Will the Roadster Fly? Obi Has a Theory

[00:00:21] Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving and much, much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host and I'm getting an echo in my headphones and I don't know why. Why, why is that happening? Weird. Okay. Well, I will suffer through it. Talking about not suffering through things and actually enjoying it, when I was putting together the

[00:00:51] show, it started last night and it kind of turned into, you know, moving in today as far as getting the show notes ready. But when I was putting together the show last night, I was watching a show called, it's a podcast called Grave or YouTube channel called Grave Conversations. And they basically it's an interview show with celebrities, but they're in coffins. I've seen it a couple of times. It's not something I normally watch. But Blowthricks, I've seen it a couple of times. It's not something I normally watch.

[00:01:21] That's how you're watching. I'm not going to watch. I'm not going to watch. But overall, GWAR, who's the lead singer of Guar, GWAR, was the guest. And I'm not going to say I'm a huge fan of Guar, but whenever there's something that is related to Guar, I like to just kind of peek in and watch because if you don't know who Guar is, Google them because you're going to get a lesson.

[00:01:44] but they are kind of a shock rock band that just does everything with like a like a little wink wink nudge nudge kind of thing and you'll you'll know what i'm talking about as soon as you see the the band and what their get up is but yeah one of my favorite things is recently they did they did a cover i'm just ken from the barbie movie and i that was okay

[00:02:12] but it wasn't great but they did a cover of pink pony club and it is by chapel ron and it is the best version of that song and i think chapel ron's version is pretty good but guar's version is and and i will uh fight you if you don't think this is true guar's version is so much better

[00:02:36] and chapel ron and rowan's version is really good like i think uh she put together a pretty good song but guar made it better all right let's go ahead and get right into our ev news this story comes from mark k in the uk we already know that norway is heads and shoulders above any nation when

[00:03:04] it comes to ev adoption like they are at the top but uh markson on this the synth historian and other countries while not as high as as norway are getting pretty close like they're they're starting they're creeping up when it comes to ev adoption and i feel confident eventually every country in the world will be 100 evs i don't know when that will happen but i feel confident it's going to happen

[00:03:34] at some point in time but with that norway has something like a 98 ev uh sales every year or every every month excuse me so let's talk about some other european countries and we're only going to be talking about august 2026 numbers so let's start with spain spain had a relatively um lower percentage

[00:04:02] not a low percentage but their uh ev adoption out of all the cars sold in spain in august of 2026 27.7 percent of them were evs that seems like a low number but that's up 30 percent year over year when you compare that to august 2025 and then when you look at belgium for instance they are sitting

[00:04:25] at 46.2 percent of their august automobile sales were evs which is pretty impressive and in august i i saved i saved this last one for uh on purpose because there's a little little bit of a asterisk on this but in august denmark's ev sales were 85.9 percent of all sales now in the article that i read

[00:04:53] that said that it included private sales as well as commercial so i'm reading this as used and new car sales squished together so while that's a very impressive number there should be an asterisk attached to it but yeah i mean we're we're i think we're heading in the right direction when it comes to ev sales are we getting there as fast as some people would like no but we're heading the right

[00:05:17] direction if you're interested in pairing your waymo ride with some public transportation waymel waymo waymail waymo will offer you a two dollar and 85 cent credit so here's how it works you have to have a visa card you have to be operating in a city where waymo has approved this service

[00:05:43] so it's not just anywhere it's specific places uh check your local areas for participation um but you have to have a visa card from what i understand waymo wants other processors to be involved as well but right now it's just limited to visa people so you link your card your visa card to your waymo account and if you use the same card this is important if you use the same card for

[00:06:08] public transportation or public transportation or public transit and waymo within two hours of each other you will get a two dollar and 85 cent credit in the form of waymo cash so that's pretty impressive waymo is saying in its more mature markets which include san francisco la and phoenix over half of

[00:06:31] their riders will also use public transit so in my area you know we have buses obviously uh because everyone most everybody has buses but in the downtown area of phoenix where waymo also operates there's a light rail and then you know there's buses and and uh other types of transportation that you can get down there um my area is a little bit limited but if you were to take let's say a uh a

[00:07:00] a bus to a bus stop that's close to your home or doctor or whatever and then you took the waymo the rest of the way you would get a two dollar and 85 cent credit why it was 285 but not three dollars is i'm not 100 sure or not two dollars and 50 cents 285 seems specific maybe that's the average cost to take public transit i don't know but yeah it seems uh very specific but if you're interested in this

[00:07:29] kind of thing check to see if it's available in your area because i don't know if it's available even in phoenix it might just be like san francisco in la but uh or even maybe austin anyway check your area to see if you have that toyota is set to launch a extended range electric vehicle now when i first read this i was like oh that's really cool uh but don't get too excited because unless you live in

[00:07:58] china because this is going to only be sold in china if you live in china and i know we have a few listeners who are in china congratulations you can buy a era of toyota so at the moment not coming not going anywhere else just it's just going to be in china uh production is expected to start sometime in spring of 2027 but we we don't have a lot of details about the vehicle itself which is unfortunate

[00:08:22] i wish we knew a little bit more or any more honestly but toyota believes that they can sell 200 000 of these e-revs in china in 2027 and they think they can hit 400 000 in 2028 so obviously they are very bullish on china oh you know what i also want to mention our next episode will be a little bit of news and the tesla semi event i forgot to mention that at the top of the show

[00:08:53] okay RJ Scaringe who is the ceo of rivian said in an interview that the r3 r3 will be priced materially materially materially i've been in class all day materially lower it'll be much cheaper than the r2 um and the r4 will be cheaper still and i'm i was not aware that there was going to be an r4 so that's

[00:09:18] a that's a little bit of news to me but the r3 to me when they announced the r2 and the r3 together i always kind of thought the prices would be right about the same i didn't think the r3 was going to be meaningly materially lower thank you um words are hard but yeah uh so craziness so r3 is going to

[00:09:45] be a little bit cheaper whenever the r4 whenever you see that it's going to be cheaper still so that's this is good news i would i would like to own a rivian r2 sometimes i wish i wouldn't have bought my tesla but i love my tesla and i would have had to wait another three years for this car and i really wanted to have a car paid off by the time i retired so i mean there's lots of good reasons to have the

[00:10:08] tesla but uh yeah uh they are too good looking car r3 does not excite me at all though the crossover uh their version of the crossover does not i'd rather have a tesla model y to be honest what do you think send me an email Bodie b-o-d-i-e at 918digital.com all right i'm gonna do my best

[00:10:34] here to to pronounce the name of this next company uh scania scania i'm gonna i'm pronouncing it kind of like scandinavia scania is a swedish company and they are building an electric semi truck it's actually the company itself is owned by volkswagen and scania's semi will have a range of

[00:10:59] 447 miles or 720 kilometers which is really impressive it also happens to be 106 miles more range than the european tesla semi so the the tesla semi in the u.s and in europe are specced a little differently the european spec of the tesla semi this will this scania's semi will have 106 more

[00:11:26] miles was that confusing it was confusing to me i don't think i can clean that up just so you know it's got more miles than the tesla semi by 106 miles i think this is really cool however if you if you stop a moment and think about this for a second most countries if not all countries i can't say all because i just don't know but most countries have an overall weight limit of your uh when you include

[00:11:53] your the tractor which is the thing hauling it the semi itself the trailer and the cargo there's an overall weight limit and if you add batteries to this truck it's going to reduce the amount of cargo that you can haul which will in turn reduce the amount of money that you can make now is that a meaningful difference i don't know but it is a little it's going to take some money off the top for sure but

[00:12:19] then you'll be able to drive a little bit further but also most countries have a limit as to how long a semi truck driver can drive at one time without having to take a break and i would imagine that 447 miles or 720 kilometers somewhere in there you're going to have to take a break so does it is

[00:12:40] a meaningful difference or are they just flexing is really what i'm going to but um scania fit an additional 356 kilowatt hours of battery behind the tractor cab and this is not unheard of like the velocity fire truck that pierce makes that's where the batteries are stored behind the cab it's not

[00:13:04] stored in the floor it's actually stored behind the cab so this certainly isn't like a nutty concept or even a new concept for that matter but it also still has the the battery pack underneath the vehicle as well so it's got it in two locations so first responders keep that in the back of your head but overall you know is this uh is this a flex because tesla announced the european

[00:13:30] tesla semi and scania was like you know what we can do you one better or was this something i mean obviously it was planned for a long time but or is this something that is like uh you know beneficial i don't know i i tend to think that it's more of a flex than it is beneficial but i could be wrong on this let me know if there is some value in you know pulling into a truck stop and having a decent

[00:13:59] amount of state of charge left so that when you're sitting there you're you're not having to maybe fill up as as uh or recharge your vehicle as much as you would need to if it was at a lower state of charge but on the other side you have a mandatory break so does it really make that big of a difference i don't know um i'm i would imagine that it makes some difference okay this next story um

[00:14:28] made me laugh by the headline okay and i'm not going to read you the headline i'm just going to read to you how it kind of formed in my head and i'm going to ask it as a question it didn't it wasn't like this in my head as a question but it made me laugh when i hear it hopefully this makes you laugh can you guess what the most affordable full-size electric pickup truck is in the united states

[00:14:54] now before i tell you let me tell you why it made me laugh because there's not a lot of full-size electric pickups in the united states we have the chevy silverado ev we had the ford f-150 lightning no longer have that we have the gmc sierra we have the hummer ev so far we got three gm products there the tesla cyber truck and i mean if you're being really

[00:15:22] generous you could almost count the rivian r1t but really can't so we're talking three trucks uh four i guess if you include the cyber truck four trucks and three of them belong to gm that's what made me laugh but according to cars direct the silverado ev is the most affordable full-size electric pickup truck which you know i don't hate that it starts at fifty three thousand

[00:15:52] two hundred dollars this is the work truck model which means so means it's uh more of the bare bones not to say it's bare bones but it's more of the feature limited model and it has a range of 286 miles the silverado ev if you wanted to like top it out and i would say this probably isn't even the top top trim but if you wanted to just kind of spend extra money you could buy one for 86 000 if you're

[00:16:20] so inclined uh right this is our final ev story and then we'll move on to our patreon plug and then to our tesla news we don't actually have very much tesla news actually there have been so little news that i've pretty much i've completely cleared out the tesla queue and i think i have two stories left

[00:16:42] in the ev queue and normally there are easily over 20 if not over 30 uh stories after every episode that i've man i'd like to get to this story but i can't get it to it in this episode maybe next episode there's always 30 left over and i have oh you know what i can actually tell you let's just take a trip down the kilowatt news desk here all right i did get some new stories in the inbox but

[00:17:10] we're not going to count those because i haven't sorted them yet so in the for the show tab so just if you're curious the way i do this is i have an app that i created an ai and it brings all of my stories into an inbox and then i triage them and then i put them in a tab called for the show and from there i can put them in a tab called complete and that's how i make my show notes the complete ones i export

[00:17:35] and put it into chat gpt and it makes my show notes for me so anyway i currently have 19 total stories in the for you for the show section normally that's quite high in the 50s 60s 70s after every episode is recorded i have two ev stories that i gotta get to and i have four tesla stories and then i have some autonomous driving stories and renewable energy stories and i'm actually going

[00:18:04] to create a show based on the the renewable energy stories so yeah anyway what i'm saying is is news is drying up a little bit so uh let's go ahead and and continue on with the show sorry for the break so more americans are showing interest in evs this is according to a new survey from here technologies

[00:18:29] 53 percent of u.s drivers surveyed said they said that they are more open to considering an ev than they were a year ago i want to be a hundred percent clear here that does not mean that 53 percent of u.s drivers want to buy an ev it means that they would consider an ev as one of their buying

[00:18:56] options not that they would they would consider it which i still think is progress uh according to the story 57 percent of drivers said that high gas prices were a part of the equation as to why they would consider an ev um charging anxiety also appears to be easing according to the survey 47 percent of

[00:19:20] drivers say that there there are a decent amount of public chargers now um which is you know up last year when they did this story 28 percent people of people said there are enough ev chargers and now it's 47 percent so that's a positive especially when you consider there are people out there who are answering this who have never driven an ev before the fact that they're recognizing that there

[00:19:46] are chargers out there is impressive but i mean here's the thing price still is a major problem when it comes to buying an ev about two in every five potential ev buyers say high purchase prices are holding them back from from buying an ev which makes sense because they're not cheap all right everybody that

[00:20:10] is our ev news we're going to move on to our tesla news in just a moment but before we do that i just want to let you know you can go to support kilowatt.com and you can sign up and support the show through supercast or patreon it's up to you as to how you'd like to support the show and for as little as one dollar you will get rid of the ads so all of the money i try to keep it very affordable for people

[00:20:36] who want to be to contribute to the show um but you know may not have a lot of money to contribute so one one dollar and you get rid of the ads and you get to support the show so support kilowatt.com all right everybody let's move into our tesla news the czech republic has approved tesla's full

[00:21:01] self-driving on public roads so if you're counting full self-driving in europe is approved in the following countries the netherlands lithuania estonia denmark belgium and slovenia and now the czech republic this all of these um all of these approvals have come off of the dutch rdw provisional

[00:21:27] approval so it's not to say that they can't be taken away but you know tesla did a lot of the heavy lifting for the netherlands and then you know these other countries are able to kind of adopt things as they make sense and i'm sure they're changing some things here and there where that also makes sense now if you live in the czech republic here's some things you should know

[00:21:48] one you have to have hardware for the european flavor of fsd and if you happen to have a hardware three vehicle then you got to wait a little bit longer for tesla to come out with fsd version 14 light for europe which i'm sure will come out at some point in time when that will be who knows

[00:22:13] all right um this is our this is our final tesla story like i said not a lot of news uh popping up so something interesting is happening around tesla's october 1st roadster reveal and there are lots of people talking it's happening in waco and there are lots of people talking about how it's at a there's

[00:22:42] like a spacex facility and then they have this tower wrapped but you can kind of see the silhouette of a car on it and i'm sure tesla's doing all this to drum up um buzz but uh there's there was somebody requested on october 1st the faa to issue a temporary flight restriction around spacex's mcgregor texas test facility

[00:23:11] that's where the event's going to be it doesn't say who but we can assume we know who the restriction runs from september 18th through october 2nd conveniently covering you know tesla's roadster event so the restriction covers a one and a half mile radius around the facility

[00:23:34] and extends from the ground to 10 000 feet and that 10 000 foot ceiling is where everybody's getting attention it's it's just there's there's different um air spaces so i don't know i haven't looked at what the airspace is in this particular area but it could be that the airspace in this particular area happens to be from the ground to 10 000 feet it doesn't mean that tesla is going to be flying in

[00:24:03] a roadster at 10 000 feet i don't think that is where i think that's just you know according i'm not a pilot but i i am a drone pilot so i'm kind of a pilot uh licensed drone pilot thank you part 107 but with that i i just don't think that the 10 000 feet means anything at all i don't think it's going to be they're going to launch a rocket off and then drive the car off the rocket and it will

[00:24:31] float to the ground i just don't think that's the case what i if i had to guess right because as a drone pilot i have to follow notums which is a notice to airmen which is these restrictions right you can't if you if there's a flight restriction from september to october 2nd and it's for a mile and a half um one and a half nautical mile radius around the facility you have to assume that they

[00:24:59] don't want people flying over the facility taking pictures that would be my guess like if there are plenty of folks out there who have made a whole channel off of you know flying drones over tesla facilities and taking pictures i would imagine that tesla doesn't want anybody to take pictures and see what's behind you know quote unquote the curtain i guess i'm showing my age here

[00:25:26] they could also be taking video not just pictures it could actually be video too but anyway that's my guess right i don't think there's any conspiracy and i don't think tesla is being um i don't i mean they're obviously trying to drum up some attention and some buzz but i don't think they're being unreasonable but let's talk about let's let's uh let's let's fantasize about what could

[00:25:54] happen how could the unveil go down i mean we don't want to maybe say it like that how can they unveil happen and make a um maybe not a splash or a crash i don't know how to make this point without sounding like doom and gloom but how can they unveil the car in a unique and fun way that doesn't involve it falling to the ground and crashing or crashing into you know flying away

[00:26:23] remember when drones used to just fly away yeah how can we make that happen well we know that tesla or elon has been promising for years with the space ship spacex package that it's going to have you know cold gas thrusters on the roadster and he's claimed that they will be able to help the car

[00:26:47] achieve like sub one second zero to 60 speeds which is insane and also temporary lift the car off the ground um there have been some reports that tesla could demonstrate this uh remotely because i guess the cold gas thrusters are very loud so they would have to like show this off very far away so not so as

[00:27:16] not to you know deafen the crowd but i'm sure there are a number of ways for tesla to make this seem cool ob who is uh somebody we're gonna have on i've mentioned this in the past but uh we're gonna have an once a month for now an ev tech tips segment and we've already recorded three and i'll do it as long

[00:27:45] as Obi wants to do it so it's not like i'm like shutting it down i'm just saying um it takes a lot more work to to do this content stuff than than a lot of people think but uh he wrote in and he said this and i'm just going to read his email a lot of people are theorizing that the roadster is upside down in the picture on the website and that is true elon has been promising the wildest demonstration

[00:28:14] ever that may go horribly wrong but it will be memorable memorable regardless he also keeps hinting that the car flying or hovering hinted at the car flying or hovering i have come up with some something that checks all of those boxes as well as closing down the airspace above the demonstration

[00:28:38] site they will strap a production intent roadster with this spacex package to a helicopter upside down they will use the helicopter to bring it over some sort of soft landing pad and release the car the car will either slow its descent or hover upside down for a split second and then plop into a into the landing

[00:29:06] material uh the idea that they will put the car back on its wheels and use it to show that it's no worse for wear um that said we all remember how the windows for the cybertruck held up to the intended demonstration back in 2019 if they don't do this i was just kidding honestly i i would be shocked if

[00:29:31] they actually did this or if the car could accomplish this running some back of the napkin numbers it seems theoretically possible though if they do this i demand someone tell me i'm a genius for guessing it because i was super confident it would happen the whole time smiley face the notum seems or notice to airmen seems weird unless they have their own air show event in the same area and honestly this

[00:30:00] i agree it does seem weird but i still think it's an issue with the they don't want people taking pictures with drones or flying a plane over or helicopter over and and getting pictures um i don't think that it would i don't think they're gonna drop it from helicopter but it would be cool if they

[00:30:21] did but i i just don't think that's going to happen um this is only a mile and a half one and a half nautical miles that's too narrow to do an air show so i don't think it's that uh i don't think that they're gonna do an air show it would be weird for them to do fireworks because fireworks don't go all that high in comparison it you know i don't again i don't think they're gonna shoot a um a roadster out

[00:30:50] of a spacex rocket but what i mean if we were gonna take this right and kind of take a crazy scenario from what i understand and i've not seen it um i've just heard these things online but there is like it is up in like a tower right and it is um kind of high up what if they pulled the the unveil

[00:31:17] and they drove the roadster off and it floated from the tower to the ground again i don't think this is really all that practical and it would have nothing to do with the notum but that would be a cool intro just driving it out of the the spacex tower and then having it float down to the ground that would be amazing i don't think they're gonna do that but if i you know if i had to put rumors together and

[00:31:44] then pile crazy on top of those rumors and then put that in to an oven and bake it that's that's what i got which is what i think obi did he just had a different recipe all right everybody uh that is it for me uh this week on thursday is the tesla semi event we will make sure to cover that and then i am

[00:32:10] taking a few weeks off and i say that with some um i say that knowing i have not recorded or pre-recorded any episodes uh for the future um shows yet i've worked on a couple but i have not actually recorded them yet so you'll have content i promise you but man oh man uh is there a lot of work to do

[00:32:40] so uh having said all that i am going to bid you adieu i have another podcast that i have to work on for beyond the post and then i'm going to go to bed and then i'm going to go to class tomorrow and then i'm going to start all over again so thank you all so much for listening i hope you have a wonderful week and i will talk to you with any luck on friday