NIO's Milestones, VinFast's Expansion, and Tesla's Low APR

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[00:00:08] Salads generally for most people are the easy button, right?

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[00:00:29] Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds and I'm here with Keith, co-star of my upcoming film, If, only in theaters May 17th.

[00:00:34] Do you want to tell people the big news?

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[00:01:00] Hello, everyone and welcome to Kila Wada podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving and much, much more.

[00:01:29] My name is Bodhi and I am your host.

[00:01:32] And this is the first of three shows this week.

[00:01:35] So it'll be a new show today on Wednesday will be Lucid's earnings call and on Friday will be news again.

[00:01:43] So let's go ahead and dive into this.

[00:01:46] Vinfast is set to launch in the Philippines at the end of May.

[00:01:51] We have a few people who listen to this show who live in the Philippines.

[00:01:54] So hello to you.

[00:01:55] A Vinfast event will be held on June 1st and June 2nd in Manila if you're interested in going, if you live there.

[00:02:03] Vinfast is encouraging the public to show up and take a look at what they have to offer.

[00:02:08] They're going to have some test drives.

[00:02:09] They're going to show off their electric motorcycles.

[00:02:12] And I'm sure Vinfast will even show off some of their electric bicycles as well.

[00:02:16] So sounds like a cool event.

[00:02:18] Wish I could go.

[00:02:19] So if anybody wants to fund that trip for me, let me know.

[00:02:23] Vinfast is also taking deposits in Vietnam for the VF3.

[00:02:27] If you don't know what the VF3 is, well, it's a very small compact mini SUV that will start at less than fifteen thousand dollars.

[00:02:37] And even better yet, it's coming to the U.S.

[00:02:39] And I'm sure a bunch of other countries as well.

[00:02:42] According to CarsDirect.com, you can now lease a Polestar 2 long range dual motor for two hundred and ninety nine dollars a month with three thousand two hundred ninety nine dollars down.

[00:02:55] If you're thinking about a Polestar, then you should probably look into this deal.

[00:02:59] I don't know if this is just U.S.

[00:03:01] only or if they're doing this in a bunch of different places around the world.

[00:03:04] So check with your local dealer to find out more information.

[00:03:08] Also, the electric article that I pulled this story from said that Polestar is expected to phase out the Polestar 2 in twenty twenty seven and replace it with the Polestar 7.

[00:03:19] We'll see if that actually happens or not.

[00:03:21] Battery company Leighton L-Y-T-E-N.

[00:03:25] Maybe I'm saying that wrong.

[00:03:26] Is producing lithium sulfur pouch cells or L-I-S cells for Stellantis.

[00:03:34] And Stellantis is actually going to test these cells in some of their vehicles.

[00:03:38] Some of the areas of concern for these types of cells is life cycle stability, real world operating conditions and corrosion, which are some real areas of concern.

[00:03:49] But Leighton feels like they have addressed these issues and they're ready to go to market.

[00:03:55] So we'll see what the test brings.

[00:03:57] I don't want to go into too much detail about this because this may or may not bear fruit depending on whether it works or not.

[00:04:04] But we'll definitely keep an eye on it.

[00:04:06] Let's get to some NEO news.

[00:04:09] NEO has produced a total of five hundred thousand EVs.

[00:04:14] So congrats to the NEO team on that accomplishment.

[00:04:18] It also looks like NEO will show off their first mass market car in May.

[00:04:23] They're going to do this through their sub brand, Envo, by the end of the year.

[00:04:31] And this is not to be confused with their other sub brand of affordable cars, which is Firefly, which we'll see more about that brand in 2025.

[00:04:40] But Envo is supposed to announce or show off the L60, which is a direct Model Y competitor and will cost less than thirty thousand U.S.

[00:04:51] dollars. Now, at the moment, this vehicle is slated for the European market and I'm sure the Chinese market as well.

[00:04:57] Although the article didn't specifically say that.

[00:04:59] But if the L60 is as impressive as NEO's other models, they're more up brand models, this is going to be good for them.

[00:05:08] This is going to be a really good move for NEO.

[00:05:12] While we're on the topic of good moves for NEO, NEO is partnering with a couple of different companies.

[00:05:18] Let's start with NEO and Guangzhou Automotive Group, GAC.

[00:05:23] They are close to or they've already signed by the time you hear this a cooperation agreement to bring charging and swapping stations in Guangzhou, Guangdong province of China.

[00:05:36] So if you're new and don't know, NEO is a Chinese EV maker.

[00:05:41] And one of the things that sets them apart is they have these battery swap stations.

[00:05:45] And the battery swap stations are like these little tiny garages that people drive their EV into.

[00:05:50] It takes the old battery off, puts a new charged battery on and then you just go on about your day.

[00:05:57] And this is a really cool idea.

[00:05:59] The downside of it is that you have to pay a subscription fee.

[00:06:04] Now, the way I understand that it works and I don't live in China and I can't read Chinese, so I'm doing the best I can with the information I have here.

[00:06:12] But you buy the car outright, but you don't buy the battery with the car.

[00:06:16] So you get a little discount on the car price because you're not buying that battery with the car and then you subscribe to the battery pack.

[00:06:24] So let's say you live in the city, you drive 30 kilometers a day.

[00:06:29] Maybe you decide I'm going to subscribe to the smallest battery pack for X amount of dollars or one a month.

[00:06:37] And that gives you the ability to have access to these battery swap stations.

[00:06:43] Now, one of the cool advantages of this is that if you have that smaller battery pack and you say, you know what?

[00:06:50] I'm going to take a long road trip.

[00:06:52] Well, you can go in and you can upgrade your battery pack for a specific period of time.

[00:06:57] And maybe now you have 300.

[00:06:59] Well, 300 kilometers probably isn't enough.

[00:07:01] Now you have 600 kilometers that you can travel without having to charge.

[00:07:07] And then when you get back, you just go back to your smaller battery pack.

[00:07:10] So it gives you some versatility, but there is a monthly charge involved.

[00:07:13] All right.

[00:07:14] Now that we've got that established and again, there's probably a lot more nuance to the subscription plan that I'm giving you.

[00:07:20] This is like a broad overview of it.

[00:07:24] GAC and NEO are cooperating on some different aspects of these battery swap stations.

[00:07:30] First of all, they're going to cooperate on charging and swapping.

[00:07:33] So you can also just charge your car like normal.

[00:07:35] You don't have to go out and do a battery swap every single time you want a fresh charge.

[00:07:40] Right. You can just charge it at home if you have that ability.

[00:07:43] So they're going to work on charging and swapping solutions.

[00:07:46] They're going to come up with a battery standard.

[00:07:49] They're going to do some vehicle R&D, battery asset management and operations,

[00:07:54] swapping network development and operations like battery swapping network development and operations.

[00:08:01] And they're going to build a unified battery standard.

[00:08:04] So that sounds very cool.

[00:08:06] Well, NEO and Lotus, member of the car brand Lotus, is owned by Geely, which is also a Chinese company.

[00:08:13] They have also partnered to develop an EV charging and battery swap technology with the goal to create a unified battery standard system.

[00:08:22] Now, why these companies don't all work together instead of just working through NEO?

[00:08:27] I don't know. And maybe they are because honestly, that seems like that would make the most amount of sense.

[00:08:32] But China is different than here.

[00:08:36] So I'm just going to assume that NEO has a partnership with GAC and then they have a partnership with Lotus.

[00:08:42] And maybe at some point in time, they all come together and decide what works best.

[00:08:47] Or maybe they're just trying something different with each company to see what works and what doesn't work.

[00:08:53] Anyway, NEO and Lotus are going to partner on charging and battery swapping technologies.

[00:08:59] They're going to work on battery asset management and operations, service network construction and operations, vehicle R&D and customization and connectivity.

[00:09:08] They're going to build a unified battery standard.

[00:09:11] They're going to jointly develop passenger cars adapted for battery swap stations.

[00:09:17] Let's see, they're going to facilitate connectivity of battery swapping networks and operators with unified battery swapping operational and management systems.

[00:09:26] So everybody gets to connect.

[00:09:27] Obviously, NEO is trying to license out their technology to other companies.

[00:09:32] It goes on, but I'm not going to read it all.

[00:09:34] But they're trying to license out their battery swap technology to other companies so that there's a standard instead of one company doing it one way and another company doing it another way.

[00:09:46] And they can't talk to one another.

[00:09:48] And the Geli cars can't swap out with the NEO cars batteries.

[00:09:55] That doesn't make any sense.

[00:09:56] So they're just trying to standardize everything.

[00:09:58] I think this is really cool.

[00:10:00] I am pro battery swapping.

[00:10:02] I am anti battery subscriptions, though.

[00:10:05] I would happily pay a one time fee to swap out a battery for whatever reason.

[00:10:10] But I'd rather not pay a monthly subscription for the duration of my car for my battery.

[00:10:16] All right, let's move on to Hyundai.

[00:10:19] Hyundai is investing more than 900 million dollars into self driving development.

[00:10:25] And I should say that this is Hyundai Group, not Hyundai, the actual automotive company.

[00:10:30] It's the group that owns Hyundai, Kia and Genesis.

[00:10:35] So they're going to invest 900 million dollars into an autonomous driving startup called Motional.

[00:10:42] Now, let's be honest.

[00:10:44] Nine hundred million dollars.

[00:10:45] Not all that much money like to you and I.

[00:10:49] Nine hundred million dollars is an amazing amount of money.

[00:10:53] But in the world of autonomous driving and automobiles, it's not that much money, especially when you consider that motionless.

[00:10:59] Lost one point four billion dollars in 2023.

[00:11:04] And I would just like to say that doesn't mean that this partnership is going to fail.

[00:11:09] It just means that there's they spent a lot of money last year and hopefully they have something to show for it.

[00:11:15] And maybe they do, because last month, Motional was able to demonstrate its self driving technology was able to pass a driver's license test here in the United States.

[00:11:26] For this test, they used a Hyundai IONIQ 5 equipped with Motional technology and software.

[00:11:32] And while that's not super impressive on the surface, it's definitely a start.

[00:11:37] Like 10 years ago, that would have been impressive.

[00:11:40] Nowadays, it's a good first or second step.

[00:11:44] Millions of people have lost weight with personalized plans from Noom, like Evan, who can't stand salad and still lost 50 pounds.

[00:11:55] Salads generally for most people are the easy button, right?

[00:11:58] For me, that wasn't an option.

[00:12:01] I never really was a salad guy.

[00:12:03] That's just not who I am.

[00:12:04] But Noom worked for me.

[00:12:06] Get your personalized plan today at Noom.com.

[00:12:09] Real Noom user compensated to provide their story.

[00:12:12] In four weeks, the typical Noom user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week.

[00:12:15] Individual results may vary.

[00:12:17] Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds and I'm here with Keith, co-star of my upcoming film, If, only in theaters May 17th.

[00:12:22] Do you want to tell people the big news?

[00:12:24] All right, I'll do.

[00:12:25] Sign up now and you'll get unlimited for $15 a month and six months of Paramount Plus essential plan on us.

[00:12:31] Mintmobile.com slash switch.

[00:12:47] Hiring for your small business?

[00:12:49] If you're not looking for professionals on LinkedIn,

[00:12:51] you're looking in the wrong place.

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[00:13:00] Even those who aren't actively searching for a new job, but might be open to the perfect role.

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[00:13:13] Post your free job on LinkedIn.com slash spoken today.

[00:13:23] All right, everybody.

[00:13:24] That is it for our EV news before we get to our Tesla news.

[00:13:27] I would just like to encourage everybody to take a moment.

[00:13:29] Go to Patreon.com forward slash kilowatt or support kilowatt.com and consider signing up and becoming a patron.

[00:13:36] For as little as $1, you can get rid of those pesky, pesky ads.

[00:13:42] So do me a favor and check it out and see if becoming a patron is right for you.

[00:13:47] All right, here we go.

[00:13:49] Tesla news.

[00:13:50] If you're here in the United States and you want to buy a Model Y, I have great news for you.

[00:13:55] Tesla is offering a point nine nine percent APR for financing.

[00:14:02] And that is really good, especially when you consider how high interest rates are for new auto loans right now.

[00:14:09] That's that's a pretty good interest rate.

[00:14:11] If you're in the market for a new Model Y, I would definitely take advantage of that.

[00:14:16] Sticking with the Model Y news, Tesla stopped selling the Model Y standard range rear wheel drive, which had a range of 260 miles.

[00:14:26] So what did they replace it with?

[00:14:28] Well, they replaced it with a long range rear wheel drive with 320 miles.

[00:14:34] It's pretty cool if you recently purchased within the last few months a standard range Model Y and you're like, man, I would have liked that extra range.

[00:14:43] Well, you will soon be able to pay somewhere between fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars to gain an additional forty to sixty miles of range, depending on what battery cells you have in your vehicle.

[00:14:56] So why do I say soon?

[00:14:59] Why isn't it now?

[00:15:00] Well, Tesla is working on getting regulatory approval to make this happen.

[00:15:05] And if you're new around these parts and you're like, wow, that's a novel concept, software locking the range on a battery.

[00:15:12] It's not Tesla's been doing this since the Model S.

[00:15:15] And some people think it's a really good way to do business and some people absolutely hate it.

[00:15:22] Moving on to a polarizing vehicle, are you a Cybertruck owner waiting for full self-driving?

[00:15:29] Well, then I have an update for you.

[00:15:33] A bunch of people in the Tesla community were asking Elon on X, when is full self-driving coming to Cybertruck?

[00:15:43] And if it's going to be a while, can the people who own Cybertruck at least get some of the driver assist features like lane keep assist, that kind of thing?

[00:15:53] Well, Elon responded on Twitter and he said we must focus on full self-driving for the other 99 percent of the fleet.

[00:16:00] Cybertruck FSD is a few months away, which if you spent, you know, 100,000 plus dollars on a vehicle, probably not what you want to hear.

[00:16:10] But I will give Tesla this and Elon more often than not, they do make good on their promises.

[00:16:17] Whether it's a few months away or, you know, six, eight, nine months away, it'll eventually get to your vehicle.

[00:16:24] Tesla has a much better history of following through with these kind of promises than they do with, you know, sticking to timelines.

[00:16:33] All right. Let's see here.

[00:16:37] We have another Cybertruck story. If you are a Cybertruck owner and you want to go off-roading, but you're not sure where to start, then I have good news for you.

[00:16:46] Tesla actually wrote an off-road guide for the Cybertruck.

[00:16:50] It's actually really interesting and full of tips and illustrations on how to off-road in the Cybertruck.

[00:16:57] It shows what menus you have to go into and, you know, deflating the tire pressure and all that stuff that goes with it.

[00:17:04] Are you going to be on the beach? Are you going to be on gravel? Are you going to be in mountain type terrain?

[00:17:09] It has all of that information and it's about 22 pages. It's worth looking through.

[00:17:14] I'll put a link in the show notes if you would like to take a peek at it.

[00:17:17] And since we're talking about the Cybertruck and off-roading, remember a few weeks ago when we talked to Gene and he gave us his initial impressions of the Cybertruck?

[00:17:25] Well, I spoke with Gene and he gave me his initial impressions of his first off-roading experience.

[00:17:33] And it's a good conversation. That interview will actually come out on May 31st.

[00:17:38] So I would encourage you to mark your calendars or subscribe either way. Either way works.

[00:17:45] All right. We got two more stories left.

[00:17:48] Sandy Monroe has a video on Tesla laying off his entire the entire supercharger team.

[00:17:55] This video is about 12 minutes long and it's a completely different point of view from the nonsense that I've been spouting.

[00:18:02] Like, I don't know anything about business. I know how I feel. Right.

[00:18:06] Sandy is a business person. He's worked for automotive companies in the past.

[00:18:11] He's been laid off by companies in the past and he made this video.

[00:18:16] He's very passionate about it. I actually laughed out loud a couple of times.

[00:18:21] I don't agree with many of the things that he says, but again, I'm not a business person.

[00:18:26] This is coming at it from a business point of view.

[00:18:29] And this is also coming out this from the direction of the automotive industry.

[00:18:35] Like for me, Sandy is a very trusted source.

[00:18:38] So I'm going to put a link in the show notes so that you can go and watch his video.

[00:18:42] I do want to say that I have some concerns about what he's talking about.

[00:18:46] One is he talks about, you know, once the technology or once the superchargers are designed, you don't need designers anymore.

[00:18:54] I would argue against that and say you still need somebody to develop the technology for the future.

[00:19:01] Otherwise, you risk falling behind.

[00:19:03] And he talked about the supercharger network having the best uptime.

[00:19:09] And I think I agree with that.

[00:19:12] But if you don't have anybody maintaining that supercharger network or you have less people maintaining that supercharger network, that's going to be a problem.

[00:19:22] You're not going to have the best uptime for long or you may not have the best uptime for long.

[00:19:27] So time will tell whether or not he's right or wrong on this.

[00:19:31] Honestly, this guy tends to be right on a lot of things.

[00:19:34] So even though I don't necessarily agree with the video, I really enjoyed it.

[00:19:39] He also argued that Elon doesn't think in like checkers.

[00:19:46] He thinks in chess. He thinks way down the road.

[00:19:49] And I think that's probably true.

[00:19:51] But Elon's also not probably that is true, but Elon's also very impulsive and has to eat his words a little bit.

[00:19:59] And I'd also argue that the way that he rolled out these layoffs is bad for morale across the entire company.

[00:20:06] We're definitely seeing that.

[00:20:08] One other thing we're seeing is that all too often when Elon makes these wide sweeping decisions, he has to call back some people.

[00:20:20] You know, he laid off half a Twitter and then had to call back a couple of important people who worked at Twitter because nobody else could do their job.

[00:20:28] Right. He made these cuts and then was like, ah, man, I made a mistake.

[00:20:33] Come on back and work for the company that just laid you off.

[00:20:36] So here's an update.

[00:20:38] I think this was from Bloomberg.

[00:20:40] Tesla has rehired some of the supercharger team.

[00:20:44] One of the people coming back is Max de Zegar, who was the director of charging for North America and worked under Rebecca Tannucci,

[00:20:54] who was the senior director and responsible for the NACS adoption of third party OEMs.

[00:21:01] So we don't know how many people are returning to the team.

[00:21:06] We definitely know Max's, but this does make sense.

[00:21:10] Last week, we read that email where, you know, Elon sent out to some of their partners where they're building and expanding superchargers.

[00:21:19] And it was basically like, hey, hold on while we figure out what we're doing.

[00:21:23] Well, I would imagine that some of the people coming back actually had the answers to that.

[00:21:28] And they probably discovered that, hey, these people are actually valuable to our team.

[00:21:34] Now, whether or not they valued 500 folks, it doesn't seem like that was the case.

[00:21:39] But at least a handful of people are coming back.

[00:21:43] And if I'm being honest with you, right, if I was one of those folks asked to return after I was laid off.

[00:21:51] I would. I would return because I would need another job.

[00:21:54] I'm not giving you back my severance pay. That's mine.

[00:21:56] That's a bonus for inconveniencing my life.

[00:21:59] I would work for Tesla until I found another job, and then I would steal all their intellectual property and I would upload it to my new employer's database.

[00:22:07] And I wouldn't even feel bad about it.

[00:22:10] All right. With that, that is all the news today.

[00:22:13] I hope you all enjoyed it.

[00:22:14] I would like to thank everybody for taking the time to listen to this episode.

[00:22:19] I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

[00:22:22] If you celebrated Mother's Day here in the U.S., I don't know where all Mother's Day is celebrated.

[00:22:27] So if you celebrated Mother's Day on Sunday, I hope it was a good one.

[00:22:31] And yeah, I will talk to you on Wednesday where we'll be covering the Lucid Motors earnings call.