Tesla News

[00:00:11] Electric Vehicles, Renewable Energy, Autonomous Driving, and much, much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host and I'm off schedule. I'm not going to lie. I haven't been very, very

[00:00:35] busy the last couple of weeks and it doesn't help that it's hot here. It is miserable here. I do not enjoy living in Arizona in the summertime. From, I would say, November to the end of

[00:00:48] May it's great. All of the other months it's not great. It's not a fun time and there's no reason for me to say this other than to complain. So I'm going to move on here. Today

[00:00:58] we are going to talk about Tesla News. Last week we are not last week. Last episode we talked about EV news and now we're going to cover Tesla news. So let's go ahead and

[00:01:08] jump into it. Elon said he's working on a master plan, master plan part four. And to that I say, we don't need another master plan. Master plan part one kind of laid out what

[00:01:24] Tesla wanted to do in terms of building a really low volume high priced car and then build a high priced family sedan and then buy it, build the SUV which is the Model

[00:01:36] X and then use that money to build a more affordable car, which I believe they actually mentioned that it would be an affordable car. And at one point in time it was supposed to be $35,000, which was the Model 3. That didn't happen or didn't happen for very long.

[00:01:53] Then we had master plan two, which involved robo taxis and people movers and a little bit more information about Tesla's energy and energy storage offerings. And we haven't I mean, we technically have not fulfilled all of master plan part D all of their all of

[00:02:14] their desires. They're working towards it haven't really fulfilled on that. And then there was part three, which was underwhelming. And I would imagine part four is going to be

[00:02:23] underwhelming but also include a lot of AI. I don't say all of this to be a jerk because I do think it's important to know where companies that we follow or whether you're investing in

[00:02:35] them or you're just interested in them where they're heading for the future. But I also don't think that doing these road maps, which is technically what he's calling it a master plan, it's a roadmap. Doing these road maps is necessary because Elon owns X. If he wants

[00:02:55] to say something, he can just tweet it out or post it. And you don't need to do this whole master plan thing anymore. Like how many master plans are we going to have? All right,

[00:03:06] I'm not going to belabor that point. Let's move on. I recently said that Tesla's workforce was around 140,000 workers. Well, that was before the layoffs. It's actually closer to 121,000 workers. I looked that up and I just wanted to make that correction. All right, speaking of laid off

[00:03:24] Tesla employees, three former members of Tesla Supercharger team have joined Revell to help deploy EV charging stations. If you don't know who or what Revell is, is their ride-sharing company. But they're a bit different than Lyft or Uber because they are all of the vehicles are owned

[00:03:42] by the company, Revell. And then drivers, lease or rent or borrow, I'm not sure exactly how it works, the car to drive around for a while. And they're these really cool looking baby blue Model 3s. Well, there's also another side to Revell, which is fast charging. And this,

[00:04:01] that's what these three former Tesla members or Tesla people will be helping them with. Revell actually looked when Elon laid off the Supercharger team. They actually considered picking up the locations that Tesla abandoned in New York because Revell is a New York company, at least

[00:04:22] at this time. They operate in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. Not sure how many folks are listening from those boroughs in New York. But if you have a chance and have used Revell or have a chance to

[00:04:36] use it, you want to report back some email, Bodie, at 918digital.com. Sticking with Superchargers for just a second, we know that Ford and Rivian have access to the Supercharger network. Well, coming soon, we know about GM. That's going to happen Volvo, Polestar, excuse me. But now Mercedes

[00:04:57] Benz will soon have access to the Supercharger network as well, which is great. Let's see here. Tesla is set to offer another round of free full self-driving transfers. So we talked about

[00:05:13] this a little bit during the shareholder meeting. Elon was asked by a shareholder, hey, can we do at least one more round of free FSD transfer? And Elon said, okay, one more time. Well, I had

[00:05:28] mentioned then and I still maintain that Tesla is going to pull that full self-driving, that free full self-driving lever every time they need to sell no more cars to existing owners. FSD transfers will start on June 24th. So by the time you're listening to this, they'll have started

[00:05:46] and they'll go to August 31st. So if you are interested, you know, go to Tesla's website and check it out. I think it's a good deal. And I think Tesla should just be giving it to everybody

[00:05:57] who's paid for it and then sunset the $8,000 pay for it up front model and just do the subscription, bring it down to $25 or $50 a month and just do it that way. That's my

[00:06:15] suggestion. And is it good business sense? Probably not. Would it make me actually pay for it? Yes. And I would like to have it, but I don't want to pay $100 a month for it. Speaking of pulling a lever to increase deliveries, it is estimated that Tesla is going

[00:06:32] to have a down quarter in terms of deliveries for the second quarter in a row. It's estimated that Tesla will deliver right around 450,000 vehicles, which is a bit short of last year's 466,000 vehicles during the same time period. Still a pretty impressive numbers. You know, I think maybe if

[00:06:54] they can hit 450,000 this quarter with EVs sales down and high interest rates and all that other stuff, I think they're doing okay. That doesn't seem like a big deal to me, but it will be a

[00:07:08] big deal when it comes to the stock market. Let's see here. We talked about Michelin's airless tires a few months ago. Well, not a Tesla app. The not a Tesla app website is posting that Michelin has confirmed it's in talks to bring the Michelin airless tires to Tesla.

[00:07:27] As a person who recently got a nail in his tire from construction next door and had to take it to discount tire to get fixed, by the way, discount tire not only fixed my tire, but they also

[00:07:40] rotated the tires for free. So huge shout out to discount for doing that. I would like airless tires or I'd be interested in replacing my current tires with some airless tires. I apologize for the pacing of this episode. We have lots of news stories, but most of those

[00:08:00] news stories can be boiled down to a line or two. So this episode feels like it's going very quick and we're just, you know, switching news stories at the drop of a hat and we are.

[00:08:13] So having said that, let's move on to our next story, which is going to be really fast. How much battery degradation happens on a Tesla after 200,000 miles? It's actually better than I

[00:08:25] thought it would be and maybe it's better than you think it is as well. The Model 3 and Model Y on average lose about 15% of capacity over that 200,000 miles. The Model S and X lose

[00:08:39] 12% of capacity. I think you all know I am not a battery expert when it comes to this kind of thing, but it seems like that's a pretty good number. Like we're not just tossing out cars at 80,000

[00:08:52] miles because the batteries are dead. That does happen, but on average it seems like the degradation is actually quite good. Much better than expected when you consider one of us first

[00:09:04] doing this podcast. You know, many of my friends were like, oh yeah, but you got to replace the battery every X amount of miles and that turns out not to be true. All right, I just want to take

[00:09:15] a second right before we get to the rest of our stories to encourage you to go to patreon.com forward slash kilowatt or support kilowatt.com and join the patreon. You don't have to pay

[00:09:26] anything if you can join for as little as a dollar if you want ad free content. But if you just want to kind of keep posted and get free content every now and again that doesn't have ads,

[00:09:39] just go and sign up. You can be a free member, you can be a paid member. I appreciate everybody who goes there and signs up at whatever level, whether it's free or one of the other tiers.

[00:09:50] All right, enough of that. Our next story, Tesla is facing a lawsuit from owners claiming that Tesla monopolizes vehicle repairs and parts. This isn't exactly new for technology companies, you know, Apple has been very resistant to allowing people to repair their own phones.

[00:10:09] John Deere is very resistant to allow people to do much of anything on their tractor equipment equipment, even if you pay full price. They have been taken to court several times over this.

[00:10:22] So, I don't know why Tesla does this. It could be that they don't want people to repair their own vehicles and then there to be some sort of fire or some other incident happening. And then Tesla's,

[00:10:38] you know, blamed for that. I genuinely don't know why. I mean, I have thoughts, but I don't know why. But here's what I do know. There are people who should not be doing things to their own cars.

[00:10:52] There are people who maybe think they have those skills and they really don't, and they could do something that could either potentially kill them or seriously injure them. And I'm one of

[00:11:03] those people by the way, I should not be working on my own car other than very basic stuff. Beyond that, I don't have the skill or aptitude to do it. But there are people like

[00:11:14] Rich Repairs. It's not his YouTube, Rich Repairs. Yeah, Rich Rebuilds. That's the YouTube channel. Rich Rebuilds has proven time and time again that he has the aptitude to, you know, make these kind

[00:11:30] of repairs and still do it safely. Like Tesla has all of these sensors and all of this technical stuff built into the car. If you, if they provided parts, which they're very reluctant to do, if they

[00:11:46] provided Tesla verified parts to actual folks who know what they're doing, and then they could use the sensors to make sure that everything was installed properly or even take it to a Tesla center and pay a little extra to make sure everything was installed properly. This should

[00:12:01] not be a big deal from the time that cars were sold. The first car, people were working on cars. This is silly. I am a big believer in right to repair. I'm also a big believer in knowing whether

[00:12:17] or not you have that ability to do it and not mess something up. So yeah. But to your right, it's your car. If you want to mess it up, go right ahead. Let's move on to our next story,

[00:12:31] Klaus Flugbühel, hopefully I said that right, was arrested and accused of stealing trade secrets from Tesla back in March. Now we talked about the story at that time. Well, Klaus has recently pled guilty to in fact stealing Tesla's trade secrets. Some of those trade secrets that he

[00:12:50] was stealing included manufacturing techniques and proprietary information. Klaus had an accomplice, Wailong Chow, at that time. Wailong had disappeared and they are still currently at large. We don't know where they're at at the moment. But the pair were trying to sell Tesla trade secrets. Klaus

[00:13:15] was actually caught when he tried to sell the secrets directly to undercover agents, which is maybe not the best way to do it. So yeah, we'll keep you updated as the story develops, but that's where we're at. In a similar but unrelated story, Tesla is suing Matthews International

[00:13:34] for stealing trade secrets related to battery production and more specifically dry electrode technology. Matthews International was a former supplier to Tesla. They used to supply them machinery for the battery production side of things. Tesla says that Matthews stole their

[00:13:55] trade secrets, filed for patents using the information in their trade secrets, and then tried to license out Tesla technology under Matthews International patents. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But Tesla is seeking damages and those damages

[00:14:14] are estimated to be around $1 billion. Now, as you can imagine, when one company accuses another company of stealing trade secrets, Matthews said, nah, we didn't do that. They actually said this. They said the claims stated in this threadbare complaint are utterly without merit and we

[00:14:37] intend to vigorously defend the matter. Notably, the complaint vaguely references trade secrets but fails to identify even one trade secret that Tesla has purportedly disclosed to Matthews. We are continuing to evaluate this complaint and may pursue legal remedies. So they may sue Tesla

[00:14:59] back, which in which case we win as people who follow this stuff because all of that back and forth gets put out into the public and we learn more things about Tesla's battery technology, maybe we'll learn something about Matthews, whatever we as the people who follow

[00:15:17] this stuff will win. Matthews also said this contrary to the allegations in the complaint, Tesla's lawsuit is simply a new tactic in their ongoing efforts to bully Matthews and improperly take Matthews valuable intellectual property. Furthermore, Tesla's complaint

[00:15:36] attempts to restrict us from offering our innovative solutions to others, preventing the market from significantly benefiting from the savings associated with our dry battery electrode solutions and thus interfering with Matthews ability to realize the value of our intellectual

[00:15:56] property. So like everything we will keep an eye on this story but very interesting. I'm interested to see what comes out of this in terms of who's right, at least who the court says is

[00:16:10] right but also what kind of tasty little secrets are we going to find out. It's really like when these Apple lawsuits happen you always get a little bit of basically like refined sugar.

[00:16:28] It's like refined sugar. It's just all these little treats come out and we find out that one executive said this and that's not a good look for X company or Y company. I'm just looking forward to

[00:16:40] see what happens. Let's talk about Cybertruck a little bit. Cybertruck is getting an over-the-air update that will please many Cybertruck owners because especially if you're a Cybertruck owner who uses the superchargers because according to a Tesla's lead engineer, Cybertrucks are going to

[00:17:00] get improved charging especially when you are charging at a supercharger and when you roll in, you roll in at a low state of charge. It's going to be much faster for you. I know that this has been a complaint. Kyle over at Autospec Studios, he is complained about

[00:17:18] this. I've seen other people complain about it a little bit here and there on X. I'm looking forward to hearing how this update improves these folks charging experience. We got a couple Cybertruck stories here. A bunch of Cybertrucks in Fort Lauderdale, Florida

[00:17:37] were vandalized recently and that vandalism took the form of spray paint and there was a message spray painted on these Cybertrucks and it was F except for the full dirty word

[00:17:52] Elon. It was on the hoods. It was on the side of the trucks. Elon actually sent a message back on X or posted on X. He didn't send a message back. Message received but yeah, it was

[00:18:09] pretty clear that whoever did that or whatever group did that would not pleased with Elon. Having said that, I just would encourage you to post it and send it to Elon directly. Don't spray paint it on somebody else's vehicle because you're delaying them getting their vehicle.

[00:18:30] You're costing a company money and time for having to clean all that up and they don't care Tesla doesn't care. Elon doesn't care that this happened. They're going to spend whatever it costs.

[00:18:44] Maybe it's $5,000 to fix all that. Maybe it's $10,000. It's not a lot of money to them. They don't care. All you manage to do is make yourself feel better but beyond that I don't think Tesla cared one

[00:18:57] little bit and you inconvenienced a bunch of people who were looking forward to getting their trucks that day. Let's talk a little bit about Cybertruck recalls. Tesla issued a recall for the Cybertruck because of a faulty wiper motor. Many of you know that

[00:19:13] the Cybertruck has one gigantic windshield wiper and it is gigantic. I recently saw one up close and with a friend of mine and he was like, man, that's really big. I was like, that was bigger than I thought it was going to be. We're talking samurai sword size

[00:19:31] but the problem is they're the motor's faulty and there have been several complaints over the last few months about this so they have issued this recall and because of that they halted sales

[00:19:44] on the Cybertruck until those faulty wipers could be replaced because in a rainstorm it may not work which happened to one particular person. Tesla is also recalling 11,383 Cybertrucks which that number was bigger than I expected it would be. I didn't think Tesla would have

[00:20:01] produced that many at this point but congratulations to them for doing so. But they recalled the Cybertrucks because of some issues with the bed trim that could come loose and if the tunnel covers open actually create a road hazard so that's a small recall not a big deal.

[00:20:19] Let me talk just a few seconds about the Cybertrucks that I saw up close. I saw a matte black one wrapped looked really good. I think I prefer the matte black wraps better than anything else although

[00:20:33] the white one looks really good too. The truck overall is smaller than I thought it would be and listen this is the first time that I've actually been able to walk up to one of these.

[00:20:43] It's always like I'm either driving and I see it or there's just too many people around and I'm way too shy to walk up and look at the truck but in this case I can actually walk up to them and

[00:20:56] open them up and look inside and all that stuff. So I was with my buddy and we were looking around and he was you know kind of impressed, kind of not impressed. I'll talk about his experience

[00:21:08] in a second but I was looking through these trucks and the interior is great. I don't know if I would love the steering wheel but you know overall I had really good impressions of the vehicle. The screen

[00:21:21] looks great, the back seat looks great but my buddy on the other hand so I'm just like enamored with these two trucks and going through this stuff and there was like a 67 or 68 Chevelle

[00:21:33] sitting right next to him and the next thing I know he's got the hood of the, he got permission but he's got the hood of the 68 Chevelle opened up and he's talking to the guy about the truck or about

[00:21:43] the car and we spent the rest of the time instead of going through the cyber truck like I thought we were going to do talking about the Chevelle and I'm not mad about it because he was more

[00:21:53] passionate about that car than I was about the cyber trucks but and it was a nice looking car. All right here is our last story and I'm going to ask you to think about what the 10 most American

[00:22:06] cars are. I'm not saying just so you know, I'm not saying the 10 most American made EVs. I'm saying cars, ICE cars, EVs the whole bit. I'm gonna give them to you. Number 10, think of who

[00:22:20] you think it is and I'm gonna tell you with each number okay? So I'm gonna give you the number. You think it's this model of car from this manufacturer. So number 10, the Lexus TX.

[00:22:33] Number nine, the Model X from Tesla. Number eight, the Jeep Gladiator. Number seven, the Toyota Camry. Number six, Honda Ridgeline. Number five, Honda Odyssey. Number four, Tesla Model S. Number three, Volkswagen ID4. Number two, Honda Passport. So Honda has three in the top 10 most

[00:23:05] American made cars and then number one is the Tesla Model Y. Missing from this list is the model three. There's the model three is not on this list, but I do have some information on the Model

[00:23:17] Three. Some long range Model Three versions are now eligible for the $7,500 federal tax credit if you're here in the United States. But yeah, those are the top 10. I thought it was really interesting. Let's see. Toyota has two if you count Lexus and then everybody else has one

[00:23:36] except for Tesla which has three. So yeah, pretty good. Pretty good for Tesla, pretty good for Honda. I did not think the ID4 would be in top three. I'm not even sure if I was just

[00:23:50] guessing I would have put the ID4 in the top 10. So good for Volkswagen. Whenever there are family events coming up like the 4th of July or around the holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving

[00:24:03] here in the U.S. or even Thanksgiving in Canada which happens for some reason a month earlier than ours. I always try to give people who listen to the show a little bit of ammunition

[00:24:16] when they're talking to a family member and they're spouting things that aren't necessarily true about EVs. Like, I don't think EVs are perfect and I don't think we should be presenting as if they're the savior of the planet because they're not. They're better than ICE cars but they're

[00:24:32] they're not helping the planet out for sure. But being able to say, hey, did you know that all these the Model Y, the Model S, the ID4, all those companies are the most American made cars

[00:24:46] or in the top 10 of the most American made cars? I think that helps you with the argument and that's my goal is to make your family events uncomfortable and more contentious. So I hope

[00:24:58] this works. Let me know. So, email bodi. If you're here in the United States and you are going to be celebrating Independence Day, enjoy it. Have fun. Be safe. I will be doing most of my Independence

[00:25:12] Day celebrations from the inside of a structure because it's hot outside. I'm going to make sure I have lots of air conditioning and lots of hydration. That's my plan. And then maybe at night I'll go watch fireworks. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening.

[00:25:30] I hope you all have a wonderful week and I will talk to you hopefully on Tuesday.