Nine Years Later… Tesla to Unveil the Roadster

[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've got news. But before we get to the news, we have a quick correction. I said that the Waymo autonomous taxis from Zeker were called Ojai, and that is not correct. It's actually called Ojai, which is named after a California city in California, which I know there's an Ojai, California.

[00:00:51] I did not know that's how they spelled it. But even when I said it in that episode, I was like, this doesn't sound right coming out of my mouth, but I'm going to roll with it because I don't have time to look it up. So I didn't. But you know who did know, because I didn't say this at the beginning, Steve Sheridan. Steve Sheridan sent in the correction. So thank you very much, Steve. Really appreciate that.

[00:01:14] And we all know and love Steve. And you should go and follow his YouTube channel. It's S like Steve, P like I'm going to guess Paul Sheridan. We've had this conversation, but it's S.P. Sheridan on YouTube.

[00:01:30] And if I can remember, I will put a link in the show notes. And I know I did not put a link in the show notes to the Car Stuff podcast that I talked about last episode. So I will do that on this episode. So if you are looking for that link, it'll be in this episode. Maybe. We'll see. Let's get on to the news. Let's get on to the news.

[00:02:24] Let's get on to the news.

[00:02:56] Let's get on to the news. The only other company that has done that to this point is Tesla. So even though the Fathom starts at $30,000 and is more accessible, that is a pretty ambitious goal. 100,000 units annually.

[00:03:19] Just to give you an idea, the Chevy Equinox, which starts at $35,000, sold 58,000 units in 2025. Still impressive. But Ford really thinks they can sell more of these Fathoms. And hopefully they can. That would be amazing. Don't get me wrong.

[00:03:37] But yeah, that's an aggressive goal for sure. In April of 2026, BYD rolled out its 5,000th ultra fast flash charger. These are those chargers that can charge your car in like five minutes. Right. And if you're in the US or anywhere else, really outside of China, you don't have access to these flash chargers. It's mostly just in China as far as I know.

[00:04:08] But that was in 2026. But that was in 2026. They hit 5,000. Now, just what is it? April, five months later, six months later, five months later, they've hit 10,000. They've installed 10,000 ultra fast chargers in more than 300 cities.

[00:04:27] According to the article I read, that is 34 charging stations per day since April of 2026, which is just nutty. Their overall goal is to install 20,000 flash chargers in China by the end of 2026, which would mean that they would have to install 80 chargers each day until the end of 2026 to hit that goal, even if they fall short of 20,000. That's super impressive.

[00:04:57] Oh, man. We haven't talked about Waymo in a little bit. So let's talk about Waymo. In 2024, Waymo had 589 parking tickets in San Francisco, which racked up about $65,000 in fines. That's, you know, not nothing. But since 2025, Waymo has paid close to a million dollars in parking ticket fines in San Francisco.

[00:05:22] That's over 8,300 parking tickets. So in 2021, or excuse me, 2025, they had 4,178 tickets for all of 2025. And in the first six and a half months of 2026, they had 4,131 tickets.

[00:05:44] That is just, that is just a lot. And I'm going to say from a resident standpoint, that's annoying. You know, it sounds like they're paying their tickets, you know, the 900 plus thousand dollars that they're paying to the city. And I'm sure the city enjoys that revenue when they get that opportunity. And I don't know that this is all that different than FedEx, UPS or Amazon getting tickets.

[00:06:11] It's just a part of a lot of tickets. It's just a part of a million dollars in parking tickets. It's nearly a million dollars in parking tickets. That is just nutty. Am I wrong here? I mean, I realize again, FedEx, UPS, Amazon, other delivery trucks, DHL, all of that. But I'm sure even to a certain extent, the postal service has to deal with this, but it is, is massive.

[00:06:39] And 2026 is going to be even a bigger year than 2025. You know, they could easily have over 7,000 or close to 8,000 parking tickets by the end of 2026. It just, I mean, that's a sign of growth, but also Waymo has got to figure something out here.

[00:06:59] They can't like that. That's a lot. And ultimately we're going to be the ones that pay the folks who use Uber or not Uber Waymo to get from place to place in San Francisco. We're going to be the ones that pay that, you know, that cost is going to be passed along. All right. Our final EV story, I have a question for you and I want you to think about it.

[00:07:24] How many EVs do you think are on sale in the United States? It was actually more than I thought. So I'm not going to read off every single EV that's available in the United States, but I am just going to tell you how many EV models each manufacturer is selling in the U.S. But remember that number, that original number that you had in your head, because my number was much lower than what the actual number is.

[00:07:54] Maybe I'm giving you a hint here, but let's just go through this. Audi has four different flavors of the e-tron, all different models. I'm not talking about the individual trims. I'm just talking about the models. So Audi has four EVs. BMW has four. Cadillac has five. Chevy has four. Dodge has one. Although I'm not sure that that it's the Charger. I'm not sure that that's still being sold,

[00:08:19] but we'll leave it in there. Fiat has two. Ford has currently one. Genesis has two. GMC has two. Honda has one for now. That's going away. Hyundai has three. Jeep has two. Kia has four. Lexus has two. Lucid has two. Maserati. This surprised me. Maserati has two. Mercedes has six.

[00:08:44] Mini, like the Mini Cooper, has one. Nissan has one. That's the Leaf. The Aria is not counted in this one. Polestar currently has two, but those are going away. Porsche has three. Rivian was interested. They listed Rivian only having two, because they concluded the R1S and the R1T as one vehicle. So I corrected that and I said Rivian has three.

[00:09:07] Rolls-Royce has one. They listed Slate as having one. I'm going to remove Slate from the list because until you start actually delivering vehicles to people, you don't get to count. So right now Slate has zero, but they put it in there. Subaru has three. Tesla currently has three, but could have four shortly and are actually, well, we'll just stick with could, but we'll get about, we'll talk more about that

[00:09:34] when we get to that Tesla segment. Toyota has three. VW has two and Volvo has four. That is a grand total. If we split the Rivians and remove the Slate, that's a grand total of 73. 73 EVs models being sold in the US. I figured that number would be between 40 and like maybe 55.

[00:09:58] I was, I was actually shocked how many EV options are in the US. Now, is it the same amount that's in China? Absolutely not, but it's more than I thought it was, which surprised me. All right, everybody, that is our EV news. Let's go ahead and move on to our Tesla news. Before we do that though, I do want to let you know that we have a Patreon. So if you go to supportkilowatt.com,

[00:10:23] you can sign up and you can be, you can support the show on Patreon or you can support the show on Supercast, whichever one you prefer. And you can support the show for as little as a dollar. I am, I am thinking about, um, moving some things to, or maybe starting a sub stack that might actually have, you know, a newsletter instead of just podcast attached to it. But that's maybe more

[00:10:51] about when I retire because right at the moment I don't have the time, but, uh, I might get some things moving in that direction. If you're interested in that kind of thing, let me know. Um, but yeah, and some people have asked me to do buy me a coffee, but I don't, I don't get to like, you get to give me money if I do a buy me a coffee, which is great. Don't get me wrong, but I don't get to provide any value as far as I can tell back to you other than what I already do.

[00:11:17] So I'm a little less, uh, I'm a little more reluctant to do that. Like I know a lot of podcasters do it and I've actually supported shows with buy me a coffee and I have zero expectation when I do that. But for me personally, it's a hard hurdle to get over, at least for a dollar, you can get rid of the ads. All right. Uh, that's, that's quite enough on,

[00:11:37] on the Patreon and support the show plug. Let's move on to our Tesla news in Tesla's 26 or 2026.32 software update. There is a new native ad blocker in the car's built in web browser. So I checked my car and I do not have this, but if you go into, uh, your web browser in your car and you go to a

[00:12:06] website, I went to azcentral.com, which is a new site that has tons of ads. I mean, they're, they're annoying. That's how many ads. So I knew that was going to have a lot of ads and I did not get this option, but in the top right of the browser, there's a button that says ad. And if you toggle it on, it automatically removes all of the intrusive pop-up ads, the floating videos that you can't get rid of. Um, but it also renders the pages faster because it,

[00:12:34] it blocks all that stuff. So you're just getting to the website, which I think is really helpful. Um, this is especially helpful if you have an older Tesla, like I don't consider my car to be older per se, but I definitely am not rocking hardware four at the moment. I'm only rocking in hardware three or AI three. So any sort of improvement is appreciated. I actually don't

[00:12:58] use the Tesla web browser all that much today. I was testing, um, going to Paramount Plus to see if I can, uh, log in through my account so I can watch something. And it came up with a page and it looked native. And then we talked about this a couple of weeks ago or a couple of episodes ago. And that was cool, but I wasn't able with my login credentials. I wasn't actually able to log into the actual show

[00:13:25] or to the actual Paramount plus. So, um, yeah, I'm not sure if that's a problem with me because I was able to do it on my phone or if that's a problem with the, uh, what's going on with Tesla and everything getting set up at the moment, but I'll try again later. We have specs for the European version of the Tesla semi. So we're looking at 550 kilometers, which is about 342 miles of range. And that's fully

[00:13:54] loaded. That's 40 metric tons of, uh, of, of cargo. And I think that's about 80,000 pounds to pound. Let's see here. Yeah, it's 88,000 pounds and 40,000 kilograms. So, uh, and that makes sense.

[00:14:23] So, uh, it's quite a bit, quite a bit. That's a, that's a full load. I think 80,000 pounds is like the max that you're allowed to drive on us roads, the max load, um, without some sort of exemption. The vehicle will be equipped or the semi will be equipped with three independent motors, all on the rear axle. It'll consume one kilowatt hour per kilometer. Um, when it comes to the energy

[00:14:49] consumption, it'll support 800 kilowatts of mega charging, which will give it 60% of range in 30 minutes. And this is a big battery with, I mean, 60, that's pretty good. Um, it's going to have an MCS two 3.2 port, which is a big connector. It's not going to come with a next connector. This is a big connector to charge that semi truck. Um, if you happen to be, you know, just sitting at the depot

[00:15:17] and your truck's charging, it's going to be overnight. It'd be a little bit cheaper to use like a base depot charger and it will get you like 60% in four hours. So I'm not sure where that sits in terms of like level two versus level, uh, three charging. I'm going to assume it's still level three charging, just lower, not 800 kilowatts, probably 400 kilowatts or something around that,

[00:15:40] that range, 200 kilowatts probably. But anyway, yeah. So, um, overnight charging get 60%. It's got an EPTO. So a PTO is a power takeoff. So in a standard vehicle, um, or standard semi truck, the PTO powers something else. And in this most cases, it powers like a reefer. So that's like the

[00:16:06] refrigerator for those trucks that have, uh, are transporting items like food items that need to be cold. The seat is going to be a captain seat. And if you know the Tesla semi, it, the driver sits in the middle of the cab and they're surrounded by screens. And then, um, that particular seat is ventilated. So that must be super comfortable. So yeah, uh, you know, the, the specs for the Tesla

[00:16:34] semi European edition versus the U S are a little bit different, but, uh, I don't know that there's any real value in comparing the two because you can't buy a European version and bring it in the U S and there's, you can't buy the U S version and bring it to Europe. So who cares? Uh, but there was lots of comparisons about it. So yeah, pretty cool. Looking forward to traveling to Europe and seeing a Tesla semi cause I've not, I've yet to see a Tesla semi here in the U S. Um, and I've been to

[00:17:03] California multiple times. I've been, you know, all around Arizona, still haven't seen one. Moving on to the Cybertruck, the Cybertruck can now power your home. Now there is some caveats to this. You do need a Powerwall three and a PowerShare gateway. So it, you just can't plug your, your truck into your, you know, utility box outside your house. That's not going to work.

[00:17:30] You do need to have the proper equipment, but when you do that, Tesla is saying the Cybertruck's battery can extend your home battery backup by more than three days, which is that again, that's according to Tesla. And they say that it's roughly the equivalent of adding nine additional Powerwalls worth of energy. That seems like a big statement and a lot. I don't know. I mean, it seems weird for them to lie about this. That's just one Tesla battery, nine Powerwalls.

[00:17:59] That's a big statement. Yeah. Tesla first promised this feature back in November of 2023, and then it was later targeted for 2025, and then it was pushed to mid-2026. And now you are all set. You can, you can now do this. You can now power your, your house with your truck.

[00:18:23] The Powerwall 2 and Powerwall Plus owners, you're not out, you're, they're not leaving you out. Support for this will come later in 2026. I guess the tricky part with those, with the Powerwall 2 and the Powerwall Plus is getting, you know, the Powerwall and the Cybertruck to communicate, communicate and coordinate which, um, which battery is in control during an outage.

[00:18:51] So it's not, not ever coming. It's a, they just said later in 2026, even if it comes in 2027, I feel confident that Tesla will figure this out. Having the opportunity to talk to a lot of the engineers, well, a lot, some engineers that work on Powerwall, uh, I have nothing but the utmost respect for those folks. They, they are very determined. That's one of the things that I can say

[00:19:18] about every Tesla employee that I've interacted with is number one, it does feel like Tesla gives them a lot of latitude to be creative, to solve problems. And, uh, number two, most of the, if not all the people that I've talked to, and there might be somebody that I I've talked to that was not

[00:19:41] thrilled, uh, being employed by Tesla, but most everybody I've talked to, they really passionate about what they do and they do it at a very high level. Like it's, it's just a very impressive group of folks over there is, is what I'm saying. So I have every, I have all the faith that they're going to

[00:20:03] solve this problem. Next up Richard Simons of the UK runs the UK's largest used EV showroom. And he decided to do an experiment. He bought a used high mileage 2021 model three long range. And previously, previously this vehicle was used as a taxi and he wanted to see how the car would hold

[00:20:30] up. So, you know, he drove the car, I think it was right around 180 miles per day where the car was driven a hundred around 180 miles per day. And the car has just rolled over to 250,000 miles. And in terms of maintenance, it's very little maintenance or repair has needed to be done to this car. So according to the article that I read, the repairs include or maintenance include

[00:20:55] wiper blades, uh, the six sets of tires bushings. So if you don't know what a bushing is, it's on the suspension system and it's used to absorb the bumps in the road. This is all very, um, a very simplified, like somebody who's a mechanic might be like, well, it's not exactly how it works, but I in a very simple system, uh, system, the bushing is absorbs the bumps on the road, makes your ride

[00:21:22] comfortable, but also reduces the wear and tear on the vehicle. Um, the biggest repair for this car was they replaced the front exterior speaker. Like, you know, when somebody is backing up or driving really slow and it goes, I don't think I'm doing a very good impression of it, but you know, that sound, you know what I'm talking about when it does that noise, uh, that's coming out of the front speaker. They had to replace that. Um, it didn't mention this, but I would imagine they also had to replace

[00:21:51] the low voltage battery, but in terms of like brakes, for instance, the original brake rotors, pads, fluid, and, and, um, the coolant, all that is all, uh, uh, still original. They haven't had to replace that at all. Uh, the battery's in good shape. It still gets 284 miles on a full charge. So a hundred percent takes 11 minutes of supercharging to increase the battery

[00:22:18] state of charge by 30% or 85 miles. So all in all, you know, this music, this vehicle's high, high mileage, but has definitely, um, it's one of the, I want to, I don't want to say it's an oddity because I think just as in general, EVs tend to do better at higher mileage than their gas counterparts, but very impressive. Let's just say it's very impressive. So if you're interested

[00:22:45] in a used EV in the UK, this is not an ad, um, you know, Richard did not, uh, reach out to me in any way, shape or form. I got this off of an article, but the website is R like Richard, but R S like Sam, Y M O N S dot C O dot UK. If you're interested in a used EV, again, not an ad. I have no idea. This

[00:23:12] person was probably very lovely, but I cannot confirm that. All right. Uh, Grok may be able to send text messages for, for you from your Tesla. This is not an official announcement, but I guess there's hints of this in the Tesla owner's manual. You can ask Grok to send a text and it will craft, craft the mass message or craft the text using just regular natural language.

[00:23:39] I would imagine that means, you know, you don't have to be like, Hey Grok, text Dale, hi, Dale comma, please come over and you can just talk and just say, Hey, send Dale a text and tell him that I'm going to be there in a few minutes and it will do that. So that's what I'm assuming that means. For me, I don't use Grok in my car for anything other than asking it stupid questions

[00:24:06] when I'm bored. And I very rarely do that, but you can use Grok to navigate to a specific address, make a phone call, perform basic vehicle controls. If you are on the right version, um, in order to text, use that feature, you would need to be on hardware for, or AI for and have premium connectivity. When it comes to privacy and security, uh, personal details like contacts are kept local

[00:24:36] for calls and messaging. Uh, when you send a data cure, uh, query that data does, or when you send a query, that data is sent to XAI's servers for processing. Uh, they remain anonymous to Tesla and are not linked directly back to you or your vehicle. Um, but, uh, you know, believe what you want to believe. So I I'm not saying that it's not true. I'm just saying those two companies are very intertwined

[00:25:06] and could not be, it could become not true at some point. So for, as of right now, let's believe it, but let's also keep in mind that, uh, it may one day not be true. So yeah, uh, kind of cool. That's the kind of thing that you're interested in. I don't have an Android, but I do have an iPhone and when I'm driving and I need to send somebody a text, I can just say, Hey, S lady, send this text

[00:25:34] to so-and-so. So I don't need to use Grog for this. I'm assuming Android would be the same, but you know, it's there. So it's an option, I guess. All right. Uh, I got two more stories here. No, no, it's just one story. It's just, it's a little bit longer, not too long. Uh, yesterday and today, uh, honestly, I've felt

[00:26:00] a little rundown, which is the reason why this episode is being released on Saturday and not Friday. It was just, it was like eight 30 and it was all I could do last night to, to stay awake. I was so tired, just needed to get into bed. And then this morning I've had similar struggles, but I feel a little bit better. I just think I'm run down. Right. But the other reason is I had some technical issues. So I have, I built an app inside of a program called lovable,

[00:26:27] which is an AI program. I vibe coded this app that brings, it's called the kilowatt news desk. It brings all of my stories into one place so that I can sort it and I can export the stories. And then I can upload that to chat GPT and it creates my show notes and all this stuff. So, so far it's worked swimmingly, uh, yesterday and today, not so much, but I do, I did get it fixed. So I spent most of the morning this morning trying to figure out how to fix it. It is currently fixed. So I'm very happy to

[00:26:56] report that. Um, but there may have been a good reason for all of this to happen for me to be run down and have these technical issues. Cause right after I fixed the kilowatt news app, I hit a button on the app and it says, you know, pull the new stories in and lo and behold, it pulled like five stories in and four of them were the same. And the stories were Tesla will reveal the next gen

[00:27:20] roadster on October 1st. So if you're on the Pacific Pacific, if you're on the Pacific time zone, it's 5 30 PM, 8 30 Eastern. If you're in London, it'll be not on October 1st, but October 2nd. Um, it's 1 30 AM in London, 2 30 AM in Berlin and 10 30 AM in Sydney. I'm giving you these wide ranges of times just so that you can kind of keep this in the back of your head. If you don't live in those areas,

[00:27:48] but you live somewhat close to those areas, you kind of know what time it'll be in your area. But some reservation holders are already getting invitations to this event, which is super cool. It's going to be happening in Texas. Um, the reservation holders will need to RSVP by October 16th as of this recording that is in four days and the guests will need to be 21 or older refreshments

[00:28:15] and, uh, drinks will be provided. So we'll see. Uh, I'm guessing there's alcoholic drinks. So you gotta be 21. I'm also guessing because of some of the specs for the roadster, they don't want anybody under 21 there, but let's talk about those specs. So the roadster was originally announced at the Tesla semi event on November 16th, 2017. So nine years ago, uh, almost nine years ago,

[00:28:43] it was announced it was supposed to ship in 2020. That was, that then slipped like 2021. There's been a couple of different pushes for the release of the roadster. Now I don't know what they're going to unveil at this event on October 1st here in the United States, October 2nd, everywhere else in the world that's not on that time zone. I don't know exactly what they are going to announce and show off

[00:29:09] during that time. But if we look back at what some of the promises of the Tesla roadster were, it's going to have a four, it's going to be a four seater convertible hard top that you can take the, the, the, uh, glass roof off part of the glass roof off and put it in the trunk zero to 60 in 1.9 seconds, top speed, 250 miles per hour, 200 kilowatt hour battery with up to 620 miles of range,

[00:29:38] 18.5 inch infotainment screen. And then if you get the SpaceX package, you're looking at cold air thrusters that will help improve, uh, performance and handling, like it's supposed to help with cornering and things like that, as well as get a little boost of acceleration. According to Elon,

[00:29:58] it will fly or hover, um, it might achieve zero to 60 in 1.1 seconds. If you believe that, I mean, it could, I don't know that anybody should go that fast. Uh, that definitely seems like there's very little room for correction in 1.1 seconds to get to 60, but, uh, the original price of this vehicle

[00:30:22] was 200 to $250,000. I have no reason to believe that Tesla will not be honoring that price for reservation holders who put as much as $50,000 down for the SpaceX package. I think it was $5,000 down for the other package, but we'll find all of that, all that information out on October 1st.

[00:30:44] Um, I mean, we all know that Tesla did not, they didn't stream the cyber cab, which seemed like a big announcement and a huge miss to not stream that. I don't know why they chose not to do that. Maybe it was because, you know, technically they couldn't get that going, uh, because they had a technical issue. Maybe it's cause they didn't want to, but I don't know. Pretty weird. Uh, I would assume

[00:31:11] that they're going to stream this, but we'll, we'll, we'll see if they do, we'll cover it. If they don't, you know, I'm supposed to be taking a break during those two weeks. So I'll probably pop in and give just kind of a brief overview when it happens. So yeah. And, uh, yeah, that's it folks. That's our, that's our whole show. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have email,

[00:31:37] if you have questions, email me, it's Bodie B O D I E at nine one eight digital.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn. It's Bodie B O D I E Grimm G R I M M. And, uh, yeah, that is our weekend episode. I hope everybody enjoyed it. I am still working on the, uh, snooze review. Um, I've recorded my bit

[00:32:04] of it. I just need to, uh, uh, put the, the B roll together with my talking head video. And I'm currently doing that. It's just taking a little bit longer than, um, yeah, it's just taking me a little bit longer, but I think you're all going to enjoy that. And, uh, yeah, I hope with, with any luck, I hope everybody has a great weekend

[00:32:29] and I will talk to you all soon. Expect this new zoo review to be out sometime tomorrow at the very minimum of the very latest Monday, but hopefully tomorrow. All right, everybody. Thank you so much. And I will talk to you all soon.