Tesla Drama, VW Data Leaks, and an RV That Powers Itself!

[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 Bodine, I am your host, and I am back from CES. I am tired. I got back on Wednesday night. Thursday, I had a bunch of stuff to do because I had been gone for not just the time I was at CES, I had to work some extra shifts so that somebody else would work my shifts while I was at CES.

[00:00:48] And so yeah, there was just a long period of time where I was away from home and a bunch of stuff had piled up that I'm responsible for. My family did a tremendous job of taking care of stuff, you know, taking down a lot of like the Christmas decorations and things like that when I wasn't around.

[00:01:04] But there was things that, you know, only I do like getting on top of the second story and taking off those Christmas lights kind of stuff. So that was Thursday, Friday, I was so tired, I took two naps. And, you know, got a head start on getting the house clean so we can spend some time together as a family.

[00:01:26] So yeah, it was, it's, it's been a crazy week. It's been a fun week, but very busy on Saturday, which is today when I'm recording, actually woke up at 530 with a lot of energy. So I was like, let's get that podcast knocked out before everybody else wakes up. So let's go ahead and dive into it. First things first, we have a new patron to this podcast, almost said website, we have a new patron to our podcast.

[00:01:54] And that is Dave. Dave, thank you so much for going to patreon.com forward slash kilowatt. Or you might have gone to support kilowatt.com. I'm not sure which one you went to. But in either way, thank you so much for going and supporting the show. If there's anything you need, please feel free to reach out to me. It's Bodie, B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com or you can reach out to me on Patreon.

[00:02:17] All right, let's start with our news. Volkswagen owners will get access to the supercharger network in March, which is great news. The bad news is Volkswagen won't start shipping out the free NACS adapters until June or July. So if you already have an adapter, good news. If you don't have one and you don't want to spend, you know, upwards of $180 on one bad news.

[00:02:44] And we have a similar good news, bad news story for Mercedes. I still have more Volkswagen news to talk about. But Mercedes drivers will get access to the supercharger network in February. But Mercedes is not giving out an adapter for free. You got to go to the dealership and pay $185. Customers will be notified when they're available at the dealership.

[00:03:03] Back to the Volkswagen news. Volkswagen sold 383,000 fully electric EVs in 2024. It was actually 383,100.

[00:03:17] That's about what Ford and GM sold together. Volkswagen is a much bigger company worldwide than Ford and GM are. They have Audi, not BMW, they have Audi, Volkswagen Group, Skoda, and another brand that I'm sure I'm forgetting at the moment.

[00:03:38] But yeah, 383,100 worldwide. So that's pretty good. What's not good, however, is that Volkswagen, according to a whistleblower, had a data leak that exposed the location data for 800,000 EVs. Now, I will say at the start here, reading this article, it does sound like maybe they had a vulnerability and not necessarily a leak. It doesn't sound like this was exploited. I could be wrong.

[00:04:08] But just the way that the email read, or not the email read, but the article read, it sounds like there was a vulnerability. It does not sound like there was any confirmation that this vulnerability was exploited.

[00:04:22] Now, having said that, the vulnerability came from Volkswagen subsidiary, Cariad, C-A-R-I-A-D. It came from that company, and they deal with the software side of Volkswagen Group. They had left an opening for hackers to potentially get their hands on driver data that was stored on Amazon Web Services.

[00:04:51] So some of the data includes when the EVs were turned on and off, the owner's email, phone numbers, addresses of owners, precise locations of about 460,000 vehicles. I do need to let you know that this issue has been addressed. But if you're a Volkswagen EV owner, your data may have been exposed. Again, there was nothing confirming that it was exposed the way that they talked about this.

[00:05:21] There was a lot of could-haves and may-haves type phrasing in the article. So that kind of leads me to believe that they don't know if it was, that the information was exploited or not. Moving on to Volvo. Volvo sold 352,800 EVs and plug-in hybrids in 2024.

[00:05:42] Close to 100,000 of those vehicles sold were the Volvo EX30s, which is the more affordable EV that Volvo has on offer. The EX30 starts around 36,000 euros in Europe. Fortunately, it starts around $45,000 here in the United States. But Volvo said there is a single motor version coming to the U.S., which will cost around $37,000.

[00:06:09] That's supposed to be here early 2025, so not that far away. And it will have a range of 275 miles. So not too bad for $37,000. And moving from extremely affordable to a little less so, Ophelia, which is the Sony-Honda collaboration, they announced the Ophelia One, I think in 2023.

[00:06:35] And now they are taking pre-orders if you live in California. So let's just start with the basic information here. The Fila One is a sedan. It comes in two different trims. The Origin, which will start at $89,900. It's going to rock some 19-inch wheels and will be here sometime in 2027. If you want to spend a little bit more money, the Signature starts at $102,900. It adds 21-inch wheels.

[00:07:05] Not adds. It features 21-inch wheels. Dual rear screens. And we're looking at a delivery sometime in 2026. Both of these models include AI-powered Fila intelligence and a personal agent. We'll see how that actually ends up working. Spatial audio, 5G connectivity, customizable themes. The cool thing about this car is it had...

[00:07:34] I didn't get to see it this time at CES, but the last time I was there, it had a little screen in the front. And you could kind of... When I say the front, I mean like the front of the car. And you could program that to have different things on it. They had it programmed for, I don't know, a Spider-Man advertisement. I'm sure you wouldn't want that on your car. But a media bar with user-generated text. 300-mile range. And it'll be compatible with the Supercharger network.

[00:08:01] Sony is also positioning the Fila One as an entertainment space on wheels. It will come complete with... I think it's a PlayStation 5 equivalent. But gaming, movies, music capabilities essentially that you would have in your living room. But it's mobile. It'll also have 40 sensors and cameras. It promises level 3 driving on highways, level 2 in other conditions.

[00:08:32] Augmented reality integration. And virtual worlds embedded into the experience. I will say... They could promise the moon. We'll see what actually ships with this car. I don't think it's going to ship with all this. The Fila One is designed to compete with the Tesla Model S, Lucid Air. They have the Honda Accord in here. It's a blend of all three of these.

[00:09:00] The Model S, the Lucid Air, and the Honda Accord. Which is just super funny. Because the Honda Accord is a super affordable car. Whereas this is not. I think they just threw that in there for Honda. It will feature roof-bounded radar. Or excuse me, LiDAR. And a bunch of radar sensors. That, you know, kind of... You know, the designers at Tesla would not be happy with that.

[00:09:25] But I think the car still looks very sleek and very fancy. Let's move on to some of the challenges. The Fila One is launching a sedan in the $100,000 range to start. We can all kind of look to Lucid and see how that's going. In terms of a really nice, fancy sedan. It's not selling great. Less than $10,000 in 2024.

[00:09:55] There's also... Sony and Honda might have a subscription service that's involved with this car. We don't know what that looks like. We don't even know if they're going to do it for sure. But if they do, you know, I'm not so sure it's going to be cheap. I don't know if Sony is the kind of company or Honda is the kind of company that would, like, make you pay for heated seats that you've already paid for. Make you pay a monthly subscription for heated seats that you've already paid for, I should say.

[00:10:26] But, yeah, it really will be interesting once this vehicle comes out, how many people will actually buy it. For the price that they're asking, I don't think it's going to be very many, to be honest with you. I do think it'll be a neat car. And I'd like to try to drive one for a week. You know, I'd love to get my hands on one. But I don't think it's going to be a big seller.

[00:10:56] I mentioned at the top that you could only pre-order this vehicle if you live in California. If you do live in California, you're looking at a $200 refundable deposit if you'd like to get on the waiting list for this vehicle. And again, you know, we're looking at 2026 for the $100,000 version and 2027 for the more affordable version, which costs, let me go back up to my notes here, $90,000.

[00:11:26] So let me know. Are you interested in, you know, buying this car? Like, you know, when I say interested, I mean you need to be able to afford it. If you could afford this car, would you buy it is really where I'm going with this. All right. That is it for our EV news. Let's move on to our Tesla news because we already kind of gave you a Patreon plug at the start. So let's dive in. Elon was on X recently streaming.

[00:11:56] I guess he's playing video games and talking to people. And he mentioned that Tesla was testing autonomous FSD trials internally. He didn't say much more on that, which is already a vague statement. So I've heard a lot of speculation out there on what Tesla is and isn't doing. I wouldn't read too much into any of this for now. Elon is very good at drumming up Buzz for his products.

[00:12:24] And I don't necessarily think that that this very throwaway statement, it seems like, is worth the amount of press that it's getting. Of course, they're testing it on some level internally. That seems like that just makes total sense. I don't know why this was a big news story, but there was a lot of articles written on it that I read this week.

[00:12:52] And there's nothing here for the moment. There's nothing here. Moving on. Tesla has issued a recall of around 239,000 vehicles, slightly above that, for a self-driving computer failure. We talked about this a little bit at the beginning of December. And now we've got an official recall.

[00:13:15] The problem is there's a short circuit that fails and causes the full self-driving not to work. But it also causes other features not to work, like auto wipers, auto high beams, the cameras, GPS, range estimates. So if you own a 2024 or 2025 Model 3, Model Y, or Model S, your vehicle could be affected. And if you own a 2023 to 2025 Model X, your vehicle may be affected.

[00:13:45] And I'm sure Tesla is going to be sending out letters and notifying those who are affected, you know, within the next couple of months. Tesla's actual smart summon feature is under investigation by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration following multiple crash reports. So let's just go through this if you're not familiar.

[00:14:07] Actual smart summon is an upgraded version of Tesla's smart summon, which didn't work very well when they first released it. Actual smart summon came out a couple months ago. And the intended use case is, let's just say you've got a bunch of groceries and maybe you've got some mobility problems. And you need your car to come to you and pick you up at the curb. You're standing right outside the grocery store.

[00:14:36] So all you've got to do is open up your Tesla app and push a button. The car will leave its parking space and navigate through the parking lot. So it's a pretty cool feature. It should be noted, however, that the person who is summoning the car, the person who is using the app, the person who is holding the button down, they are the person responsible for the car to get from point A to point B safely. Not Tesla, because it says it in the user agreement. It's your fault.

[00:15:06] So here is part of the problem. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration Office of Defects and Investigations launched a probe into 16 alleged crashes involving actual smart summon. Some of the key concerns are when users are using this feature and they need the vehicle to stop, there isn't a sufficient reaction time to get the vehicle to stop to avoid an accident.

[00:15:34] And it sounds like some of the reasons why this could happen are an app connectivity delay, which increases stopping distance. So if the user sees that there's going to be an accident and pulls their finger off of the app, there might be a, you know, one, two or three second delay before the car actually stops. So that's one of the reasons. It also could be that the user is not in a position that they could see the car all that well.

[00:16:02] So, you know, they don't even try to stop until the last minute. And then by then it's already too late anyway. It sounds like Tesla is required to report these accidents to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, and they haven't been doing that. So that's a problem.

[00:16:22] And I don't know if they're not doing that because the way that it says it or in the article, the way that it says is that they're required to report any accident involving the ADAS system on public roads. And technically a parking lot is a private parking lot. I don't know if they're using this as a, if that's a reason that they're not reporting it or not. I genuinely don't know.

[00:16:47] So what we do know is Tesla has lobbied or is currently lobbying to remove the reporting requirements when the ADAS system gets into an accident. And, you know, given Elon's close ties with President Trump, it's very likely that in the Trump presidency that they remove this requirement for reporting when ADAS systems are involved in a crash. I think that would be a shame, but nobody cares what I think.

[00:17:16] I would like to know when these, I am a big proponent of, you know, full self-driving features in vehicles. And I fully recognize while we are developing the technology to achieve full level five self-driving capabilities, there are going to be accidents. There are going to be fatalities.

[00:17:37] Like these are realities of driving around in boxes that are heavy and go fast, no matter if a computer is driving or a human is driving. But having said that, I would really like these accidents to be reported and tracked by some federal agency to make sure that one company is not, and I'm not even talking about Tesla here.

[00:18:00] I just mean any company is not, let's just say meeting industry norms when it comes to safety standards and autonomous driving. Just leave that there. The investigation is going to be a part of the investigation.

[00:18:14] The investigation is going to evaluate the features top speed, operating restrictions, line of sight requirements, the effectiveness of the app control, and the connectivity delays or potential connectivity delays that may impact stopping distances. All right, let's move on.

[00:19:00] The board members' compensation far exceeded the average for other S&P 500 board members. The average board member of an S&P 500 company is $300,000. Please sign me up. I'd love to be on your board. I would only need to be on one board, and I would not be bored being on your board. Here's the breakdown of the settlement.

[00:19:24] And remember, most board members are compensated $300,000 a year.

[00:19:32] In the settlement with Tesla shareholders and Tesla's board, Tesla board members will return $277 million in cash, $459 million in stock options, and forego an additional $184 million in stock options that were supposed to be awarded to them for the years of 2021 and 2023. So, yeah, nearly a billion dollars there. That's nutty.

[00:20:01] Tesla and the board members have admitted no wrongdoing. And by the way, just so you know, this is the same judge that denied Elon's pay package, which Tesla has officially appealed that denial or that ruling and is asking once again for the Delaware courts to approve his $56 million pay package.

[00:20:29] All right, let's move into our final Tesla story. And this time I stacked all the bad news on top and I gave you good news at the end. Tesla has officially announced the refreshed Model Y, which was codenamed Juniper. Here are just some quick details to start us off here. It's going to be China only to start. Deliveries will begin in March. And the starting price in China is the equivalent of $36,000 US dollars.

[00:20:58] Now, let's talk about the interior enhancements of the Model Y. And this is the part that makes me kind of jealous. Improved acoustics for a quieter ride. I don't think my car is like super loud, but I would like it to be a little bit quieter. New Model Y owners are going to get some cool ambient lighting options. There's a rear seat passenger screen, which I wish my car had as well. Ventilated seats, which is amazing. I love ventilated seats.

[00:21:29] Electronically folding rear back seats. So right now, if you want to put the back seat down, you activate a little switch and it just kind of falls forward. So the electronically controlled seats is a much more elegant feature than just falling forward, which always bugs me when it happens. We're looking at a redesigned steering wheel, which looks a lot like the Model 3 Highland steering wheel. It has a turn signal.

[00:21:58] So the new Model 3 in the Cybertruck, the turn signals are on the steering wheel. This one actually has a stock for the turn signals. We're looking at some performance boosts. We're going to get slightly better efficiency. That's most likely due to the exterior design changes that we'll talk about here in a little bit. The long-range all-wheel drive model will achieve 447 miles. This is based on Chinese CLTC cycle.

[00:22:27] That's based on how they calculate range. In reality, here in the United States or North America, we're probably looking closer to 350 miles range. Improved acceleration, 0 to 100 kilometers will be 4.3 seconds, which is 0.6 seconds faster than before. Now let's move to the exterior design. The front of this vehicle has some design elements we saw on the CyberCab.

[00:22:56] It's very aerodynamic. I don't know quite how to describe it. One of the cool things is that there is a continuous LED strip along the front that gives it a very nice modern look, similar to how the CyberCab has its continuous light and the Cybertruck as well. There's a new front bumper camera, which enables true 360-degree view for parking precision. So right now, when I'm parking, and I don't know if I'm too close to the curb or not,

[00:23:25] you could actually see that in the front camera, which is great. Revised taillights and the fog light positioning, which is a nod to some of the Cybertruck elements. The front of this car and the back of this car look very different. But if you were to look at this car from the side, it looks like a Model Y. So I'm conflicted on whether I like the design or not. From the front, I like it very much. From the back, I like it very much.

[00:23:54] From the side, I like it very much because it looks like my car. If you look at it at an angle, it's weird looking to me. And it may just be because there's so many design elements from the old Model Y, coupled with some of these new things that Tesla has. Like in the back, for instance, the liftgate. The license plate is on the liftgate. But because they made some changes on the back of the car, the license plate is now lower down about where the bumper would be.

[00:24:24] Not a big deal. And I think when you see this car in person, it's going to look really nice. One other feature that I really like is it's got an upgraded suspension system with new springs and dampeners, which is going to give you a smoother ride. I do not think my Model Y rides all that smooth. I think it's kind of stiff. So I love that. New wheel and tire combinations. Some of the things that Tesla hasn't really confirmed are the battery specs, you know, the charging performance.

[00:24:53] But we could probably assume that it's built on the same 400-volt architecture where you get, you know, 250-kilowatt max charging rate. And then we don't know when it's going to be available for North America, Europe, and other markets. You know, the Chinese Gigafactory serves other countries besides China. So I would assume at some level you will be able to get this vehicle in those countries. Maybe not right away, but sooner than here in North America.

[00:25:20] But, yeah, I think this is a good update for Tesla. And I'm looking forward to seeing one in person. All right, everybody, that is it for our EV news. But that is not it for our show. While I was at CES, I had an opportunity to sit down with one of the founders of Lightship. And that founder's name is Ben Parker. Took me a second to look up, make sure my notes were right.

[00:25:48] Ben was actually an employee of Tesla. He was a battery engineer there. He worked on the Model 3. I believe he told me he worked a little bit on the 4680 battery cell, like the structural battery pack. And, yeah, he's just a really cool guy and very generous with his time. So let's go ahead and welcome Ben to the show. All right, I'm here with Ben Parker of Lightship RV.

[00:26:18] Ben, what is Lightship RV? Well, Bodie, we're America's first electric RV manufacturer. We are a ground-up, you know, based and built in America travel trailer builder. We build what we think is the perfect travel trailer for, you know, this new age that we're entering, the electric age. Our first product we call AE1.

[00:26:47] And the AE stands for aeroelectric. Both of those components, the aerodynamics and the electrification are critical to what we build. The reason for that is that, let's take the aerodynamic piece first. Aero is all about efficiency.

[00:27:08] And in particular, you know, the better your aerodynamics are means the less energy you will lose to the wind as you're going down the road, meaning the smaller battery that I need to put on board to achieve a certain range, whatever my stated target is. And so we focus really heavily on having great aerodynamic performance.

[00:27:32] So building a very low drag vehicle, one that slips through the air instead of sort of plowing through it and to good results. This vehicle, our first product is about a 26-foot long, 8.5-foot wide, 7,500-pound beast of a, you know, of a travel trailer.

[00:27:55] Its drag efficiency is equivalent to that of a Tesla Model 3, a tiny passenger sedan that weighs half as much and is minuscule by comparison. Do you know what the coefficient is, the drag coefficient? Well, yeah, I'll say a number, although it's kind of interesting. Where with a passenger vehicle, the coefficient of drag is a meaningful number on its own. With a travel trailer, it's not really, right?

[00:28:23] Because the CD is always, the drag of the trailer is only meaningful when you measure it with the truck included. Okay. Because the trailer is never going to be going down the road on its own, at least, you know, maybe in my craziest dreams, but not for a while. So I think it's, we're approaching 0.1, the CD of 0.1, which is a very low number. And that's because it's a, you know, it's a streamlined body.

[00:28:50] It's not what you would call a bluff body where you have multiple forms and the air tends to separate. As it hits a certain part of the vehicle body, the whole shape of the lightship, which people should just go online and check out lightshiprv.com to get a visual on what I'm talking about. The whole shape of the trailer is this bullet shape.

[00:29:11] And so we're able to basically reattach the flow of air as it comes off of the truck that's towing the trailer, keep it attached all the way down the length of this fairly long vehicle body, and then have a clean separation, a clean cutoff of the airflow as it hits the back of the trailer to minimize the wake, the size of the wake behind the trailer.

[00:29:38] And in so doing, reduce the drag. The aero is key. The second part of it, like I said, is the electric piece. This is kind of, you know, there's a, we're living through a watershed moment in certainly vehicle technology. And I think even more broadly, a lot of the powered economy is electrifying right now.

[00:30:04] Now, we stand on the shoulders of giants in a way. We were talking off mic here about how a lot of the folks at lightship came from companies in the EV corner of automotive. So the Teslas, this is my co-founder and I, we're both Tesla, the Rivians, and the list goes on.

[00:30:25] And what we're able to do, because the auto industry has invested so heavily in, you know, great electrified components, is to take a lot of those components. So I think batteries, motors, electronics, pull from that automotive supply chain and adapt them to a trailer use case.

[00:30:48] So what you get out of that is, basically, if you're used to a traditional trailer, then you're probably used to heating and doing all of your cooking off of propane. Your lighting systems are typically just like a 12-volt lead-acid car battery that, unfortunately, there's a decent chance will die at some point over your trip and, you know, maybe leave you without lights.

[00:31:14] It's, you can keep the thing running, but you have to bring a generator along with you, usually a propane or gasoline generator. And so there's kind of just a hodgepodge of fuel sources that people are used to dealing with when they take a traditional travel trailer out. Erase all that when you go to a, you know, a modern, state-of-the-art electrified system as we have. We have a roughly 80-kilowatt-hour, 400-volt EV battery on board,

[00:31:43] and we use that source of storage to not only run all of the camping loads on the trailer, meaning your lights, all of your appliances, everything, that even your, actually, even your air conditioner, your HVAC system is all run off of the high-voltage battery. Not only that kind of clean, quiet camping experience, we also use that EV battery to propel the trailer.

[00:32:13] So we put a motor on board, we call it the truck drive system, and we use that motor to basically make the trailer into a self-propelling trailer, by which I mean one that helps the truck that's pulling it, so that the truck doesn't have to do all the work of pulling this big trailer on its own. What's key about that is that, especially with EV trucks,

[00:32:41] trucks in general struggle with fuel economy and range when you're towing a big load. EV trucks really struggle with it because they're so tuned for efficiency. So when you put a brick wall that weighs 7,000 pounds behind it, your range plummets. With a system like the truck drive system powered off of that big EV battery, we can rescue almost all of the range of an EV truck. So instead of it losing half to two-thirds of its EPA range,

[00:33:10] you're now back to, let's say it was a 300-mile truck, you're now back to your 300 miles of range even while towing. And I think that is a game-changing moment for how people do trailering and trips with a travel trailer, and it's available now. What about if you're going upgrade with an ICE truck or whatever?

[00:33:34] Because that's the part where even diesels, F-250s will struggle going upgrade. Yep. Are you assisting with going upgrade? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think the core feature to go after, or maybe the biggest, the most low-hanging fruit with a system like truck drive is to do range assist. There's a lot of other stuff that you can do once you turn a trailer from effectively dead weight

[00:34:03] to something that can self-support. So truck drive is active under acceleration, for instance. So once you hit a certain speed threshold, it'll kick in and you feel like a little push in the butt. Basically, it feels like a turbocharger kicked on, like an electric turbocharger kind of kicks on, and you feel the weight and the drag sort of leave your truck when you're towing uphill.

[00:34:26] I think this will be especially apparent for people who are pulling with, yeah, like a turbocharged V6 engine, as a lot of half-ton trucks are now getting. Awesome engines, they don't always have the torque that you want for those heavy hill climbs, and so they will work in concert with truck drives, so you don't feel so bogged down if you're doing that steep ascent

[00:34:53] over the Eisenhower tunnel in Colorado, something like that. So what happens when you're going downgrade? Does it assist with slowing the vehicle downgrade? Yeah, absolutely. Basically, same concept in reverse, so maybe some of the listeners already have checked this out and know how truck drive works, but truck drive consists of a battery and a motor, of course, a hitch, a custom-developed hitch, which can do force sensing,

[00:35:24] so it's able to see what is the force between the truck and the trailer and respond to that, and then a controller as well. When the trailer is pulling the truck back, you would measure a tension force between the two, and the controller will then tell the motor to kick up the motor to assist. The opposite is true when you're, like you're saying, if you're coming downhill or even if you're coming to a stop,

[00:35:53] where now the motor will, in response to a pushing force between the truck and trailer, go into a regen mode. So now the trailer is actually pulling back, it's pulling itself back a bit, and in doing so, of course, we're generally recharging the battery on board the trailer. So if you have a gas or diesel truck, well, we just hybridized your truck whenever you're towing.

[00:36:21] And I think what's kind of great about that, beyond just the energy side of this, the energy experience, is that if, for instance, you're descending that mountain pass, and you're kind of used to the trailer basically wagging the truck around because it's pushing on the truck all the time, that squirrely feeling will go away. So now the trailer, because it's regenning and keeping zero force between the truck and trailer,

[00:36:49] it will track very stably behind the truck. So you're not going to get that same kind of nerve-wracking, squirrely feeling in a dynamic situation like that. That is really cool. You know, when you, so the battery will power the vehicle while you're driving. The battery will power when you're just hanging out at your campsite. And you see right here, so it'll also help with some home battery backup. Do you have things in place for that?

[00:37:17] Are you going through some third-party company like Siemens, or what's going on there? We have kind of a multi-phased approach to this. So I think first off, yeah, the core idea behind home backup support and just generally thinking about the lightship as a capable home solar system, a home energy system, is that most RVs are really doing nothing, if we're honest, for like 48, 49 weeks out of the year. And I think that's a lot of value and utility lost

[00:37:46] from what would be a much higher value asset. And so the thought with using the solar system is, how do we get that value back? How do you daily cycle your RV, or at least use it as a source of energy security at your house? So that, you know, if the grid goes down planned or not, your lights stay on. How we do home backup, like I say, as two phases. Initially,

[00:38:15] you can think of AE1 as, basically, a very capable silent backup generator, right? So, we'll have a, we'll have a, about a 10, 10 kilowatt power takeoff zone, just a, a 1450 plug. And you can wire that into your home, just as you would a gen set. You know, if you've got a generator inlet at your house, and then have a, have a transfer switch on your home so that you can, you can,

[00:38:45] you know, transfer the home between grid power and, and in this case, lightship power. Over time and the second phase of this, as, as the whole vehicle to grid, vehicle to home ecosystem is developing, we, we will build more and more intelligence and, and sort of more, more functionality into that system as well. So, phase two in our minds includes, not sending that power, not through a generator inlet,

[00:39:14] but actually right back to your EVSE, back, back to your charger, having a gateway on the home side that is, um, in contact with, with a, with a grid operator, uh, deciding what to do with your energy asset, your, your lightship. Um, and I think that the potential there is pretty cool because it's, there's, um, there's a lot more automation. So for instance, uh, grid goes down, immediate switch over. Um, if,

[00:39:42] if you're paying at a time of use rate plan, now you can energy arbitrage, the grid, you can peak shave at home and, and effectively, uh, make money with, with your lightships power system year round. You can even firm up the grid itself. So I, you know, I, I dream about us having fleets of, of lightships that, um, will act as effectively as a virtual power plant or as a, like a, an aggregated micro grid and in a certain region.

[00:40:12] And I think all of that is going to be, going to be possible. Um, we're just taking it one step at a time. That's cool, Ben. Let me, let me, let me, I'm going to read off the highlights that you have listed here. All right. 300 miles of all electric range, seven days of off-grid living. Uh, you have 1.8 kilowatts of solar power on top. It, uh, this is a, this is a very fancy pop-up. It'll pop up to seven and a half feet, which, you're looking at my friend Rob right there. Rob is, uh, I think six, three, six, four. So he could comfortably rock this, uh, light ship EV.

[00:40:42] Add room to spare. Yeah. Yeah. and then the home battery backup. This is, this is really interesting. What's it cost? And where would people go again? I know you mentioned it once, but might as well mention it again. Where would people go to find out more? Well, we have a bunch of different price points on, on the first product. First product we call AE one. There are three general production trims. And then there's one really special trim that we, we are starting with that, that exclusive trim, um, we call the cosmos edition, the cosmos edition.

[00:41:11] We're only ever going to build 50 of, uh, so it's, it's going to be, uh, you know, pretty, pretty limited run. And basically if you're, if you're one of the first 50 light ship owners, you can, you can put that feather in your cap for, from now till forever. The cosmos starts at two 50. So it is, it is like a really nice, nice product with a, um, you can think of it as like the belt. It's, it's everything. We threw the kitchen sink literally at,

[00:41:39] along with a bunch of other stuff at it and, um, made it really special. The, as you go down the line to this excessive trims, we go at most panos, and then taros. All four of those names are based on the distance that you are from the earth. Okay. Cosmos being the farthest off, and taros is right there on, you know, planted on the ground. atmos is about 180. Okay. It's, it's going to be, you know, heavily, heavily equipped as well.

[00:42:08] Panos is about 150. Panos will still include the track drive system, but we'll have a smaller, still high voltage, but a smaller battery on board. And then taros is sort of like, uh, it's sort of like the gateway drug. So we, uh, we strip out the track drive system, but keep, keep the all electric camping aspect of it. And, and obviously that, you know, the, the, the unique design and that, um, it's, it's 125,

[00:42:37] although it's actually a bit under 120 after you, you can take a solar tax credit on it. Same as you would for a home. If you, you know, if you put solar on your, your house and, and, uh, we think, we think, we think all of the, all of those different trims, which we'll release over the next, uh, year and a half or so represent pretty awesome value for, for what you're getting. Um, there's really nothing else like this on the road. And, uh, yeah, we just, we just started production of, of Cosmos of the first trim.

[00:43:06] So they are, they're available today. Yeah. I heard you guys recently rolled off the first two. First four. First four. Congratulations. Two, two, two are customer vehicles and the other two are, are engineering vehicles. So yeah, first two. Right on. All right, Ben, thank you so much. Voting. Loved it. Um, for, I, like you said, I kind of said it in passing, but folks who are interested should go to www.lightshiprv.com to check out more. All right. And I'll mention it again at the end of the show as well. Okay.

[00:43:37] Okay. Okay. I want to thank Ben for being so generous with this time. I was really looking for like a seven to 10 minute interview and he gave me almost 24 minutes. And actually we talked well before the interview started and we talked a little bit after the interview ended. So he was super nice. Um, um, I got to see the light ship in person and it's pretty cool. Like what they're doing with this vehicle is pretty cool. Um,

[00:44:06] if you are interested in seeing, uh, what they're up to, you can go to light ship, rv.com, uh, L I G H T S H I P R V.com. And I'll put a link in the show notes as well. And folks, that is it for me today. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you on Tuesday.