[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 are going to talk about news. But more than that, it is the 10th anniversary of Kilowatt. Today. So I had this episode prepared yesterday and I was like, do I record it or do I actually record it on the day, the 10th anniversary?

[00:00:48] Now there's a lot of stuff that went into that decision. One being, and this is important for you to know only because the quality of this video, our video, audio might get progressively worse as the show goes on because I have to go to Alaska because my aunt passed away. She passed away last week and the funeral's on Friday. So today is Wednesday the 5th. So she passed away one year ago today. No, I mean one week ago today.

[00:01:19] And, um, just, you know, shout out to Marlene. She was five years older than me and felt more like a cool older sister or older cousin than she did like an aunt. Like I didn't even call her Aunt Marlene. I just called her Marlene. But, um, yeah, uh, not to bring everybody down, but I have to go to that. But today's it to get ready to go to, to Alaska has been very busy.

[00:01:45] Um, so I'm recording this 20 minutes before my, uh, Waymo gets here to take me to the airport and it's not going to take, it's going to take way more than 20 minutes to record this. So you get to join me on different legs of the trip. I might even record in the Waymo. We'll see what happens.

[00:02:06] But, uh, yeah, I mean, I didn't bring, I didn't mean to bring everybody down because, you know, that's not the, it wasn't the goal. I brought myself down. I didn't mean to bring everybody down. That wasn't the goal. So sorry about the bummer, but 10 year anniversary for kilowatt, 728 episodes. If you include this one right here, which I think is pretty darn impressive.

[00:02:29] So I'm going to give myself a pat on the back. I want to give everybody who has been listening or supporting the show or contributing and in some way, shape or form a pat on the back. I really, um, appreciate everybody who is a part of this community, whether I hear from you or not, you are appreciated. Um, I mean, I, it should go without saying, but it's important to say it. It really does mean a lot. I did not think when I started this,

[00:02:58] that I'd be able to go for 10 years. As a matter of fact, in, and like three years ago, when we reached seven, I was like, maybe tens it, maybe tens as long as I go. That's a good long time. And, um, I have, I don't feel that anymore. I feel like I want to continue, uh, new opportunities are always around the corner. And without going into a lot of detail, I had an opportunity this morning. We'll see if it plays out, but yeah, this show has brought me a lot of cool things.

[00:03:26] I've gotten an opportunity to meet a lot of really cool people and I've gotten an opportunity to learn a lot of cool stuff. So, um, with all that, just a big heartfelt thank you to everybody for, um, supporting the show in whatever way you do, whether it's just listening or can, you know, emailing in contributing articles, or, I mean, there's just so many people that are supportive.

[00:03:52] And that is always appreciative because, you know, I was talking to Rob Dunwood this morning, my co-host on beyond the post. And, uh, he mentioned, you know, sometimes being a creator is lonely and then it's a hundred percent true. But when you have a supportive community like this one, it doesn't feel as lonely. So big, thank you.

[00:04:17] All right, let's get through as much of the news as humanly possible. This is going to be a big show too, because I got a lot of articles to get through. Starting off, Lucid, well, now they're going to delay the Cosmos. I think this was not inevitable, but I, I, I'm not surprised. Let's put it that way.

[00:04:38] You know, Lucid had a rumor that they're going to go through bankruptcy. Um, but no, they're, they, they said, that's not true. We're really, what we're doing is we're just kind of restructuring the company. And they brought a company and that's usually deals with bankruptcies and restructuring to help them restructure by while staying out of bankruptcy.

[00:04:59] Uh, I, I genuinely think that because, you know, 60% of Lucid is owned by Saudi influences in some way, shape or form. I don't think Lucid's going to go away. I just think Lucid will get tired of, or not Lucid. I think Saudi Arabia will get tired of dealing with the nonsense and they'll just buy the whole company and do what they want with it. Maybe even shutter the factory here in Arizona and just have the factory there in Saudi Arabia, who knows?

[00:05:28] But the Cosmos as of right now is, uh, delayed, which is, you know, that was going to be their $50,000 model Y type competitor. It will be delayed till 2027 and we'll see if it's delayed even further out. Um, oh, I, I, last week I recorded an interview with Tom Appel, which you'll hear on Friday. And Tom and I brought up, uh, or we talked a little bit about Lucid.

[00:05:56] And at that time we didn't have this information. So when you hear us bring that up and we talk about the Cosmos, uh, that was recorded before this information came out. All right. Next up, Ford is recalling 86,000 Mach-E's because a piece of window trim could possibly fall off while in operation, while driving.

[00:06:21] And that could cause an accident, not for the person driving the model or the Mach-E, but for the person following behind it or to the side of it. And, you know, we don't want, we don't want somebody to swerve and cause a bigger accident, uh, because a piece fell off a car. So these Mach-E's were built between February, 2017 and October 8th, 2024. Uh, oh, excuse me. I only gave you part of the information.

[00:06:48] These, uh, Mach-E's were built February, uh, 17th. Jeez. These Mach-E's were built between February 17th, 2023 and October 8th, 2024. And if you own one of these cars, just be aware. I am sure that Ford is planning on reaching out to you soon. Talk about BYD.

[00:07:11] You know, BYD is just a force of nature when it comes to the EV industry. Now, it should be reminded that they don't build only battery electric vehicles. They build extended range vehicles and stuff like that. Um, I don't think they have a hybrid for hybrid's sake, but I, I don't know everything. I don't know their entire lineup, but they build a lot of EVs. Um, I'm going to talk about their total, uh, cars, not just, not just pure battery electric.

[00:07:40] I'm going to talk about like the extended range, like the BYD Shark and including the electric. But BYD exported 180,528 passenger vehicles, not in the second quarter of 2026, not in the first half of 2026. That was July of 2026. They exported that though. That does not include their sales in China.

[00:08:05] Even that is cars that they built and exported out 180,000 vehicles, which is just nuts. It also doesn't include their commercial vehicles, just, just their passenger vehicles, 180,000. That is up 123% year over year when you compare against July, 2025. And in case you're like, holy cow, that's amazing. Um, that just must've been a huge, you know, deal for them.

[00:08:34] And it was, but you know what their previous record was? Um, it was 175,000 vehicles exported. And that was in June of 2026, which is another record. So yeah, BYD just killing it. Now, um, in terms of battery electric vehicles, BYD saw a 31% growth in that same July, 2026 time period, uh, 31% is pretty good.

[00:09:04] And if you are not aware, BYD exports vehicles to Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and I'm sure other places in the Middle East and stuff that I'm, I'm not mentioning, but they're a big exporter for sure. So, um, even with this very big number of 180,000, uh, you know, the battery electric vehicle

[00:09:30] growth of 31%, especially when you consider that BYD is already a leader in the market, that's, that's significant. All right. If you live in China, you can now reserve a leap motor A05. Now I made a little joke that like three people listen in China and I went back and actually looked that used to be true.

[00:09:54] Like Hong Kong is, is, uh, listed as a country, but I'm sure China wouldn't want that to be listed that way. But Hong Kong is listed as a country and they're number 10 in terms of countries that listen to the show and China is number 12. So a bigger audience in China than I thought. So hello everybody. Now back to the A05. This is a compact car. It's a little smaller than the Hyundai Kona.

[00:10:22] It's closer in size to the Volvo EX30.

[00:10:28] Um, or if you, if you want to get something more relevant, uh, that we're going to talk

[00:10:57] with two different battery flavors, 39.8 kilowatt hours and 53 kilowatt hours. These are going to be LFP battery chemistries. Um, you're going to get a range of 405 and 510 kilometers, depending on which battery size you went. And when we convert that to, or went want, if we convert that to miles, that's 252 miles or 317 miles. So not too bad.

[00:11:23] It's going to DC fast charge from 30% to 80% in 16 minutes. So not the fastest fast charging out there. Uh, especially when you consider that China right now has some just nutty, nutty, nutty, uh, uh, battery tech that is charging in like three minutes. And I think we have an article down closer to the bottom, uh, talking about that.

[00:11:46] But, uh, we don't, we don't have a price yet, but leap motor obviously just, uh, well-reviewed overall, you know, it's an affordable car, but it's a well-built car and, and any sort of software issues that they may have had in the past or currently have, they are definitely working through those. We don't have a price for the AO5 or A05 yet, but you can reserve it for 99 won.

[00:12:15] Which, you know, I, I, I don't keep my finger on the pulse of, uh, the concurrency between Chinese, uh, money and us dollars, but that's about $15. So you can reserve this car for 15 bucks if you want to. So we can, we can assume that it's going to be affordable. All right. Uh, okay. So I said, we're going to talk about the Ioniq three.

[00:12:42] We, we now know that the Ioniq three is, you know, not coming here to the United States. Um, but in the Netherlands, the starting price is about 28,000 euros or $32,000. Um, it's about the same size as the Leap Motor A805. If you're curious as to how big it was, and it's going to come with a standard range battery

[00:13:09] and an extended range battery, not an extended range EV, not the E-rev. It's just, they just called it an extended range battery. So the bigger battery pack, it'll be 42 kilowatt hours or 61 kilowatt hours for the bigger battery pack. And then with that, you're looking at about 344 kilometers, which is right around 213 miles with the bitter, the bigger battery pack. You're looking at 496 kilometers, which is about 308 miles.

[00:13:39] Um, if, if you know most of Hyundai's vehicles are built on an 800 volt architecture. This is not the case for, uh, is it eight or 900? Oh, now I'm doubting myself. I think it's 800, but it could be 900, but it doesn't matter. This car is not built on that same architecture. It's built on a 400 volt architecture to save money, which means the, the charging speed is not great. It's not awful, but it's not great.

[00:14:08] It'll get you 10 to 80%, uh, in about 30 minutes. But if you, if you want the bigger battery pack, the 61 kilowatt hour battery, battery pack, it'll get you 10 to 80% in 30 minutes. So it only takes one minute more to take it to that same, uh, uh, uh, 80% under the, you know, 10 to 80% in 30 minutes versus 29 minutes. So, you know, crazy.

[00:14:38] Uh, let's see, that's going to have a lot of different trim options. And I saw a bunch of different stuff that's coming out in the UK versus Europe. I'm not going to really talk about that. Although this would, uh, interest that I'm sure, uh, Sam Fiorani already knows this, but it's going to come in a, uh, in trim, which is like kind of like their sports car, but it's an electric vehicle, but it's going to be a hot hatch and that's, that's going to be available

[00:15:05] in the UK might also be available in Europe, but for sure the UK, um, in terms of the interior, you know, looks very much like a Hyundai interior to me. You'll get the option of a 12.9 or 14.6 center infotainment screen. And then it's optional to have the driver display or the instrument cluster behind the steering wheel. It's going to come out with the Plios Connect, which is their new operating system.

[00:15:35] It'll also have a nice configuration or mix of physical buttons where physical buttons make sense according to the article. And then it's going to have an AI companion, which doesn't surprise me. I think, you know, we're going to hear all about, uh, new 20, 28 cars with, and their AI companions. Okay. Now we're at their airport and I've got a little bit of echoes. Let's get rid of that.

[00:16:04] So at the airport and hopefully you can't hear the music in the background because otherwise YouTube will, I don't get monetized on YouTube, but I don't want to get a strike either. Uh, let's go ahead and continue in with our news here. I tried to do this in the back of the way mode, but it was not the best possible experience. So now, uh, we're going to do it here outside of, uh, Phoenix beer company in terminal three gate E six. Just, uh, so everybody's aware where I'm at. All right.

[00:16:33] This next story comes out of car news, China. That's the publication. They are reporting that Chinese EV maker Hong Chi and battery maker, the Shane battery. They have developed a battery that will charge between 10 and 70% in three minutes and 41 seconds, which is nutty. Uh, in addition to that, they were able to charge from 10 men or 10% to 97% in eight minutes and three seconds.

[00:17:03] So pretty fast. This was an 80 kilowatt hour battery. They did this in controlled conditions. It was 77 degrees Fahrenheit where they were doing the battery test, which would be about 25 degrees Celsius, uh, 80 kilowatt hour battery. They were able to reach a peak charge of 960 kilowatts, which is just nuts. This battery has a new anode. It's got a new electrode.

[00:17:28] It's got some carbon coating process, um, which reduced resistance. And then also they were, the battery itself is liquid cooled that helped keep those temperatures down when it was charging so fast. Um, this is kind of interesting because recently, uh, Thomas shared a podcast, uh, and the podcast is called the Volt V O L T. It's a volt dot WTF. If you're interested, I'll put a link in the show notes to the episode as well.

[00:17:56] But they interviewed Rick Constantino, uh, who is the co-founder and CTO of group 14. And, uh, the group 14 is building these really cool silicon anodes. And they talked a lot about the benefits of silicon anodes, which we'll talk about in a second, but also, you know, the difficulties and the ways that they're solving them. Um, so, uh, that's pretty cool.

[00:18:24] And I guess that leads us to our next story, which is Scylla. Scylla is a company like group 14. They're developing silicon anodes. And from what I understand, based on the Volt interview and reading this article, the advantage of having a silicon anode is that they can deliver, well, Scylla is saying they can deliver 20% more range without needing to increase the size of the battery because silicon stores

[00:18:53] more lithium than graphite does, which makes the battery cells or can make the battery cells more energy dense, which is great. But according to the interview and the, uh, article that I read, there is, there is the benefit that silicon can store more lithium, which is great.

[00:19:15] Uh, but the downside is, is as that anode expands and contracts as it charges and discharges, it can cause or speed up battery degradation, which is not great. So, um, the goal obviously is for them to figure out how to use a silicon anode while not causing

[00:19:41] that battery degradation at scale so they can commercialize it. And that's something that is always the big question is, can it be actually produced at scale for commercial purposes? And Scylla and group 14 obviously think that it can. So, uh, we shall see. Scylla does have a partnership with Panasonic energy as well as, uh, Mercedes.

[00:20:08] So, uh, very likely that we will see silicon anodes in, you know, the near future for EVs. Hopefully. And that leads us to our final EV story here, which inside EVs writer, Jen's miners got to drive the slate pickup truck for about an hour in Newport, Rhode Island.

[00:20:36] And they drove, you know, on Rhode Island roads. I've never been to Rhode Island, but the movie that comes to mind whenever I think of Rhode Island is me, myself, and Irene. So I think we can all assume that's the kind of roads that he drove on. Uh, he also got to drive like the base trim, which is saying something when this is a no frills pickup truck. The base trim is the base, um, the, the lowest level that you can get.

[00:21:04] Uh, there was a demo speaker system, uh, that was the only upgrade to the car. In terms of the size of the vehicle, uh, he said it was kind of around the size, same size as a 1990s Chevy S10 blazer, which first I wanted one of those so bad when I was in school. Uh, second, that much bigger than I thought it was going to be.

[00:21:29] Uh, in terms of the size, he said that's a little shorter than the Ford Maverick, but that's due to the cab only having one row of seats because there's just the, in the standard configuration, there's only two seats in the front. Um, and the Maverick has two rows, the front and the back, but this, the bed on the slate is a little bit longer than the Ford Mavericks. Now that's all just to say that it's not as small as it looks in the pictures because it does look

[00:21:58] kind of toy, toy like in, and small in the pictures. Um, Jen says that he's a tall guy, but he found the truck to be comfortable. They had Fabris seats. Obviously there was physical buttons for HVAC and mode selection and things like that. No touch screens. You have to bring your own device if you want that kind of thing. In terms of specs, the truck was a 65 kilowatt hour LFP battery pack, 20 to 80% range in about 30

[00:22:26] minutes, 205 miles of range on the vehicle to be tested, but it'd be about 240 miles range with, if you've got the bigger battery, 2000 pounds of towing. I just cannot imagine anybody towing with this vehicle zero to 16, eight seconds. Maybe somebody who's doing like landscaping or something like that, that's towing things that you need a lot of stuff, but maybe they're not heavy. Um, anyway, uh, nice one pedal driving experience.

[00:22:56] Gave it a very, um, satisfactory rating. Like he, he had a fairly glowing review, all things considered, because there's just not much to this truck. Uh, this vehicle will start under $25,000, but if you add in the delivery fee, it's going to be over 26,000. All right, let's go ahead and move into our EV needs here.

[00:23:22] Tesla is, Tesla's had some issues with the Cybertruck power conversion system. And they are three howlet. If you're in the boarding area, please come see me here at the E6 podium. Hardy of three howlet. I hope they are able to go see them at the podium. Um, okay. So yeah, so Tesla's had issues with the Cybertruck power conversion system.

[00:23:45] Um, they are now extending the warranty, uh, on the Cybertrucks to cover that PCS or power conversion system for eight years or 150,000 miles, which matches the battery warranty. But prior to that, you know, it just matched the truck warranty, which was four years and 50,000 miles. And then if somebody has already had this replaced, Tesla will pay for those repairs. So you will get reimbursed hopefully with interest.

[00:24:15] And this applies to all Cybertrucks that were built, uh, before 2026. By the way, this is, you know, I don't know if this is interesting or not to anybody else, but like, I saw no less than like seven Cybertrucks driving home from Coles the other day to my house, which was about a six mile drive. Like I was actually sitting, I was getting up the freeway, sitting at the light to turn left and a Cybertruck get pulls up at the light to turn right, or I guess to turn, to get onto the freeway. So they're on my left.

[00:24:45] And, uh, I was like, well, that's weird. I was just thinking that there's so many, seeing so many Cybertrucks today. And then as I go over the overpass, uh, there's another Cybertruck getting off the freeway. So just a ton of Cybertrucks yesterday. Um, I don't know if, if, are, are we seeing more sales? I'm just seeing a bigger concentration. I don't know what's going on with them. Are people just okay with driving them now or is before they weren't? I genuinely don't know.

[00:25:16] Uh, let's see. Tesla accidentally sold 15 Canadian model wise and model threes here in the United States. And those vehicles were built in Shanghai or Berlin could have built the new one. And those particular vehicles, because they were built for Canada, do not meet us safety standards. So they have to be bought back and replaced with us built cars or cars built specifically for the U S.

[00:25:41] But you would think that the U S safety regulations and Canadian safety regulations would be more in lockstep than we are, but, uh, they're not. Tesla has expanded Tesla semi sales to Europe. Um, that this is based on a job posting in Germany for sales.

[00:26:04] And they sounds like they're officially, according to EV wire, expanding Tesla semi into France. So Germany and France seem to be like the, the two close or, uh, I guess the first two countries that we're going to, or Tesla is going to be expanding to, which seems early. This seems very early.

[00:26:27] You know, Tesla so far has only developed or produced 200 delivered 200 Tesla semis. And those are mostly for testing. They're still ramping up production in Nevada. Um, you know, once they hit scale, Tesla seems to be able to get like around 50,000 units per year. But does it seem like to anybody else that they're there, this expansion for Tesla semi

[00:26:52] is, is very fast unless they're going to build a plant in Europe to build these semis. It just seems weird. But anyway, um, I'm sure that test will figure it out. They're going to have to make some sort of adjustments, minor adjustments. I'm sure to meet European regulations, but, uh, I've not, I've still not seen a Tesla semi in real life. So I'm looking forward to maybe one day being in France and seeing one for the first time.

[00:27:22] Since we're talking about Europe, Tesla is giving out two month FSD trials in Europe. And to that, I say, how about two month FSD trials here at the U S I did get a month. And Alison Sheridan got, uh, access to version 14 light for her model three hardware three model three. And she was pretty impressed with it. She walked me through how the car was able to park itself. It started on the street, went down a ramp and found a shady spot to park. So sounded amazing.

[00:27:52] Um, I think in late August, I'll probably maybe early October. Um, I'll, I'll pay the $99 for FSD to see, you know, how good version 14 light is. The problem I'm having is I don't want to pay the $99 and then find out that I get version 12 or whatever it was up to before 14 came out. So I would like to know I'm getting 14 for sure.

[00:28:22] And along the same lines, some hardware three computers are overheating with FSD version 14 light. Um, we'll keep an eye on this. It doesn't seem like it's a lot of cars, but I saw a video where the driver was just, you know, cruising around. They were filming it. The car alerted, uh, that the driver must take over immediately. And then FSD is temporary unavailable. And then it showed pictures of service mode in the car.

[00:28:52] And it showed that there was an ECU thermal issue, which is why it overheated. Oh, ask your line at this page in Turrell Towns. Please come see me here at the E6 podium. Echo 6 podium. Hurry up, Charles. She sounds like that sounds urgent. Okay. So, um, yeah, so ECU issue. Hopefully they're able to get that corrected. But it's definitely 14 light is definitely seems like it's definitely pushing the hardware

[00:29:21] to its limit. Uh, let's see. This is our final Tesla story here. Unfortunately, Tesla sales were down 19% in China for the first half of the year. Now that sounds like a negative headline and it is, but it's also kind of a misleading headline. This is what it should say. Tesla sales are down 19% when compared to peak Tesla sales, which were in 2023. So they're not down year over year.

[00:29:50] They're down from whatever the peak was. Um, when compared to 2023, like I said, which was the peak? Who cares? Uh, are they down year over year from last year? Yes. A little bit. 9%. Not, not the end of the world. Um, they still sold in the first six months of 20, 2026.

[00:30:16] So the first half of 2026 in China, Tesla still sold 238, 955, 238,955 vehicles. So to me, those aren't failure numbers. Um, oh no, they, and then they exported another 228,994 vehicles to Europe, Canada, and other markets like Australia and New Zealand.

[00:30:40] Um, so yeah, that's a total of like 467,000, almost 468,000 cars out of that factory in China in the first half of 2026. Uh, yeah, not, not too bad that I, that like over 800,000 Teslas have been sold year wide worldwide, excuse me, in the first half of 2026. I, I just do.

[00:31:08] I, the, I read this article and I was like, well, that's interesting. And then I read the headline. I said, that's interesting. Then I read the article and then I got irritated. Um, yeah, not a big deal. I don't think any of this is a big deal, by the way. Uh, this is kind of interesting. Tesla delivered their first roadster in February of 2008.

[00:31:33] 12 years after that, they finally got to a million vehicles produced and delivered. It took them 12 years, 2008 to 2020 to produce a million vehicles in July of 2026. They crossed over 10 million vehicles. So they're definitely, uh, killing it for sure. All right, everybody. That is it for me.

[00:32:01] I'm hopefully I'm able to get this uploaded before, uh, the plane takes off, which will be here in a few minutes. So I hope y'all had a, uh, I hope y'all enjoyed the show. Happy 10th anniversary to everybody. And I will talk to you all on. Well, I guess I'm going to talk to you on Tuesday. I pre-recorded it's show with Tom Affel. That'll be Friday's show. Um, but anyway, thanks everybody for listening to the show and I will talk to you soon. Bye.