Tesla's Rebound, Polestar's Ban, and The Great Battery Heist

[00:00:21] Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving, and much, much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host. We are recording this. We, I am recording this on a Thursday sitting outside while my kids are doing martial arts. And it's been a good week. Just a busy week. So I'm a little late in getting this out, but lots of good things going on. Just

[00:00:52] taking a lot of time. So, uh, this episode is going to be a little different. Um, just because, you know, there's just like putting it together. I've just been piecing it here and there as I've been able to, uh, have a little bit of time to, to work through this. So, uh, keep that in mind. Uh, it might be a little bit shorter. I don't know. I tend to think that these things take less time to record than they really do. But in reality, I usually end up around 20 minutes.

[00:01:21] Um, so as I'm sitting here watching, uh, through the window, the kids doing their jujitsu, my daughter was working with another kid and that kid got up and he must've gotten hurt. So, uh, if I sound distracted, I just want to make sure it looks like he's okay. Um, anyway, moving on, uh, we have a new Patreon supporter and that Patreon supporter's name is Ben. Ben, thank you so much for supporting the show.

[00:01:49] I've had an opportunity to have a few interactions back and forth with Ben. So I really appreciate that he came over and decided to start support the show. If you would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash kilowatt or support kilowatt.com. And, uh, when you do that, if you go to support kilowatt.com, you could choose to support either on Patreon or Supercast. However, it makes sense to you. And I only ask for a dollar. So that will be the Patreon plug. I'll keep it real quick.

[00:02:19] Let's go ahead and dive into our EV news. Polestar, which is a Swedish company. Um, they are owned by Gili, which is a Chinese company. And right now, I don't know how many people are aware of this, but the U S and Chinese, China, Chinese relations aren't fantastic at the moment. Uh, in,

[00:02:47] I think it was under the Biden administration. They actually put a ban on, uh, Chinese connected cars in place. And the Trump administration left that in place. That's how I understand, uh, the, the, how this whole thing worked.

[00:03:02] But, uh, the, uh, the ban includes any model year after 2027. So 2027 and beyond. Well, Gili owns Volvo. Uh, they also own, uh, like I said, they also own Polestar and Volvo is actually, we talked about this a few weeks ago.

[00:03:28] They actually received approval by the U S department of commerce to bypass this, uh, connected car ban. And Polestar did not get that same approval to bypass it. It doesn't sound like Polestar was like fighting it super hard, honestly.

[00:03:45] But, uh, yeah, so Polestar will no longer be able to sell, uh, cars here in the U S doesn't mean they won't be able to sell cars elsewhere. Just here in the United States, they, after the 2027 model year comes around, they will not be able to sell cars. So it's, it's 2026 and that's it. We will not see any 2027 Polestars in the U S unless something crazy happens.

[00:04:11] Now, the interesting thing is the Polestar and the Volvo EVs and Volvo and Polestar share a lot of the same DNA and their infotainment systems, their connected car features are built on Google built in. So they're run on Google built in, which is the same thing that Chevy's using and other automakers are using.

[00:04:36] So for Polestar not to, to get approval seems a little weird to me. If Volvo could get approval, it's not to say that they're exactly the same. Um, just because they're both built on Google built in, you know, they can customize it here and there to suit their needs. So it may be that there's something different about what Polestar is doing versus what Volvo is doing, but because they're both owned by the same company, because they're both Swedish owned companies.

[00:05:05] And I believe Volvo actually owns a portion of Polestar as well. There should be some communication back and forth to how they can make this whole connected car thing, uh, work.

[00:05:21] Now it's not just the infotainment system that, you know, uh, that, uh, the, uh, the U S government is looking at it's the whole connected car and where it's phoning home to and all that other stuff. And so there's a lot to this that, uh, I'm oversimplifying, but what I really kind of want to point out is because they're both owned by the same parent company and they both are built on this, a lot of the same DNA.

[00:05:47] You would think that they would be able to figure that part out so that Polestar could continue selling cars here in the U S. And if I had to like, think of why this is an issue is maybe Polestar's aren't selling that great here in the U S anyway. And then they decided, you know what, this isn't just, this isn't a market that's going to work out. So why try? Um, and that might be, that might be the case. I don't know, but I do think that it's interesting.

[00:06:15] That Volvo was approved. Polestar wasn't. It is also interesting because Polestar has, uh, manufacturing plants in the United States. Oh, not Polestar. I'm sorry. Uh, Volvo has manufacturing plants in the United States. And right now Polestar is, there are some Polestars produced in the United States, but they're also coming out of China and Korea.

[00:06:41] So I don't, I mean that, that might also play a factor in this like South Carolina plant is where they're, uh, building the Polestar three. The Polestar four is primarily built in South Korea. Uh, and the Polestar two is, is typically coming out of China. So with that, you know, I don't know.

[00:07:03] Um, we're the, the, the, the, the bummer on this is that we're losing a really good EV, uh, car here in the United States that people who own them love them. So that is a little bit of a bummer, but to celebrate the fact that they're ending operations in the United States, Polestar is discounting the Polestar three and the Polestar four.

[00:07:28] At the moment they don't sell the Polestar two in the United States anymore, just like they don't sell the Volvo EX 30 in the United States. Cause that's also built in China. But the, the discounts on the three and the four, they're pretty significant. It could be up to $23,000 for the Polestar three and up to $25,000 off for the Polestar four.

[00:07:53] So if we look at this, a Polestar three now starts at $54,000, a Polestar four, which is reviewed really well now starts at $35,000. If you wanted to pick up an EV that was a really good value, this would be the time, uh, if you were interested in Polestar.

[00:08:17] Now there are different terms and conditions you have to meet to get the 25 or $23,000 off the cars. So please go and do your, your, your, your research. But if you meet the conditions, that's a pretty good number. Um, $35,000. Like we're looking at Chevy Equinox, uh, uh, uh, uh, prices for $35,000. And a Polestar four, I'm looking up the range here real quick.

[00:08:47] Yeah. The single motor Polestar four has got a range of 310 miles. If you're looking at a dual motor, it's 280,000 miles or 280 miles. It's got a range of 310 miles for single motor and a range of 280 miles for the dual motor. Um, if you want the performance, you're only going to get it at 255 miles, but still $35,000 is a great price for that car.

[00:09:18] Okay. Um, it's, it's a new month. We're sitting down July 2nd as I record this and in the new month and it's a new quarter and we usually start seeing delivery numbers. So I was going to talk a little bit about delivery numbers and I'll pepper men in the, over the next couple of shows as we get more information. But Toyota sold 17,500 EVs.

[00:09:43] And my first thought, because, uh, I had just done a story or I just put in a story about NIO, which we'll talk about in a second. My first thought was that was how many they sold in June. And I was very impressed. And then I found out it wasn't, um, I'm still impressed because it's Toyota, but Toyota sold 17,500 EVs. That was for the first half of 2026. You know, they have some, they have the Toyota Highlander coming. That's going to be all EV.

[00:10:12] They got some cool stuff coming, uh, in terms of EVs over the next year or two. So we'll see what happens, uh, with Toyota. But yeah, that's not a great number overall for six months for a car company as big as Toyota. But they're also, you know, not really selling a lot of different EV brands. So they've really kind of put the, their, uh, efforts into this next series, which will be start with a Highlander and so on.

[00:10:42] And then, uh, and they, they, they have some newer, I don't know. I don't want to go too much into Toyota. Uh, anyway, they, it's not just the Highlander. There's other stuff going on. Um, now let's move on to Rivian deliveries. Rivian delivered 12,194 vehicles in Q2 of 2026. That is up 14% year over year. So that's a great, um, bonus.

[00:11:10] That's a great, um, uh, improvement for Rivian. Uh, their initial guidance was they were going to sell or deliver between nine and 11,000 cars over Q2 of 2026. So they certainly beat expectations. And Rivian is actually revised their delivery guidance. So initially they said they're going to deliver somewhere between 62 and 67,000 EVs in 2026.

[00:11:39] They are now saying they're going to sell between or deliver between 65 and 70,000 vehicles. And I'm sure as Rivian is, as they kind of get on board with production on the R2, as that ramps up, I'm sure R2 is going to make up a decent part of that, you know, 65,000 to 70,000 vehicles. So we'll keep an eye on it. Rivian, I think their earnings call is July 20th.

[00:12:08] So we will for sure cover Rivian's earnings call this quarter. I don't think I'm going to do Ford and GM unless something crazy comes out of their earnings calls. Cause they just were not that interesting to me, um, overall. So we'll cover, uh, Lucid and Tesla and Rivian. Oh, and just kind of a side note here. I didn't write this down, but Lucid is doing a big shakeup in the C-suite.

[00:12:34] They got a new CEO and that CEO is making sweeping changes in the C-suite. So, uh, if we have time, you know, in a future show and it's still relevant, I'll talk about that. But just keep that in the back of your head. Finally, NIO had a pretty good June. Sales were actually up for NIO 63% year over year.

[00:12:58] So NIO had a total of 40,597 deliveries in June. That is a fantastic number for NIO. If you're looking at how these deliveries were split up across NIO's three brands. So you have NIO, that's the main brand that they started with. They delivered 21,908 vehicles. And then you have the Anvo and the Anvo has vehicles that are competing with like the Model Y.

[00:13:27] They're a little bit more money, but they're less money than let's say the NIO brand. Those, uh, they delivered 11,743 of those vehicles. And then they had the Firefly, which is their most affordable brand. Um, when I say their most affordable brand, when you compare the Firefly with like a BYD seal, the Firefly is about twice the price.

[00:13:52] So they delivered, uh, 6,946 Fireflies, which honestly I'm a little surprised about because this is supposed to be their, their really affordable brand, their compact car, their, their, you know, the plan was to sell them in Europe and, you know, uh, Australia and New Zealand and stuff like that. And it just, they started, uh, production last year in 2025, like April of 2025.

[00:14:20] And they just really haven't, um, taken off. Like I think they should have now, granted, this is almost 7,000 cars in a month. Whereas Toyota is only delivered in the United States, 17,000 cars. So, you know, it's not in the first half of 2026, it's not nothing, but I would have expected them to have much higher sales of the Firefly. So I wonder what's going on there in the markets that they're selling that car.

[00:14:50] All right, let's move on to our Tesla news. And we're going to start off with Tesla's delivery numbers. Tesla had a fantastic Q2 2026 when it comes to production and delivery numbers. As a matter of fact, it is there. If you look at all of their quarters throughout the history of the company, this is the fourth best quarter they've ever had.

[00:15:16] So when you look at 2025, especially the latter half of 2025 and the first half of 2026, we had some, uh, down numbers for Tesla and it looks like those numbers are starting to tick back up again in Q2 2026. So starting off with the production numbers, when we look at model three and model Y production, the, in three months, they, they produced 442,936 vehicles.

[00:15:46] Uh, I mean this there, other than BYD, they're just eclipsing everybody in the EV market. And then when we look at other models, which include Cybertruck, Semi and model S and model X, they produced 8,822. And that's a grand total of 451,758 vehicles produced in three months, which is just an amazing number.

[00:16:14] All right, let's move on to our delivery numbers. And yes, I am in fact back in my studio. If it sounds different, it's because I'm back in my studio. So now delivery numbers, when we look at the model three and the model Y, they delivered 467,762 vehicles. That is just such an amazing number.

[00:16:40] You know, in one quarter, they delivered what a lot of EV companies would love to deliver in a year, uh, one quarter. And then when we look at other models, again, that includes the Cybertruck, the Semi, the S and the X. And I would expect that we would have, you know, a little bit bigger S and X sales, just simply because that was the, the end of the, of an era with the S and X.

[00:17:06] They delivered 2,364 EVs total across all four of those vehicles. Uh, let's see. And that gave us a grand total of 480,126 EVs delivered in Q2, 2026. So pretty good.

[00:17:31] Um, I mean, it, it, it, it, it's a hard one to, you know, you can have a lot of bad things to say about Tesla and, you know, sometimes I'm, I'm a little harsh on Tesla, but you, you just can't argue that they are a popular, they, they build a good car. It may not be to your liking, um, but they build a good car. It's relatively fairly priced and, um, people tend to like them.

[00:18:01] So yeah, Tesla's earnings call will be July 22nd, uh, at the end of the month here. So we will make sure to cover them as well. This next one's a bit weird. Since December of 2025, there, there have been, uh, somebody has stolen batteries from Tesla a minimum of 11 times since December of 2025.

[00:18:31] And it's not that they sold, they stole a couple of battery cells here, here and there. They saw whole battery packs, whole power walls in some cases. And it's just like in December they sold, they stole, excuse me, about half a million dollars worth of, of batteries. And then that happened one time they sold, they stole two full trailers.

[00:18:56] And then in January that happened to nine more times they stole these trailers. So what had happened was the thieves exploited security gaps by using fake IDs and they had, you know, relationships with different Tesla shipping companies and they were able to gain access through, you know, different, uh, failed security protocols on Tesla's part and the,

[00:19:24] and the shipping companies part to make these, uh, theft thefts pretty frequent. And, you know, two full trailers of power walls in December, like I said, were totaled that $475,000. That's insane. So what it looks like had happened is the freight broker that Tesla uses contracted the jobs to fraudulent carriers.

[00:19:52] And that's, that's how, you know, they were able to just drive away with trailers full of batteries. At this, at the time that the article was written that I'm, I'm getting this from, there was three arrests made. And it does sound like, you know, the authorities had put GPS trackers in the trailers and they were able to kind of track down at least some of the people who were doing this.

[00:20:17] But you would think like, if you made your way in December of 2025, if you made it away with over half a million dollars worth of batteries, obviously you're not selling those poor power walls anywhere because Tesla, once they're activated, Tesla's going to be like, we know this is a stolen power wall. Where'd you get it? And they'll be able to track it back, but maybe they could take these apart and sell the modules or sell the individual battery cells, that kind of thing. Right.

[00:20:44] Um, but that would be, that should, that should be where you stop, you know, doing this 10 more times, at least 10 more times. You eventually Tesla's going to catch on and they're going to be like, oh yeah, we're going to let you steal something and we're going to track it and then we'll catch you. And that's what they did. So anyway, I thought it was a weird story. All right.

[00:21:12] Uh, FSD, we have a new FSD version for hardware or AI three vehicles. It is FSD version 14 light. So hardware for vehicles already have version 14. This is the, um, this is the lighter version.

[00:21:34] This is the not as full featured version of FSD version 14 that hardware for vehicles have. This is actually the first FSD or major FSD update for hardware three vehicles in around 14 months. And it's not to say it's their, not their first update for the vehicle itself. It's the first FSD major update.

[00:21:57] And Ashok Alaswamy had this to say, FSD version 14 is now rolling out to AI three early access customers. Based on the feedback we'll roll out to more customers over the next few weeks. This build distills the driver behavior from AI fours version 14 series into both camera and compute config of AI three.

[00:22:27] It includes destination option options, speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly, significant improved safety. We hope you'll enjoy it once it ships wide, the build ships wide. So in the release notes, this is what it says, uh, distilled intelligence from hardware three version 14 into hardware three.

[00:22:53] Uh, it allows hardware three to directly learn how to handle scenarios using hardware for V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to hardware four, including reinforced learning and offline models for hardware three. So I'm reading from reading this, right. It's basically, we took the intelligence from AI or hardware for vehicles, and then we pass

[00:23:21] that down into hardware three and it can phone home based on and learn based on hardware for experiences. If I'm reading that right. Uh, it also improves both proactive and reactive response across a wide variety of categories, including navigation, handling, merging, forks, uh, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights,

[00:23:43] and vehicle cut in scenarios, improve general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering, and more consistent lane centering. That is fantastic. Introduced, uh, parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities. Um, unparking is a funny term, uh, added arrival options, uh, for you to select where FSD

[00:24:13] should park, you know, whether that's going to be in a parking lot or on the street or in the driveway or on curbside. Uh, speed profiles are now available to further customize driving style preference. This update is, in my opinion, pretty impressive, especially when you consider that hardware three or AI three has about 15% of the Q, the memory bandwidth that hardware four does.

[00:24:39] So, uh, we're definitely, you know, constrained with hardware three. And it sounds like they were able to take a lot of the features that hardware four had and bring them to hardware three. Obviously this is not where we need to be in terms of making it so that everybody can have a, you know, level four, level five experience with their car.

[00:25:03] But, uh, you know, it's a step in the right direction of, uh, until they can basically replace the hardware four, uh, computers that are replaced hardware three with hardware four computers or AI three and AI four. So yeah, um, I need to start saying AI. I, it's, it's hard because we started off with the hardware nomenclature and then,

[00:25:32] uh, they switched without telling anybody to AI and they talked to people like they were dumb if they were saying hardware instead of AI, but really like AI three. Hmm. I mean, let's just call it hardware three, hardware four. I don't, I don't, I don't like AI is something different. So anyway, whatever, that's what they're doing.

[00:25:54] Uh, this will, like a shock said, once the, the, uh, testers, you know, get it and start playing with it and, uh, you know, it rolls out to more people, it will be, um, a wider rollout in the U S and then maybe the rest of North America in terms of this being rolled

[00:26:18] out to EU countries, uh, or excuse me, approved EU countries, China, South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia. That's probably going to be sometime in the future. Um, and it's not going to be in the order that I just set it in, but I can't imagine that, uh, Tesla is going to roll this out, uh, across multiple countries quickly. I imagine this is going to take some time.

[00:26:44] So in the end though, I do have, I have plenty of criticisms when it comes to Tesla, but I do think this is a step in the right direction. Uh, a little update. We talked about the car accident that occurred where a, uh, Tesla driver drove into a house in Katy, Texas and killed a 76 year old grandmother. The driver is being, uh, um, he's going to trial for manslaughter.

[00:27:15] So just kind of FYI, just a little update on that. I mean, it doesn't mean he's going to be convicted of manslaughter. That just means he's going to trial. Um, and then, you know, we'll see what happens after that. Um, oh, you know what? There's a new model. Why did, is everybody aware of this?

[00:27:37] Uh, the model Y L premium or the longer three row model Y is now available for sell here in the United States, or excuse me, it's available for pre-order here in the United States. And it is a little bit longer, um, than a standard model Y. And initially they're only going to sell the model Y L premium, which is a three row car.

[00:28:07] Um, so you'll be able to, it'll have two captain seats and then two seats in the back. So it'll fit six. It looks like comfortably. And, you know, I don't know how much comfortable, more comfortable this is going to be than like a model X. It kind of looks tight back in the back seats there, but that's just based on Tesla's, um, based on their, uh, images.

[00:28:33] Um, based on the overall length, uh, the overall length is 195 inches. And Tesla doesn't make it easy to compare here, compare models. Oh, they do make it easy to compare. I'm just stupid. Uh, so we'll do the rear wheel drive with the model Y premium all wheel drive. All right.

[00:29:01] So we're looking at some significant pricing differences. I couldn't make this bigger. Um, if we're looking at the starting model Y that starts at $40,000, whereas the starting price of the model Y premium is going to be $62,000 range is going to be 325 miles, uh, zero to 60 and 4.4 seconds.

[00:29:31] So, uh, that's not too bad. You're going to get 12 month trial of FSD versus, uh, when you buy a new Tesla, now you get a one month trial and then it's $99 after that more options to exterior colors, get a couple of different wheel options. Uh, you can choose between all black premium interior or that really pretty Zen gray interior that we talked about a couple of weeks ago.

[00:29:57] Uh, you know, do you get the extended range or excuse me, the extended storage, the first row gets heated and ventilated seats. Um, the, the seats, the two captain seats in the back have armrests that automatically go up and down. So that's pretty cool. Uh, let's see here. 18 inch audio system or 18 speaker audio system.

[00:30:20] Um, so yeah, I mean, I don't know that I'd want to spend $61,000 on this car, but it's the initial rollout is the premium. So, I mean, it's, it's pretty cool. I'm going to see if I can, does it show what the, the cargo space you get?

[00:30:47] Um, let's see how long, much longer this is. Model Y. Hold on. This is riveting. I'm sure. Scroll all the way down to the bottom. We are looking at 188 inches.

[00:31:12] So we're looking about seven inches more in the premium model Y L versus just the regular base model standard model Y. So I don't know. I mean, depending on how you configured that seven inches, you know, there's a little bit of space you can, if the seats were up, you could push those seats back a little bit further. So, and, and make it more comfortable for the people in the back seat. Um, interesting though.

[00:31:42] We'll, we'll, we'll see how people here in the U S uh, like it. All right, everybody. Well, that is it for me. I've, I've blathered on long enough. Hopefully you enjoyed this episode. If you have any questions, you can email me. It's Bodie B O D I E at nine one eight digital.com. Thanks again to Ben for signing up and becoming a patron. Sorry. Thanks to Ben for signing up and becoming a patron. And then, uh, one more thing.

[00:32:11] Oh, if you want to follow me on LinkedIn, it's Bodie Grimm B O D I E G R I M M. And that's pretty much the only social media that I'm halfway, uh, active on, but I do respond to my emails, not always quickly, but I do eventually respond. So you can email me as well. All right, everybody. Thank you so much. And, uh, our next episode will either be an interview or news, probably news. And then the next one will be an interview. So I hope you all enjoyed this episode. I will talk to you soon.