00:12:46] But, um, that developer said that Tesla's pricing would cost about $60 million a year, just in

[00:12:56] API fees.

[00:12:58] Again, that does not include any of the other costs of doing business.

[00:13:03] That's just them paying $60 million to Tesla so that they could have access to Tesla's APIs.

[00:13:12] Um, I think it would stand to reason that the Tessie app doesn't make $60 million a year.

[00:13:19] Currently, the users for the Tessie app sits at about 400,000 people.

[00:13:26] And assuming that everyone who uses the Tessie app is a paying customer and they don't have

[00:13:32] a free tier, the developer would need to charge $150 a year just to pay for Tesla's API fees.

[00:13:39] Again, that does not, that does not make them a successful business.

[00:13:44] That just covers Tesla's, um, um, fee.

[00:13:50] I'll be nice.

[00:13:51] And it just covers Tesla's fee.

[00:13:53] And the founder of Tesla scope said that the pricing would cost them about seven and a

[00:14:00] half times more than they, than the app makes every month, which is not again, not good.

[00:14:07] Um, Reddit did something similar to this earlier this year.

[00:14:12] And a lot of developers who were developing third party apps for Reddit just pulled up sticks

[00:14:18] them and they moved on because the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.

[00:14:21] Like it was going to cost them money or they were going to, um, barely make any money.

[00:14:26] So it just didn't make any sense for them to develop for Tesla or for Reddit in that instance.

[00:14:32] Or, I mean, I think the same thing's going to happen for Tesla.

[00:14:35] So this is kind of a bummer.

[00:14:38] I understand that these things cost Tesla money, but I think third party apps add enough

[00:14:44] value that Tesla can probably absorb a lot of that costs.

[00:14:47] And it, it most likely would not, they wouldn't even notice financially.

[00:14:52] I would guess, uh, this seems maybe like Tesla is, is trying to discourage developers instead

[00:15:01] of encourage them or it's a, it's a cash grab.

[00:15:04] I'm not sure.

[00:15:05] I would like to see Tesla re address this in a way that's more developer friendly.

[00:15:13] All right, everybody, that is it for me today.

[00:15:16] I hope you all enjoyed this episode a little bit different.

[00:15:20] Like I said, I'm using my Anker M650 Lavalier mic, and it's a little bit of a different setup.

[00:15:27] So, um, I feel a little bit freer, you know, I'm not sitting in front of a microphone.

[00:15:32] I'm, I get to move around a little bit more.

[00:15:34] Uh, hopefully this sounded good.

[00:15:37] Let me know what you think.

[00:15:38] It's a Bodie B O D I E at 918digital.com.

[00:15:42] Or you can find me on Twitter or X at 918digital.

[00:15:46] And, uh, yeah, I hope everybody had a great week and I will talk to you on Tuesday.