Plug, Charge, and Chill

[00:00:20] 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 are going to talk about EV news, but there's not a lot of EV news. Let me be clear. There's a lot of tariff news. There's a lot of Elon news. I'm not going to talk about the tariffs because nothing

[00:00:43] is set in stone at the moment. I'm talking to you Monday, February 3rd, and it looks like some of the tariffs may not go into effect on Tuesday, tomorrow. So we'll talk about tariffs and how they affect the EV industry when those things actually happen. Okay, we have a new supporter, and that is Randy. Randy, thank you very much for supporting the show. Randy actually, and this made

[00:01:12] me so happy. He went to the website, 918digital.com, and he went to the contact page, and he sent in a note. So not only did he support us on ACAST+, but he also sent an email, and he said some nice things, and I'm not going to read that part. But one of the things he mentioned in the email was last full

[00:01:37] episode we had where we had news. We talked about Joseph's comments about the generator on the Dodge RAM, if you remember that. I had ChatGPT or ElevenLabs read that email to you folks. And if you didn't read it, basically one of the RAM variants, RAM EV variants, will have a little generator that will power. Its only job will be to power the battery pack, which I think is a good

[00:02:06] idea in terms of stopgap measures. Although I will have somebody on in March that has a different opinion on that. He thinks it's a good idea and not a stopgap, but we'll talk about that in March. Anyway, I had said that I have quite a few of the folks that I work with, the firefighters, they have side gigs. They're painters, they're construction workers, they lay tile or brick,

[00:02:36] or whatever. They do it all, really. And a really handy group of people to have in your life if you're not good at that stuff. I mentioned that this would be a real benefit to them because they could drive their trucks 90% of the time without needing to use gasoline or diesel, depending on what the generator is charged on, probably gas. But anyway, in a lot of these cases, when you're out and you

[00:03:03] want to be in nature, you're hauling a trailer. A lot of charging stations don't have pull-through charging. So if you're hauling a trailer, that's not a great way to go. On top of that, when you're hauling a trailer, it kills your battery. So a vehicle like this that has a battery and a generator is useful in those situations, which is a valid point. And that was all paraphrased.

[00:03:32] Please don't take my poor communication skills as what Randy had wrote. But anyway, I agree with you. And that's a valid point and not something that I had. It's not that I have never thought of that before because I absolutely have, but I have not expressed that, I don't think. Most of my examples go back to my friends who are reluctant to buy an EV because of X, Y, and Z reasons and what

[00:03:59] would make them buy an EV. But I will say, to Randy's point, a lot of these same friends all have trailers or toy haulers and they do go to the dunes and they do go camping. Like I have a friend that I work with. In the summertime, he goes up to Flagstaff, to Munns Park, and he hauls his camp trailer up there and he and his family stay in the camp trailer for the summer because it's a lot nicer up there than it is down here because it's so hot down here. And then he just comes down to work.

[00:04:28] So that's a very valid point, Randy. Thank you very much. By the way, Randy, and you don't have to reply back, but I want to let you know that I replied to your email, but I don't know because it went through the contact form on the website if you actually got that email. So you don't have to respond, but if you just let me know if you got it or not, this is a good test. You're the first person who's ever done this. So I don't know if it actually went through or not. But Randy,

[00:04:54] thank you so much for supporting the show and thank you for emailing in. All right, let's start our news. The Volkswagen ID7 will not be coming to North America, which is a real bummer. But yeah, Volkswagen has decided, nah, we're not going to send it. And I'm sure there's a variety of reasons behind that. Maybe one day Volkswagen will change its mind because I think the ID7 is kind of a cool

[00:05:18] car. Speaking of cool cars, Volvo will add plug and charge capabilities to the 2026 EX30, EX40, and EC40 electric vehicles. So this is great news. So if you don't know, plug and charge means you get out of your car, you plug the car in, and the payment system, the connection, everything is just done through the car and the charging station. You don't have to do anything else. Now I'm sure

[00:05:46] some charging stations, like if I had to guess Tesla, I don't know if this is for a fact, but I'm sure that would be like supported and maybe some other charging stations, especially if they're smaller, may not be supported. So it may not work on every single different flavor of charging station that's out there. So that's good news, right? Even if it's not supported by all charging companies, the bad news

[00:06:12] is that you have to wait till 2026 to get this capability. Current vehicles will not be upgraded with software to take advantage of the plug and charge capabilities. So that is a little bit of a bummer, but it is nice to know that it will be coming in 2026. Hyundai has opened up pre-orders in South Korea. So I'm sorry to the rest of the world for the Hyundai Ioniq 9. This is a three row SUV.

[00:06:42] Initially, they're going to sell a six seater, but a seven seater configuration is on its way. The trim packages are starting off with the exclusive. It starts with the exclusive, then it goes to the prestige and then it tops out with the calligraphy. Very fancy. There's some classic Hyundai Ioniq styling, but then there's it's, it's softer and more futuristic in a way,

[00:07:08] in my opinion, I think it looks a lot better than the Kia EV9. And I'm a fan of the EV9. I think the EV9 looks really cool, but it's a little boxy. This, this car is more sleek. If you're curious as to what this looks like, I would definitely encourage you to go to Hyundai's website and check out the Ioniq 9. I really like it. And when I get done recording this podcast, because my wife is looking for a new car, um, after we pay off mine, which will be in

[00:07:38] June or July, um, I'm going to encourage her to consider the Ioniq 9. Of course she gets to choose what she wants, but it's a three row SUV. She likes a minivan, but it's got a lot of room because it's three rows. It starts at the right price. It's got the right range, but we'll go into that in just a second, but go check it out. Let me know what you think. Bodie, B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com. All right. So this vehicle in Korea, not here in the United States or, or in

[00:08:07] Europe or anything like that, but in Korea, we'll start at $45,800. It's going to top out at $54,100. It will charge from 10% to 80% in 24 minutes. If you're on a 350 kilowatt hour charger, if you're not on a three, if you're on a slower charger and 350, as we're going to learn is pretty good. Um,

[00:08:32] it's going to charge slower. Uh, let's see, tops out at 330 miles of range. And for us in North America, the Ionic 9 will be built at Hyundai's plant in Georgia. And we're looking spring of 2025 for the, uh, pre-orders to start. And I would imagine deliveries won't be too far after that. And the good news is for North America, it's going to come with the NACS connector. So that's great news

[00:09:00] for sure. All right, everybody, that is it for our EV news. I know three stories. Again, there's, there's a lot of news out there around the EV world. A lot of it is kind of chaos and, and maybe not necessarily something we should worry about right this second. So let's jump to our Tesla news.

[00:09:24] This next story is for a very select group of people who listened to this show. So if you own a Tesla, you bought or subscribed to full self-driving, you pay for Tesla insurance and you live in Texas or Arizona, this story is for you. So for the three people who are, who are still paying attention to this story, I have good news or I mean better than bad news. You can get up to, up to,

[00:09:53] did you hear that? Up to a 10% discount on your Tesla insurance. If you use full self-driving more than 50% of the time that you're driving the vehicle, I'm not a hundred percent sure what the, what would, what would disqualify you from getting that 10% or the full 10%. But yeah, I'm curious to, to the folks out there who have full self-driving, do you think you use it more than 50% of the

[00:10:23] time? Because even when I had the trial version and I was trying to use it as much as I possibly could, I still don't think I used it 50% of the time. So I think that might be harder to do than it seems, but I don't know. I don't have a full time. So it wasn't like built in as a habit for me. Like it might be for other people who have it, who have access to it all the time. So again, email me Bodie, B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com. If you use the, or even if you

[00:10:53] don't use this, the feature more than 50% of the time or less than 50% of the time. Now in terms of the discount, it seems like the discount should be higher if you're using it more than half of the time that you're driving. In my personal opinion, like just to give you an idea, it's been a year or so since I've had Tesla insurance. But back then, I think I paid a total of about $950, maybe

[00:11:19] $1,000 during the six months that I had Tesla insurance and was testing it out. If I got the full 10%, I'd only receive 95 to $100 discount. We're not talking about a lot of money. So I'm not sure that this will get people who have full self-driving, but aren't using it more than 50% of the time to use it. It's not a very big incentive is what I'm saying, but maybe, I mean, we'll see. I mean,

[00:11:47] you already have it. And if you meet all those other qualifiers, it is, it's definitely worth a shot to save yourself a little bit of money. I will also say that this feels like Tesla is dipping their toe in the water and this may get better. You know, we might get a better incentive over time. I think a better way of doing this would be like, say you bought your car, you bought the $8,000

[00:12:12] full self-driving package and you use Tesla insurance over time, you know, maybe you could get up to $4,000 back from the $8,000 or whatever. Or maybe if you subscribed to a full self-driving at $99 a month, after a while, that number just keeps dropping down to a more reasonable number, like $25 or $30 a

[00:12:38] month. Just as a way to say, Hey, thank you for being all in, in the Tesla ecosystem. I don't know that Tesla is going to do any of that, but I think that would be a bigger incentive than, you know, $95 every six months. I mean, thinking back to that time, I was actually driving quite a bit because I was excited and I had a new car and I had kids that needed to be different places. So

[00:13:02] I was really encouraging or I was really excited to drive the vehicle. So I drove a lot and my bill was probably higher than somebody who worked from home and, you know, drove like, you know, 150, 200 miles a week or something like that. I was definitely crushing that number. I was going down to Tucson whenever possible. So, um, that person is going to pay less insurance than me because

[00:13:27] Tesla bases your price off of your usage and your, in your driving habits. So maybe that person only pays $400 for, uh, the, the, the Tesla insurance every six months. So that's only a $40 discount. So I just don't think the way of, of incentivizing, uh, uh, customers, I don't think this is the best way to incentivize customers is what I'm saying. All right. I'm going to move off this topic because

[00:13:53] I didn't even mean to, this was supposed to be a brief, um, uh, a brief topic. So moving on to Tesla V four superchargers, they are now capable of charging at 325 kilowatts in North America. At the moment, the only Tesla that can take advantage of 325 kilowatts is the cyber truck.

[00:14:16] So, I mean, great if you own a cyber truck, but not great if you don't, I mean, it's just kind of interesting if you don't, I guess I will, the lucid air gravity recently got access to the supercharger network and it has the capability to charge at 400 kilowatts. It'll be interesting to see if Tesla gives lucid and other companies that have this higher end capability of accepting

[00:14:44] electricity, if they'll give them the full 325 kilowatts, or if they'll, you know, keep them at like 225 kilowatts. Cause right now, according to the inside EV article that I read, they're maxed out at 225 kilowatts, but it's still early on. So that may, uh, change and even it could be changed

[00:15:06] already. Um, it is interesting to know that the gravity is a vehicle built on a 926 volt architecture. So if you want that full 400 kilowatt charging experience, then you have to go find yourself a thousand volt DC fast charger. And the superchargers are like 500 volts. So you have to go out and find a thousand volts DC fast charger. And those are few and far between, but if you can find

[00:15:32] one, you can put 200 miles of range in your vehicle in about 12 minutes. And then if you're curious, the lucid air, not, not the gravity, not the SUV, but the coupe or the salon, um, it is the capable, it's capable of charging right around 300 kilowatts, accepting a 300 kilowatt charge. If I remember correctly, um, and I think the higher end trims, and this is going off of memory, but I think the higher end

[00:15:58] trims can accept 300 kilowatts and the lower end trims, it's, you know, around 200 and maybe 230 or 220 or something like that. So not as good, but don't quote me on that. Um, I'll have to go back and look that up. All right. Here is our final Tesla story this episode. And this is from not a Tesla app, who I encourage you all to go to now tesla app.com and read this blog because it's increasingly

[00:16:26] becoming one of my favorite Tesla specific blogs. So let's dive into this. The article we picked today from not a Tesla app is 2025 Tesla promotions, or at least Q1 2025 Tesla promotions. There are some things that Tesla is doing to try and sell more cars or lease more cars. The first thing they're doing

[00:16:47] is they're lowering lease prices. So model three long range wheel rear wheel drive is now $249 a month. Whereas before it was $299 a month, a model three long range all wheel drive is $349 a month versus what it was before at $399 a month. And then the cyber truck all wheel drive Tesla dropped that lease

[00:17:13] from $899 down to $749 a month. And obviously there's, you know, taxes and fees and, and, uh, money that you got to put down. So, you know, do your due diligence before, uh, signing up for these leases. But that's one of the things that Tesla is doing to try and move vehicles. Another thing that they're doing is on the referral codes, all trims of the model three, the buyer will get a $2,500

[00:17:44] discount if they use a referral code. So that's pretty good on every other vehicle. If you want a model S or model X or cyber truck or model Y, which I guess would be every other vehicle, it would be a thousand dollars off if you use the referral code. So that's not too shabby. And then as far as the cyber truck goes, um, they're taking, uh, between a thousand and $2,000

[00:18:08] off the foundation series vehicles that they still have. They're also offering a free expel vinyl wrap in Canada and the United States. If you want to have your cyber truck wrapped and that's about a $6,000 value right there. And there's some night, like I've seen some really nice red wrapped cyber trucks, but one of the ones that I think that looks the best is the white one. Um, it's, that's a really

[00:18:36] good one. And then there was one I saw at Lowe's the other day that was like piano, uh, black. It was like the glossy black. It was, it was good looking as well. As far as the wraps go, you have until March 31st, uh, to, to purchase or lease a cyber truck to get that deal. And I'm, I'm sure most of these, uh, um, promotions will expire at the end of the quarter. And then just kind of as a side note,

[00:19:03] one interesting thing that electric pointed out was that during the earning earnings call that we just went over, cyber truck wasn't mentioned at all, not, not one time. And now that I think about it, I don't remember it being mentioned, but I couldn't tell you if it wasn't mentioned at all, but electric says it wasn't mentioned at all. So I thought that was interesting and I would pass that

[00:19:25] along. And then, yeah, that's all our news for this episode, but I do have an interview from CES. I don't know which one I'm going to play right now because I'm recording this a little bit early and I haven't decided, but we're going to listen to the interview and then I will catch you on the other side. Okay. I am here with Jenny. Jenny is with Evenflow. Jenny, uh, we were looking at some

[00:19:54] car seats, not something we typically talk about on the kilowatt podcast, but what I think you guys are doing with your car seats is really interesting. Why don't you walk us through it? Yeah, for sure. So Evenflow is so excited to be at the CES show actually debuting today, our Evenflow sensory suit technology. There is nothing worse than being in a vehicle and driving down the road and your baby is screaming. They're fussy. It's very unsafe in the vehicle to be reaching back to trying to give

[00:20:19] them a toy, to give them a bottle. Like that causes distracted drivers. It's also very unsafe. And a lot of consumers don't realize that when you add aftermarket hang toys from the handle or anything to soothe your child, that's not, that does not come with the car seat. It's very dangerous because in the event of a collision, it can become a projectile. So we were taking all these insights and consumers loving all the soothing items in their home, but why can't you integrate that into a car seat? So that's why we are debuting our sensory suit technology, technology to soothe your child

[00:20:48] while you are driving that keeps everyone safe. The soothing handle has lights and sounds that synchronize to different lullabies or white noise that is all voice activated from the vehicle. It's we have an app that you can customize the lights, the sounds, the color palettes, how it plays to the music and synchronization. That way, while you're driving down the road, you all you have to say is, hey Alexa, play Jessica's lullaby. The lights will come on, the parent is not distracted, the child

[00:21:17] calms down and everyone is happy. It also attaches to a stroller. So if you're on the go, you're in a restaurant with a child in the stroller, or you're on a stroll and the baby gets fussy, there's actually buttons along the side handle of the car seat that all you have to do is click one button. Or if you're putting the car seat into the vehicle at night and you can't see, there's actually a nightlight option where you click a button and it lights up the car seat so you can see your child while you're harnessing in the dark. We are so excited to launch this. We're going to have a model that's

[00:21:46] $259 and we're also going to have a rotational infant car seat with soothe handle for $349. You'll be able to find these in mid-February in Walmart, Target, Amazon, and BabyList and obviously evenflow.com. And we are so excited to bring this groundbreaking technology, the first of its kind in the world. And I'm so excited that evenflow is the one to do it. Okay. So when you said, you

[00:22:08] say, Hey, a lady, some cars have the Amazon assistant already kind of built into their infotainment system. So this is, this actually connects to the infotainment system. How does that work? No. So it does not connect to that. It'll connect through your phone. So you have the evenflow app and it'll recognize it through the app on your phone. And it's already a preset that you've already customized to your child and saved. Okay. So you, you can, you can customize a, uh, like I used to play

[00:22:38] the hamster dance song, you know, constantly for my kids to get them to calm down. Uh, so you can customize something like that into, uh, I guess, uh, almost like a, an infant playlist where it's got the sound, it's got everything. And then, uh, you just, uh, with iOS and Android, you say, Hey, lady, soothe the baby. Yes. You say, Hey Alexa, play your baby's name's lullaby and it'll automatically

[00:23:05] turn on while you're driving. Okay. And now I'm hearing bird noises. I don't know if that's coming from one of the many bird places. No, it's definitely coming. So right now I have bird noises on there. So right now you're going to hear birds. There's wind chimes. In research, we actually found the most favorite is crickets. And we actually have a green color palette that'll actually chirp with yellow when you hear it chirps and the baby can follow it.

[00:23:31] Oh, that's cool. So I would like to put in a feature request for the hamster dance because I'm telling you it works every single time. I've never had an infant that it didn't work on. So I'll pass that off to the technology team for sure. Okay, please do. It drives the parents nuts, but it's very good. Okay. So we're, we're looking at, this looks like the infant. Is there anything special with the base? Yes. So the one that you're seeing right here is our revolve 180

[00:23:55] light max next car seat with sooth handle. This car seat rotates 180 degrees for ease of unloading and unloading the car seat or your child. So, you know, parents will understand the arching of the back to get your child in and out bumping your kid's head on the handle or whatnot. So this will make the car seat move to the door board for ease of loading and unloading, or if they're in the car seat for loading and loading. Okay. And is there any sort of monitoring technology? Cause you know,

[00:24:23] in a lot of cases, like if I was by myself and I had my kids in the back, uh, they're facing the complete opposite direction than I am. Is there any sort of monitoring in terms of like their temperature or any of that stuff? Yes. I'm actually really glad you asked that. So we actually have our sensor safe technology. Even flows actually had this technology for over eight years now. And it's a chest clip that has Bluetooth technology. They'll actually link to your app, just like the sooth handle. It'll be another feature within the app. So what this does

[00:24:51] is it alerts you if the vehicle is too hot or too cold for your infant. It'll alert you if they've unbuckled. It'll alert you if you have walked away from the vehicle and you've left your child in the vehicle. Cause unfortunately it's very tragic, but you do see those stories in the media. Um, and it also alerts you if your infant has been in the car too long and you should go over to a rest stop and take a break and let your child get out of the car. And that helps optimize, optimize their airways and it's better for the child's health.

[00:25:18] Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. All right. So, uh, just to break this down, smart car seat comes with an app, uh, safe for your kids and actually having bought multiple car seats times two, uh, in my lifetime, two 50 and three 50 is not that bad. No, being able to offer this accessible technology is going to be game changing for, for all consumers to offer it at that type of

[00:25:45] price point for consumers is going to be great. So, and that's what even close about. We want to offer accessible technology and innovation for all consumers, regardless of, um, regardless of who you are. And we're really proud that we're able to do that with our car seats. All right. Perfect. Jenny, there's a crowd forming. So I'm going to say thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. How would people, uh, obviously in February they go to Walmart, but where would people find even flow? So you can go to even flow.com, Amazon, uh, baby list, Walmart and target. You'll find our items.

[00:26:15] Perfect. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. What a great interview from CES that I don't know which one that I inserted in there because I'm recording this early. Uh, but I would like to thank whoever allowed me to interview them. It was very nice of them. Thank you so much. If you would like to email me, it's Bodee, B O D I E at nine one eight digital.com. You can also find me on X at nine one eight digital.

[00:26:40] And, uh, yeah, I appreciate everybody listening. I appreciate Randy for going to a cast plus and signing up and, and supporting this show. And, uh, I know that I owe our patrons a patron shout out. I have plans. I have plans for the patron shout out, um, probably March. So, all right, everybody, thank you very much for listening and I will talk to you. Let's see today's Monday. So I'll talk to you on Friday.