Tesla vs. Manitoba: Choose Your Fighter

[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 it may be a little more echoey than normal. We had a friend of mine come in and do some work in the room that I happen to be in and it's a little more empty than it typically is. Which is, at least to my ear, is throwing off some echo.

[00:00:49] I don't love it, but I do have some tools that might be able to take some of that echo out. So you may not notice it. We'll see. We'll see how good of a job I do. On today's episode we're going to talk news and then we have James from True North EVs and he's going to tell us about a lawsuit between the province of Manitoba in Canada and Tesla. And if you're not familiar with James' podcast you should definitely go check it out.

[00:01:17] But I'm laughing because I invited James on the show. Sorry, I'm talking with my hands. I'm very animated tonight. I invited James on the show. Completely forgot. I was like, can you come on on Friday? And he's like, yeah. I was like, cool. How about six? And he's like, great. And I guess I don't know what time zone Manitoba is in. But I basically, I forgot that it was Friday. I didn't forget that I was recording with him on Friday.

[00:01:44] I was just because of travel and trying to recruit after all that. I was just, I don't know what the problem was. But when I realized it was Friday, it was like three minutes after the time I thought we were supposed to record. And then it turns out we weren't supposed to record for another hour. Anyway, James is a professional is what I'm saying. I am a total moron. And also because I, because I didn't know what time zone Manitoba was in. I scheduled my son's haircut for the same time I was supposed to record with James.

[00:02:14] So I actually recorded in my car over my AirPods and James recorded in his studio. So anyway, that's all to say kudos to James. Go check out True North EVs, which is a great podcast. Yeah. And James is just an all around pro. So go check out what he's doing. He'll have some other things to promote in the interview and I'll let him do that. All right, let's go ahead and move on to. Oh, you know what? I have to thank somebody.

[00:02:43] Gene raised his Patreon pledge, which was very kind of him and never expected. But I really appreciate that he did that. So put your hands together for Gene, everybody. Hello, Gene. Thank you very much. Gene's been on the show before and he's a really good friend of the show. So I don't know if I mentioned that already yet or not, but it's definitely worth mentioning. So thank you again, Gene.

[00:03:09] All right, now let's get to our EV news. Let me scroll up to the top where the actual EV news is. Rivian is recalling over 30,000 R1Ss and R1Ts. The issue has to do with turn signals. So kind of an important thing, but not necessarily mission critical. I mean, you do need to have your turn signals. Don't get me wrong. But, you know, the car is not going to blow up if your turn signal doesn't work.

[00:03:37] This recall is affecting 2025 and 2026 R1 platform units. And it kind of the breakdown goes like this. It's 26,000 R1Ss and 5,700 R1Ts. That's the bad news. The good news is Rivian has updated the R1S. The 2027 R1S comes with an option that people are very much raving about.

[00:04:06] And I have to be honest, I love this feature as well. The 2027 R1S comes with captain's chairs. Now, this may not seem like a big deal to you, but if you have children, this is a huge deal. Now, when I was looking at the pictures of this, I was like, man, there's no armrest for the people who are sitting in the captain's chairs.

[00:04:31] But the armrest is actually built into the seat so you can actually pull it out and put it down. But when nobody's in that seat, you can put it back up and it's out of the way. So that's really nice. And then there's another really cool feature in the actual part that you sit on, the seat, not the backrest. There's a cup holder in the actual cushion part. So you can actually open that up. And I would describe it as a Volkswagen or German style cup holder.

[00:05:02] We'll have to see how strong it is. It doesn't seem like it's going to hold the stand, the cup full of water and ice on a hard break, but it might be stronger than it looks. But yeah, it's real nice looking cup holder. I don't know if you could put a Starbucks coffee bag there without it spilling because of the road vibration. But I don't know that you could do that on a lot of things. You know, it's a cool feature and it just comes right out of the seat cushion and the backrest.

[00:05:32] That's what I was the armrest is hidden in the backrest part of the seat. So you pull it out, set it down, put it away. Just overall, really cool. Rivian does a lot when it comes to putting thought into their products and that those are two cool features. Is it worth $80,000 or $100,000, depending on which trim you buy? Probably not.

[00:05:57] But if you did, if you did buy it, it's a nice feature. Next up, BYD revealed the Denza N8. And I should say that they revealed the new version of the Denza N8. The N8 first went on sale in 2023. So, you know, three years. We don't have a lot of specs in terms of the new N8, which is N like Nancy 8.

[00:06:27] But we do know it's a five-seater. It'll have a 130 kilowatt hour battery, which is made up of BYD's really, by now, kind of famous blade battery 2.0 cells. Those particular cells are capable of charging your car from 10% to 70% in five minutes or 10% to 97% in nine minutes.

[00:06:57] Now, you have to be at the correct charger that can give you that much electricity, but it does have that capability. So, that's pretty cool. It'll come in rear-wheel drive or all-wheel drive flavors. Oh, I didn't talk about the range. 1,003 kilometers of range or 623 miles. Not too bad.

[00:07:23] We don't know how much this car is going to cost, but I would imagine because it is a BYD product, I think the DENSA is a little bit more of a fancy version of a BYD in terms of the BYD group. But I can't imagine it's going to be too terribly much inside of China. It might be, you know, in the $35,000, $40,000 US range outside of China, but inside of China, I would imagine it's probably pretty affordable.

[00:07:48] And even then, if you get in 623 miles of range or 1,000 kilometers of range, it's probably pretty affordable when comparing it to other vehicles outside of China as well. Now, we do have folks that send in articles every now and again, and Jamie and Mark are two of those folks that do that. We're going to start off with Jamie, who is in Ireland. And there's other folks who are on the show frequently in Ireland.

[00:08:18] I don't know if this is public, so maybe I'll just shut my mouth. But hello to everybody in Ireland. Anyway, Jamie sent this article around along, not around, along. For the first time ever, fully electric vehicles are the top choice for new car buyers in Ireland. According to the Society of the Irish Motor Industry, battery electric vehicles grabbed 26% of new car registrations, which is huge.

[00:08:47] And I believe that's for the second quarter, which actually surpassed hybrid registrations. So battery electric vehicles on the rise for sure. Which, you know, this is a huge milestone. Ireland is outpacing other markets, European markets like Spain, which is about 10% of new vehicles registered. And Poland, which is like 5%.

[00:09:11] They're running neck and neck with the UK, which is not technically, I guess, a European country. Not part of the European Union anyway. But they're still behind Nordic countries. You know, Nordic countries are like 80 to 98% of new car registrations are battery electric vehicles. But still, this is pretty impressive. There's one problem, according to the article that I read.

[00:09:37] And 30% of Irish households lack access to private off-street charging. So like in-home charging, they don't have that ability or apartment charging or condo or whatever, you know, is going on there in Ireland. Currently, there are about 4,000 public charging stations in Ireland.

[00:10:00] And based on comparable European Union countries, it sounds like Ireland needs about 13,000 charging stations to get to where they need to be. So, you know, lots of room for growth. And then that growth is going to drive those charging stations for sure. But, I mean, this is still pretty good. 26% is a great number. We'll see what it looks like next quarter.

[00:10:31] All right. Our final EV story. Is that our final? No, we got one more. Hold on. Let me check. Nope. Our final EV story comes from Mark K in the UK. New EV sales in the United States are down by over 20% year over year. We know that new EV sales are not killing it at the moment. This is usually attributed to the end of the federal tax incentives, which I mean, admittedly, that may be part of it. But I don't really think that tells the whole story.

[00:11:01] There is something to be said that when the EV tax credit was running out, a lot of people went out and bought a car earlier than they maybe would have so that they could take advantage of that EV tax credit. And maybe there's just less people looking for a car at the moment that would be an EV. So I don't necessarily think that it's because the tax credit went away. I think it's more because people bought when the tax credit was here.

[00:11:28] And most people don't turn their car in a year after they bought it. Most, not all. But that's only part of what this article is about. And the article is really about the secondhand market, which is a completely different story. Used EVs just posted their best quarter ever.

[00:11:46] According to Cox Automotive, 128,000 used EVs were sold in Q2, which is a 29% jump compared to the same time last year. So used EVs are killing it.

[00:12:04] Part of the reason for that is a huge chunk of these vehicles are coming back onto the market because, you know, they're three-year-old vehicles and people are returning their lease and they're getting new cars. So that's part of it. A lot of automakers took advantage of like commercial leasing provisions, you know, a few years back. So now people are turning their leases in. So that's great.

[00:12:29] The average used EV is currently selling for around $37,000, which is slightly up from earlier in the year. But this is due to rising demand. So when we look at, you know, the average cost of an EV is probably $48,000 in the US.

[00:12:50] You can get a really good used EV that was maybe gently used, but but loved when it was being leased for around $37,000. You can save yourself about $11,000. If we're just going off of averages, obviously you can save yourself quite a bit more because not every car is going to cost $37,000. That's the, that's the average. But if you look at that and you look at like what gas prices are at the moment.

[00:13:16] And when you look at like the batteries themselves for EVs are actually holding up pretty well. You know, the fear that the battery was going to degrade in five years and you wouldn't be able to really use it anymore. That's not really happening. So high gas prices, really good. You know, the batteries really holding up really well has made a used EV more palatable for a lot of people.

[00:13:47] So I would say, you know, we're in a little bit of an EV slump, but that's not really because of lack of interest. I think that's mostly because pricing interest rates are very high. Um, but you know, more affordable used EVs are hitting the market, which makes them a really good option.

[00:14:08] Especially if you're looking for a second car or you're driving something that is maybe you're only getting 220 miles of range or something like that, but you're only driving to work and back and maybe works 20 miles each way. You're, you're still saving a lot of money when it comes to maintenance and gas. So, um, yeah. What are your thoughts on the used EV market in the U S compared to the new EV market? Um, I'm curious.

[00:14:37] You can email me Bodie, B O D I E at 9 1 8 digital.com. And big thanks to Jamie and Mark for passing those articles along. All right. That is our EV news. Let's move to our Tesla news. Before we do that. I just want to encourage everybody. If you want to support the show, you can go to support kilowatt.com. You can sign up, you can support the show. It basically, you just, it removes all the ads.

[00:15:03] And for a dollar, you can get a dollar a month, $12 a year. You can get rid of the ads completely and you never have to listen to another ad. So that is support kilowatt.com. And all the money goes back into the show. None of the Patreon money goes back into my pocket. All right. Moving on to our Tesla news. If you live in Texas, you may be able to rent a power wall for $35 a month, which is nuts. And I should say lease. They say rent in the article, but I think it's more of a lease.

[00:15:34] There is a catch. You do have to lease two power walls and sign up for Tesla electric. Now that's not the end of the world because if it's, you know, $35 a month for a power wall, you would expect it to be $70 a month for two power walls. That is not the case. You get two power walls for $35 a month.

[00:15:57] For everybody else outside of this program, because I looked, if I was to get a power wall and an extension, that would be $160 for that. So two power walls for $35. I think that's pretty good. Now there is a little bit of a catch because Tesla does get to use some of the capacity of the power wall for its virtual power plant. And some of that energy will go back to feed into ERCOT, which is Texas.

[00:16:27] Texas is like utility. Texas does things in a, in a weird way, but that's the like overall utility for the state electric utility. Uh, it's not available everywhere in Texas. So, you know, do your research to see if it's available where you are, if this is something you're interested in. One of the articles I read said it doesn't include solar panels, but I'm unclear if that means you can't have this deal.

[00:16:55] If you already have solar panels or they're just saying this isn't a solar lease. Um, it sounds like they're just saying it. This isn't a solar lease. Uh, if you want to continue to qualify for the $35 a month, you have to stay in the Tesla electric program, which is, you know, make it somehow. And somehow Tesla is a retail electric utility. I'm not really sure how that all works.

[00:17:20] You know, uh, there's a, I had a friend who worked for Idaho power a long time ago and he was explaining to me how, you know, they buy and sell power on the open market. And I mean, it's interesting, but it's also kind of mind numbing. So there's a lot that goes into that, but somehow Tesla figured it out. But anyway, if you do live in an area where you can get this deal, $35 is pretty good. You have to put a hundred dollars down, but that's it.

[00:17:46] Like all the equipment and installation just comes with, with, with the $35 a month, which is crazy. Yeah. Uh, next up Tesla is planning on building a robo taxi charging facility in Austin, Texas. Oh, you know what? We have a breaking alert here. Let's see.

[00:18:09] I have an imminent threat alert, a dust storm warning for the area that I live in until 1015 mountain standard time, uh, ready for sudden drop to zero visibility. Pull aside, stay alive. That's nice. Um, and we are not in the middle of it, but fairly close. That's cool. What else here? Normally after a dust storm, we get some good rain. So hopefully we'll get some good rain cause we really need it.

[00:18:39] And I know everybody that's in Arizona listening to this, we'll be listening to it after this, uh, emergency alert, but, um, yeah, stay safe for everybody. That's really what it comes down to. Even if you're not in Arizona, let's move on to the, this, I've never had a critical emergency alert before. As far as I know, imminent threat alert is what it says on my phone.

[00:19:06] Anyway, um, moving back to our Tesla news. Tesla is planning on building a robo taxi charging facility in Austin, Texas. There are two phases of this project. One phase will be, uh, they're going to build out 48 version four supercharger posts. Or stalls, which is great. Cause you know, all these robo taxis that Tesla's planning on to put on the road will need some place to charge.

[00:19:33] But that requires a person to get over, you know, move over and, and installed, put the charger in. Um, phase two, however, we'll install 80 wireless chargers. And that, I think that's super cool. I am looking forward to the wireless EV charger. Uh, I don't know in my current house, if that's something I'll ever do.

[00:19:54] Cause I have a, currently have a charger and that just adds more money, but maybe someday when we move it's a, if it's available, that'll be something that I'd be interested in putting in my next house. But as it is right now, um, that's not something I'm interested in, but I think it's really cool technology and look forward to seeing that in more places. All right. Uh, since we're talking about robo taxis, let's talk about the Tesla Cybercab.

[00:20:23] Tesla has confirmed that it is planning to do a launch event for the cyber cab in Austin, Texas. We don't have a ton of details other than they are going to have an official event and that's going to be soon.

[00:20:40] We, because it's going to be held in Austin, Tesla is holding like a sweepstakes so that five normal people will have a chance to attend the event and, and to enter into the, to the sweepstakes, I guess. You have to take a ride in a robo taxi between August 17th and August 23rd. And then the winners will be announced August 25th. You cannot call a robo taxi and then cancel it. That doesn't count.

[00:21:10] That doesn't get you entered into the sweepstakes. The, the nice thing about this is for every ride that you take, you are entered into the contest. So that's pretty cool. You can also enter by mail. And if you go to Tesla's event webpage, you can find more details on how to enter by, by mail. We don't know when exactly the event is going to be, but we do know that it's going to be sometime after. August 25th. So, which is, you know, when they announced the winner.

[00:21:39] So I would imagine August 25th, we're going to find out when the actual event is going to be. Five doesn't seem like very many to me. Does it seem like that many to you? It just seems like they probably could have gotten 30 or 40 or 50 and still been okay. But maybe they're keeping the group small. So it's more intimate, intimate. And it's more personable. I don't know. It's more special. I'm it's late at night folks.

[00:22:07] And there's an imminent dust storm coming. I'm such a dummy. I almost said the bad word. Anyway, it's been, man, if I could tell you all the stories of how the last couple of weeks have gone. Um, I think this is our final story. Hold on. Let me check here. Yes, this is our final story. I, um, my, my idiocy is coming to an end.

[00:22:33] Um, Mikhail Gapinski did a, he's a little bit of a Tesla hacker. He did a retrofit on his 2022 model three, which had and came with obviously hardware three. Um, but he found a, uh, wrecked or salvaged model Y that had hardware four in it. And he scavenged the parts from the model Y, all the hardware four parts.

[00:23:02] And then he took those back to his model three and he hooked, you know, the, he replaced the computer the hardware four repeater cameras, um, did a light little bit of, you know, ECU hacking as you do. He was able, which was interesting to reuse the coax cables that were in the existing car for the cameras, but he had to use an adapter to connect them to the hardware four cameras.

[00:23:28] But this was pretty easy to do because he had all the Tesla schematics because Tesla make this, makes this available. So, um, basically what, what Mikhail said was this was a lot easier than he thought it was going to be. And basically the, the thought online is what's keeping Tesla from doing this from finally upgrading the hardware three vehicles. And I would imagine that Tesla probably has a more elegant way of doing it.

[00:23:55] Like the, the computer, he had to use some zip ties to get everything to fit into place and be secure. I would imagine that Tesla is not going to be using zip ties. They'll probably have some special mount that will go into when they retrofit for the computer and other things. So it's not, you know, I, it is nice to see that it's not as hard as people thought it was going to be initially.

[00:24:20] When, when it was announced that hardware four was coming out and hardware three probably wasn't going to be everything that it needed to be to, for full self-driving. Um, but still this guy did it, which is really impressive. I mean, very remarkable that he was just like, you know what, let's give it a shot. And I'm surprised that the people haven't tried. Maybe they have and they failed, but Mikhail figured it out. So that's amazing.

[00:24:49] Mikhail, if you listen to the show and you want to come on, you can email me Bodie, B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com. I'd love to talk to you about this, but moral of the story, it's not as hard as, as, as we thought it was going to be. So this is awesome. Uh, hopefully Tesla will figure it out again. I'm not expecting to get mine, my car upgraded because I didn't pay for full self-driving, nor did I subscribe, uh, to, for the, the subscription.

[00:25:19] So I, I wouldn't expect that I would get this, but hopefully folks who did pay for hardware three in the past, we'll get this, this upgrade for free. And then if Tesla wants to offer a paid version, maybe that might be something I'd look into, but I really have to see how it, how it acts. Um, I, I need to be more impressed before I shell out that much money. All right, everybody, that is it for the news.

[00:25:48] Let's chat with James from True North EVs about the lawsuit between Tesla and Manitoba, the province of Manitoba in Canada. So James, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Bodhi. Great to be here. So you're so much more professional than I am, James, because you're not sitting in front of the Great Clips in Tempe, but you're sitting in front of a proper microphone in a proper studio.

[00:26:19] But thank you so much for coming on. What's that? I, I wouldn't give me that much credit. Uh, well you, today you get all their credit, buddy. I, I just, so everybody knows, I, I asked James to be on. I forgot to send him links and I forgot today was the day we're recording. So he was, he, superstar, uh, James over here. James, today we are going to talk a little bit about Tesla and Manitoba and a lawsuit. Can you fill us in on what's going on there?

[00:26:49] Uh, so this is a similar lawsuit that happened to our neighboring province, Ontario, about, I think that was about two, three years ago. Manitoba decided that Tesla would no longer qualify, uh, for the EV rebate that is offered, um, with Manitoba. The normal rebate is anything under 70 grand as long at the point, anything other than a Chinese vehicle qualifies.

[00:27:18] Um, they changed that to include Tesla's. Um, this is very hard to do without getting political. Well, I was just, I'll, I'll say it's, it's likely due to the, uh, close ties of Elon Musk and Donald Trump and the tensions between America and Canada. And we should say you, you, you are in Canada and you are Canadian. I am Canadian.

[00:27:47] So our, our premier of our province, so kind of, I guess it'd be like your governor, uh, is very open on saying it was basically because of the ties between, uh, Elon Musk. And, uh, so yeah, he basically, uh, cut Tesla off going back almost two years ago. And in Ontario, when that happened, cause they did the same thing, uh, what happened was

[00:28:15] it was decided by a court that they weren't allowed to do that. And so what Ontario did was just cut off the whole rebate program. Um, so technically Manitoba and Tesla go to court in November is the first day for court. And we'll see what comes about this. But, uh, right now Tesla would qualify for some of them, but, uh, some of their bigger selling

[00:28:44] vehicles, uh, wouldn't qualify. Um, like right now they're bringing the model threes in from China, fantastic price on them. Um, but they won't qualify because they're Chinese made. I was going to ask that though in the, in the end, as it stands right now, do you think Manitoba is going to lose this case? We're thinking it's highly likely. Some of their vehicles won't even qualify because of price.

[00:29:13] When you say some, are you talking about the, the Cybertruck? Cause we were not selling the model S and X anymore. Would it just be the higher trims of the Y and the three? Yeah. So, so cause of that $70,000 price cap, the S and X would have still been there. Model Y, uh, some of those would have been over that $70,000 mark anyways. So some of those wouldn't qualify.

[00:29:37] It hasn't really been spoken about what Tesla is hoping to get out of this. Um, if they're just trying to get reinstated or if they're trying to actually get the money back. Um, because even the way the program works is as a person that buys the vehicle, I'm the one that has to actually apply for the rebate. It's not at the dealership level.

[00:30:06] So let's say they sold a thousand vehicles. It's not necessarily that all thousand people would even, uh, themselves qualify because you're only allowed one per person. So I don't know. Forever? Uh, for now, I haven't seen any sort of timeframe on it as to how long, but at one per person.

[00:30:31] So I believe it's same as Oregon, where if you have four people in the house, you still can shuffle through the four type deal. Yeah. Gotcha. And how much is the rebate? Uh, so it's, uh, right now $4,000, uh, for, uh, so again, under that $70,000. Yeah. It's 70,000 Canadian dollars. We should make sure that we're there on that.

[00:30:58] So in, in that case, James, it seems to me, um, me being, uh, uh, the Southern, uh, the Southern part of North America, the middle part of North America, it seems to me that this is more something that hurts actual customers, uh, Canadians than more than it hurts Tesla because Tesla's getting the money no matter what.

[00:31:23] It's not like they're knocking a piece of the price off and then hoping to get those incentives. They're charging a full, full price. And then the buyer applies for the incentives. Is that done? Right. Yeah. Uh, they did drop the price down a little bit after they were cut out of the rebate program. Um, so you can say they did take a little hit, but not really.

[00:31:50] Um, it is more the buyer, but they're not hurting. There is many people lined up to still pick up a Tesla. It slowed down a bit, uh, give it about six to nine months. It was really slow for them. Um, but definitely picking up, uh, especially once they got the Chinese, uh, model Y or Chinese model threes coming in.

[00:32:19] I have people at work that basically were ordering two or three of them at a time. What is the, what is a model three Chinese model three costs in Canada right now? I know I sprung this on you and James is going to look real quick and I'll just kind of vamp. Uh, the, it is interesting because does that count towards the, the number overall number

[00:32:47] of Chinese vehicles that can be brought in to Canada? Yeah. So we're already on our first section of us to, I believe it was 40,000 vehicles that were allowed to be brought in. And I know we still didn't get that 40,000 because there is Tesla and I think Volvo. We're kind of the only ones really bringing them in.

[00:33:09] Oh, the rest, uh, like BYD is working on, uh, setting up, uh, dealerships here. Showrooms. Uh, I think Dang Wang is the other one that, uh, showed off vehicles here that are going to be available recently. Yeah. But, uh, nothing yet here. There's many that I'm seeing online that just send us your money and you'll get it. I don't know how much I trust those, but, uh, yeah.

[00:33:40] So, uh, right now, uh, Chinese model three is 42,000. Let me see. That'd be about 37,000 us. Or, uh, 30. Oh, 30. Dang. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah.

[00:34:06] So they're definitely not doing bad, especially given here in Canada, the average, uh, selling price of a new vehicle, gas, electric doesn't matter is $60,000. So even at 42,000, you're well below the average price. And it's a great specced car. Like you're still looking at 463 kilometer range.

[00:34:31] So rear wheel drive, but great cars, but they're not hurting. Um, it will be interesting to see how they do when the others like BYD and Dang Wang start selling. But yeah. I would imagine that Tesla just wants to eat all of that market up as much as that, as much as they can out of that 40,000. They just want to suck all the air out of the room.

[00:35:00] But James, I appreciate, uh, finish your thought. I didn't want to take a cut you off. Especially right now with the gas prices. Uh, that's why a lot of guys are moving over, uh, to checking these out gas prices and vehicles are selling like crazy here. What is a liter of gas costs right now? Uh, about a dollar 60 ounces. Okay. So that comes out to about what? Close to $5.

[00:35:29] Man, I know, I know math. Not only are we doing, we're converting Canadian dollars and, uh, the rest of the world. Units against freedom units. It's very, uh, works out to $4 and 36. Okay. So that's about what it is here. Okay. Um, but that's on the low end and it moves quickly up to basically in the morning, it might start out a dollar 60 and move up to a dollar 80 by afternoon.

[00:36:00] Oh, okay. I know with, uh, I drive an F one 50 for work and it's almost $200 to fill that up. Oh, geez. Yeah. Versus, uh, driving the Equinox, uh, 800 kilometers for about $120. Yeah. I was just going to say, uh, I would love to hear, uh, more about it. Cause you, you went from having a Kona.

[00:36:25] You were actually maybe the first person I knew that had an EV that was a part of this community, the kilowatt EV community. And then, so you went from a Kona to an X to a, um, um, Chevy Equinox. Uh, if you, if you're up to it, I would love to have you back on when I could be in a proper recording studio and set this up the right way, um, to, to chat with what your experience was with that. Sure.

[00:36:54] We could also throw in, I also drive a 2014 Nissan Leaf. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's my regular driver. So we could talk a little bit about the Chatham. Yeah. The journey. Use it, but yeah. Uh, James, how would people find you? I would, where would they go to, to find out what you're doing? You could find me online. Most of them are going to be under true North EV on Facebook or LinkedIn, or you could search

[00:37:23] for my podcast at true North EV podcast. I'll put the links in the show notes. Do you want to talk about your consulting real quick before we get out of here? Cause I'm sure consulting crosses borders. If people want to talk to you about getting an EV, how would they do that? Uh, so they can reach out to me again at true North EV at gmail.com or find me online true North EV.ca. Uh, just helping people. There's so many new people coming to look at electric vehicles. Not sure what's best for them.

[00:37:53] Beauty is I, again, as you've said, I've driven and owned many different brands and it, I like to drive EVs. So like to learn a little bit of everything. So helping people out pick their right one for them. Everybody thinks they need one with the most range that then costs the most. And now you might be able to get away with a 12 year old Nissan LEA. Just driving around the city. 100%. Pick one that will work for you 90% of the time. Yeah.

[00:38:24] Uh, perfect. James, I will double stamp your podcast. I'm a big fan, although I did miss the Equinox thing. So I will, I will take full ownership of that. But thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for having me on. Thanks, buddy. Have a good one. All right, everybody. I would like to thanks James. And I would also like to encourage everybody to go and check out True North EVs podcast.

[00:38:49] If you live in the US or any other part of the world and you're looking for an EV, I know for a fact that James knows his stuff. And how do I know? Because early on when I didn't understand a lot of things about EVs and, you know, how battery, you know, electricity is stored and all that stuff. And, and listen, nobody listened to the podcast back then, but maybe a handful of people. And I'm happy to say we have a lot of those people still with us.

[00:39:19] But James, in addition to everybody else out there who was, was rocking with me early on in the, in the podcast really helped me understand that. And in a lot of ways, cause there was, there used to be a Slack channel way back when it just got too much to maintain for me. But, um, in a lot of ways we, we all kind of learned together. So anyway, this is a very long drawn out way of saying, go check out what James is doing.

[00:39:46] And if you are looking for somebody to kind of help you with what kind of EV you might need, he's a good resource for sure. All right, everybody, that is it for me. I'm going to go, um, hide from the dust storm. It is now, let's see, it's nine 30. So I have 45 minutes that this dust storm could rock my house. So we'll see what happens. I hope everybody has a, or is having a great week.

[00:40:14] This is a weekly edition of Kilowatt, by the way, our next episode, we will have Lucid's, uh, Q2 2026 earnings call. So hopefully everybody enjoys that as well. Everybody. Thank you so much for listening. And I will talk to you all soon.

[00:40:48] Okay. One last thing. If you want to know what the weather sounds like here, when it's monsooning, I had to go out and turn the water off because I had my drip line set up to water my trees, but it's raining. So I don't want to waste a bunch of water and water the trees when it's raining. So I had to go to two different hose bibs in my backyard to turn them off. And, um, I brought you along with me.

[00:41:15] So if you want to listen, you can, if not, you can turn it off here. Without further ado, here's my adventure of turning off the drip lines. Also, this might be a huge failure because I use the service called Auphonic to clean up the audio and Auphonic might take all of this out, but we'll see where it goes.

[00:41:41] I'm outside.