Tesla/SpaceX merger, Rivian R2 progress, new Mercedes GLA, and more

Speaker A: Foreign

Speaker B: we are live a new episode of the Electric Podcast. I am Fred Lambert, your host and usual. I'm joined by Seth Winchum. How you doing this week?

Speaker A: Set? I'm good.

Speaker B: All right, uh, what do we have for you guys this week? Uh, this week we're going to talk about uh, the Tesla SpaceX merger. Kind of spicing it up a little bit with the new report from the. Not the new time, the Wall Street Journal yesterday. That kind of uh, two people for loop. Um, then we talk about the cyber truck production maybe stopping soon. We're gonna see, we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about Tesla fulfilling a promise that um, Elon actually made to me a long time ago, a decade ago, about the supercharger uh, being powered by renewable energy. Tesla has made some big moves on towards that this week. So kudos to that. Um, when I talk about the Rivian's earnings which were very good despite the stock's performance today. Then we're going to talk about though less good for the Rivan, the first test of the efficiency of the R2 coming in just one test, but still um, a lot worse than the EPA and a lot closer to what we thought the reality would probably land. Uh, we're going to talk about the Mercedes GLA EV launching this week. Uh, we're going to talk the new one. Um, we talk about Volvo dropping the lidar from its EX and ES90 SUVs. Uh, some interesting things about that. And uh, then when I talk about the ix3 which is doing uh, very well, the uh, the output is increasing quite a bit. But yeah, last night um, Wall Street Journal came out with a report based on a source close to Tesla saying that um, the company has been waiting in whether to what to do with its Chinese business ahead of a uh, merger with SpaceX. And discussion. I've went as far as to sell it just lower, winding down completely. Um, which is obviously kind of surprising to a lot of people. We, we've discussed that before. We um, you know the, the entire idea of uh, SpaceX and Tesla merging is not, is not new. It's been around for a long time, but it's been ramping up over the last year as SpaceX is kind of gobbling up Elon's other company through, through Xai buying Twitter, then SpaceX buying Xai and so on. So the, this idea has been, has been around for a while but it is ramping up right now. And now uh, uh, in the last few, in the last week really the the pinnacle of it has been um, analysts, a Wall street analysts asking directly Elon about the potential of, of the merger on the earnings call last week and Elon was you know, normally cannot shut, shut up about anything, uh, for the first time shut up about it and actually deferred to a lawyer saying that they cannot talk about it on the call which is a big tell that things are happening behind the scene and they are trying to uh, um, to look into a merger between SpaceX and Tesla. Now we talked about this before at Electric. We're like I don't see. Well I see China being an issue for a merger uh, between Tesla SpaceX because China is such a big part of Tesla, both for sell but also for production and as a supply chain, uh, completely linked. If China disappear tomorrow morning, Tesla disappear with it. There's just no way around it. That's how it works. So to merge what is basically a US Defense company with a company that completely relies on China is based on the current itar and you know, trade laws, ah, problematic on both, both sides by the way on the, on the US side and on the Chinese side as well. Uh, so, so it's um, it's not just a one way thing. Uh now on the US side of things I've always said that because Elon is obviously very well connected within the government. Uh, I, I assume there's probably ways around it. You know, you know you just put an extra million to Trump for the next election goal and then, and then it's, it's a done deal. Like uh, but uh, on the Chinese side might be more complicated. And this is also what the Wall Street Journal wrote is that it's not. The problem is not necessarily the US it might be China might have an issue with you know Tesla technically being owned by uh, because by the way like is, I mean SpaceX is going to own Tesla, not the other way around the way at least the way it's trading right now. Uh, so that Tesla such a company that's you know, embedded into the Chinese uh, industries being owned by you know one of the large, the largest defense uh contractor in the US So it is problematic. Now Elon Musk has come out and denied the report, uh calling it fake news which basically confirms the report. No, no, but seriously, I mean I'm exaggerating here but not really because obviously Elon always does that. You know, he just denies a report by saying not true fault fake news or anything like that without going into any details and not saying that he can't Go into details here or Austin

Speaker A: proof or anything like that.

Speaker B: Yes. So obviously what's happening here, we know that a merger is going on, that there's steps being taken towards a merger. That's that as much is clear. Um, and for sure if they are doing that and at this level like a two, two trillion dollar companies merging together is massive deal and there's a lot of people involved, a lot of advisor involved. For sure they are advisors that were like what about the China situation? And then they looked into it and laid out all the different options and these options discussed in the Wall Street Journal has been discussed. So whatever Elon is saying, like you might be saying we're not trying to sell our Chinese business and I'm sure that's the case because it would be, it would be bad for Tesla. Let's, let's be honest. Well bad and not bad. Like it would probably be a lot of money for them quickly. Like uh, I wouldn't be surprised if A company pays 100, $200 billion for Tesla's uh, Chinese business or maybe they just spit it off at its own thing and you know it's, it's now a private company and um, or a public company that others can invest in and Tesla just take the cash. There's, there's a bunch of different options here on the table and obviously if anything England is more smiling that this doesn't hope that this is not the way it's going to end. But um, but yeah, I think it's clearly the goal for Tesla to merge with SpaceX. Or at least it's Elon's goal. Uh we also discussed last week the fact that uh, Tesla was able to avoid specific questions about the merger as my shareholders specifically that uh, um, a lot of people within the shareholder base at Tesla are concerned that Elon is doing that to activate, to achieve further milestone in his giant trillion dollar compensation plan. Uh, it would, you know Tesla has been stalling now on, on these market um, capitalization milestone for, for years basically this has the same capitalization that it had like four years ago at its peak. So to continue to grow. You know mergers and acquisitions are one of the greatest way to, to do that. And uh, you would basically double Tesla's market cap right away which is a merger with SpaceX. And um, but that benefits Elon specifically, not necessarily the other Tesla shareholders. Um because then the Tesla stock would just be absorbed within the SpaceX stock and you know there's a lot of agreement to be made that that's also inflated and that uh, the uh, exchange rate between the two would not necessarily favor Tesla. Uh, and Elon would be in charge of the entire thing. And Elon's incentive is for SpaceX to get a better deal in Tesla because he owns more of SpaceX than he owns a Tesla. So simple as that.

Speaker A: So do you think Gwen Shotwell would run Tesla too?

Speaker B: I doubt it. Uh, she already runs the whole of SpaceX. That sounds like already quite uh, something add Tesla to the mix.

Speaker A: She does uh, arguably a pretty good job also of like taming Elon. So maybe that's a.

Speaker B: She actually commented on this. She said that uh, merging SpaceX with Tesla would help with uh, Elon's attention.

Speaker A: Uh,

Speaker B: which doesn't make sense to me because Elon is in charge of both companies already, CEO of both companies. He can do whatever he wants at both companies and he can split his time however he wants between the two companies because uh, no one is holding him accountable for anything that's been evident for the last few years. So it would be the same thing. It would, you know, it would just be under the same roof. But he would spend as much time as he wants on SpaceX issues versus Tesla issues. It's not like the Tesla brand is going to go away or the SpaceX brand is going to go away. They're going to keep those brands around. So um, it's just going to be like this one page stock to exercise options on.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: That would be the only difference. So yeah, that's the, that was the big um, um, the big news of the week in the last few, especially the last few days. But earlier this week I thought it was very interesting. We saw this, this kind of went viral, um, this news that Tesla is suing one of its suppliers. All right, The Hangstrom Automotive Group uh, is a company that Tesla was um, dealing with in Texas, uh, as a supplier for the cybertruck. And um, this week they asked the U.S. district Courts of Western District of Texas to basically allow them to enter the premises of the Einstrong Automotive Group to get some equipment, to get some parts and tools. So Tesla request the court to grant it one thing, retrieval of Tesla's tooling. It does not seek to litigate any other disputes between the parties. The company wrote in a complaint. Um, so yeah, apparently so. We only. The whole reporting here is only on because this is a finding that Tesla has made with a court. It's not an ongoing uh, legal disputes. We haven't seen both side of the story here. We have only seen this. Tesla Side and this is side of the story is that uh, Angstrom is basically holding the Tesla cybertruck production hostage. They are asking for $250,000 a week on top of what the claim Tesla already owes them for uh, open purchase order. And um, the Tesla says that they are not letting them get their stuff and if, if that continues for much longer that will stop. You're going to have to stop cybertruck production including orders already paid for thousands of orders of cybertruck by the way. Um, probably SpaceX buying cyber trucks, but who knows. Um, now it's always more complicated than that obviously. So Tesla's, the whole reporting says basically that this crazy supplier is holding Tesla hostage and asking for a ransom of $250 a week. But I think the main thing to focus on is that Tesla already owes on open purchase orders. So I'm speculating here but imagine a world where you approach suppliers on one of your new vehicle program that you claim has over a million reservation and that you're setting up production to produce 250,000 units, uh, um, a year. And um, you know, that's how you build your supply chain around it. And your supplier, you know, believes Tesla with this. And then you go on and invest in tooling and parts for, to, to produce these parts for Tesla at that volume and then Tesla ends up producing only 20,000 a year because the demand is just simply not there for the version of the truck that they brought to production. And then you're Tesla and you're like oh, we kind of get, need to get out, out of these deal of uh, these uh, purchase agreement that we had with our suppliers because otherwise we get completely ruined by the cybertruck is demand. And now you alter those deals and then uh, you leave some of those suppliers hanging dry with a bunch of parts and a bunch of toolings that they don't need anymore. That's a very likely scenario too and it makes sense to me because Tesla talks about parts but also about tooling. And what happens often with the, is that um, the client, in this case Tesla is going to invest heavily like millions of dollars with the suppliers into their tooling. So they will buy the tooling that the supplier needs to produce the part. Uh, and then as part of that deal there's generally some kind of ladder of ah, as Tesla buys more parts from the supplier, um, the ownership of the change. Um, but then if Tesla doesn't buy any parts and still terminate the contract, if they paid for the tooling, the tooling might be theirs. But uh, in this case here, the supplier sounds like they had produced a lot of parts that Tesla never took delivery of and never paid for that they want to be paid for before they release the tooling. So yeah, much more complicated scenario here and something that um, I think Tesla shareholders should be worried about a little bit because it is a bad sign when you have, you're not paying your suppliers. And especially with a specific scenario of having a vehicle program that is producing at a tenth roughly of its plant production capacity, you're going to piss off a lot of suppliers. That just how it works. All right. About a decade ago, I think it was 2017, 2016, 2017, Tesla made the promise of um, all its supercharger network being powered by renewable energy. And it's at Electrek. It's something that we love because it's about entire mission and entire m fascination that we have with electric vehicles and electric transportation is that you have options with electric transportation. You can choose at least a little bit where the electricity is coming from that you fill up your tank, your battery pack with. Uh, and you should choose renewable energy. That just makes sense. And that was also Tesla's mission back in the day before amazing abundance. And uh, at that time Elon said that all of Tesla supercharger is going to be powered by renewable energy. And that never happened. Um, slowly and surely they improve with this over time. But now this week there was two big moves that the Tesla bought the entire output of 140 megawatt solar farm in Texas. So in Texas you're like okay, that might be maybe for their factories or data centers or whatever. But um, at the same time, the same day they also secured not the entire but 90% of the output of Project Sterling which is a giant 500, a 9 megawatt solar project with 360 megawatt of battery capacity. Battery power capacity in uh, Arizona. So that Arizona, Tesla doesn't have production facilities in Arizona. So like um, where is that HST going to? And Elon commented that this is actually for the supercharger network. So it's uh, part of the plan to increase the percentage of uh, electricity power window network that is from renewable energy, in this case solar. So kudos Tesla for that. And yesterday we had the Rivan earnings. Rivasan reported their Q2 earnings and uh, it was a pretty good result overall. A slight beat on revenue at 1.658 up 27% year over year and a slight beat on earning per share with a loss of 0.63 cents per share I think it was 65 to 70. That was expected. And uh, obviously this is uh, not giant news here but most the focus with um, the earnings at um, at Rivian are almost always the gross margin. So we want to see them start to make money selling cars because otherwise the business is not going to go anywhere. And the uh, gross margin at 11% this quarter with positive $179 million. However most of that was coming from ah, two things. $100 million in um, regulatory credits and also the Volkswagen software deal. When it comes to pure automotive, they were down about, if you include the credits, $140 million.

Speaker A: Uh, but um, better than before.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. It's when you compare yourself, you console yourself. And in this case they have compared against themselves a year ago and they, a year ago they were losing a lot more money than that. So just purely on gross profit they were down 260 million instead of being up 179 million. So, so it's going in the right direction and um, losing $140 million on building 12,000 vehicles, delivering 12,000 vehicles amid right at the beginning of the ramp up of R2. Production is really not bad. And the thing that gets a little bit more exciting now is the guidance. So we already um, saw them increase the guidance when they released their production and delivery numbers for the quarter earlier this month. It's now up to uh, 65,

Speaker A: up

Speaker B: roughly 3,000 units to their prior guidance. And they reiterated that now you know, yesterday July 30th. So they already a month into the, the first half of the second half of 2026. So they probably have pretty good visibility in their production ramp though it's always difficult and pretty good visibility into their demand. Uh, for the, for the revenue on into the second half of the year they need to double basically what they produce and what they delivered in the first half of the year. Into the second half they need to roughly deliver 40,000 vehicle instead of uh, 22,000 vehicles that they did in the first half of the year. So that is massive across the board. So massive for production, massive for delivery, massive for service center. Everyone at Rivian is going to have a crazy second half of the year. If you know someone that works at Rivian, like, wish them good luck. Yeah, they're not going to see their kids there a lot of the second half of the year. I'm sorry. It's like if, if this goal is possible, that's the only way to do it. You just have to cram and grind for six months. It's hard.

Speaker A: So I'm not saying though, um, they're going to not just sell the performance, they're going to sell the um, the premium all wheel drive but not the,

Speaker B: at the very end of the year, right? I think so, yeah, yeah, no I would hope because I don't, I don't see them delivering 40,000 performance version in the US alone.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think the sweet spot is the all uh, wheel drive also um, the LIDAR is supposed to come at the end of the year so and the upgraded computer. So a lot of people will be waiting for that.

Speaker B: Yes. And the point to point level two driving also that's a big deal for a lot of people. Uh, we're seeing it now with Tesla. Tesla as convinced a lot of people of the usefulness of that technology. Um and Rivian is benefiting from that because now they're pretty close to it themselves. So as soon as they turn that on, well that's more people that can switch to the brand that are uh, getting used to this point to point level two driving. Um but yeah I'm starting to keep a close eye on. But on the demand side I think they already have great visibility into the rest of the year so they're probably very confident that they can do that. The production side, harder delivery side is also doubling your deliveries is not, is not easy. Um, it's going to be hard something to watch but I like the direction is going. So if they can deliver 65,000 vehicles for the year, um, and they're already right now on the verge of a positive gross margin on cars alone, double the capacity. I think they hit the positive gross margin, they start making money on their cars and that changes the whole financials at Riven. I'm not saying they start turning a profit right away. I think probably end of next year even 2028 for that. But they start emerging cash, they stop emerging cash altogether now and it's more like you know, marginal profit, marginal loss like you know Tesla uh, 2021, 2022 leading into 2023 and so on when, when Model Y was fully ramp up. Um, I think, I think that that's what we're seeing from, from Riven right now. And it's exciting times because after that you know there's the R3 that going to come up there is, you know Rivian hasn't touched the European market yet, hasn't touched markets outside of North America. There's a lot of room to grow for Rivian. So I'm, I'm excited about it but These next six months again, I guess

Speaker A: the production hell part, right?

Speaker B: Yep, yep. All right. I mean if, if they get to, if they deliver those $40,000 by the end, those 40,000 units by the end of the year, uh, the production l would have been like quite short for them at least. All right, we have a few more news item to discuss and then we're gonna jump into the comment section. So we're gonna have plenty of times talk to you guys. I see we have William, uh, here we have Sean, uh, Russell, Rob, you, uh, guys, uh, anyone that's uh, live on the chat right now, you can ask us question, put it in the comment section. We'll get to it in a few minutes. Uh, also, if you do enjoy the podcast, please leave us a like, uh, subscribe whatever it is on your podcast. Uh, uh, we appreciate when you do it. You can also, if you want to take the time and go on Trust Pilot on Electrek and give us ah, a good review there because, uh, Seth just informed me this week that we got review bomb by uh, the Elon, uh, crowd last week and the completely destroyer Trust Pilot, um, the review. So if you guys, you know, think we deserve it and want to take the time to uh, look that up, uh, I would be, I would appreciate it quite a bit. That would be nice of you. All right, moving on. Uh, our friends out all the spec found someone dumb enough to lend them their R2. I say dumb enough because Cal, if you give him a car on his track, he can go pretty hard on it. And uh, I suggest you go check his YouTube channel and uh, his Instagram. He ran that R2, that R2 performance. It looks fun. Said I don't know if you saw it, so some of that video.

Speaker A: Yeah, I did.

Speaker B: Yeah. It looks, it looks like a very fun car to drive. Like, I still, you know, I still prefer like model 2 performance. I think it's the most fun EV to drive. But damn, for. For. And a boxy SUV. That thing really ripped. But yeah, before that, uh, they did uh, their efficiency test. So they do this, this efficiency test at a bunch of different, uh, speed and the um, the run the battery and they do it, uh, they calculate the efficiency not from the efficiency calculator on the vehicle software, but purely on like when they charge the car how much energy, um, it took. You take that and like uh, how much energy you spend and that gives you your efficiency. And we previously reported a few months ago when the EPA numbers came out for the R2 performance, that it was shocking to see it at 105mpge, um, 32 kilowatt hours per 100 miles, which is the same as the model Y performance again. So the multiple performance. Tesla is known for its lead in efficiency only equal to like lucid really. And uh, Rivian doing better and better. But you know, Rivian has always never been really focused on efficiency, specifically as a uh, venture vehicle, off roading and all that. It's just you have to compromise somewhere. So it was really surprising to see the R2 matching the model Y, especially on the aerodynamic performance. But now we uh, get a little bit more. The first real, real world test, if you will. And the real world test is just didn't look so good. So the R2 at each speed here at 50 miles per hour it used actually 18.4 more um, 18 more energy, 4 miles per kilowatt hours than the model Y performance during the same day, same test, 60 miles per hour. So the higher, the faster you go, the more the aerodynamic as an impact. So you would expect it to go even worse. Sure enough, 26% more energy, uh, 3, um, 3.50 miles per kilowatt hour. At 70 it got down to roughly 20% more which you know, again, first test only tests take it with a grain of salt. I think it's, it's in the ballpark. I think it's right. But like it doesn't make sense that the, so the, the, the changes between the Model Y, the, the delta between the model y and the R2 should, should increase in favor of the Model Y the faster you go. Because our Model Y is obviously more aerodynamic. So even if you, if um, Rivian has made other efficiency gains in other areas and aerodynamic, uh, you would see the difference get bigger faster you get. And this is not what we see. We see going down from 60 to 70 and then back up, uh, from 80 miles per hour with 2.46 miles per kilowatt hour, 26.5% more than a Model Y. So to me this makes a lot more sense. Like I don't the EP numbers just uh, we were shocked and for good reason because it is a boxy vehicle. You've driven it, you, you, you found that you were getting close to epa, but not quite, but you also ripping it quite a bit. Am I wrong?

Speaker A: No. So, well yeah, I mean we were on hills like they, they shoved us up, up into the mountains above uh, Salt Lake City, which you know, when you're going down, you're obviously getting really good mileage when you're going up you don't. So it's hard to tell like altitude wise going up or down. So it was hard to make a judgment. But you know my, my opinion or my feeling was that Rivian said, you know there, and there are ones they were like, you know we can like we'll give you mileage that we can actually achieve. Like you put it in conserve mode, you drive on the highway you're going to actually get more miles than Rivian says you can get. My feeling is that with the R2 they were like screw it, just do what Tesla is doing. Like you know like just get all the numbers you can. Uh, you know maybe under the best of circumstances you can get these numbers. But really uh, no. So I, I think they use the same Tesla coefficient which is I think 07 or something where most or point. They used a coefficient that's a little bit.

Speaker B: I don't think they use the same one. I think, I think they actually went worse. I think you are uh, in the ballpark. I think that's you know that's what happened. I think they, they changed their approach to the EPA because you, you have option, the EPA gives you some option on how to, to test or not test or to self certify and uh, how to display your range rated range which I think is dumb. I think everyone should be forced to have the same thing. So we have actually like a true base level uh because you know we, we obviously media is out there and we are part of it and we test these vehicles and you know we haven't had the time to test uh the chance to test the R2 yet. But um, I mean beyond sets first drive like a full review and that's nice but even that is also like a bunch. You have to run the test the same day, same environment and everything to have the, the best idea which is almost impossible. So at least at the EPA level this should be very tight limitation on what you can and can do. And right now it's more like a free fall on the charging side of things though. So I'll expect also a charging. The charging. The R2 did very well though. Um, you know it's um, even though it's not um, the high voltage EV like it's still a 400 volt system. It, it, it did very as good as you can get on the front volt basically. All right, uh, a few more um, a few, a few more news items to discuss and then we can jump into the comment section. Mercedes at the unveil of the new version of the GL EV this week. Uh, it's bigger, it's smarter and it has a lot of range over 400 miles. Even though I would assume the worst is WLPT. It's a good looking car. It's you know, nothing, nothing crazy. It's sleek looking, kind of uh, understated. I like it. Um, interior, you know, it's that giant two screen, not three screen release system that um, the M box super screen that Mercedes is known for. It's using um, Google's cloud, the new automotive AI agent. So that's nice. Uh, it's a back seat right there. It's available in two models for a 2028 version that um, was unveiled this week. 268 horsepower, 250 plus it's called and the all wheel drive dual motor one gets you 249 horsepower. So it's called a 350 formatic. Uh, yeah. So the 400 plus mile range, 408, 657 kilometers. That's the WLTP on an 85 kilowatt hour battery pack, uh, which is 800 volt two gets you uh, up to 167 miles. It's expected to go on sale in the US at closure to 350 miles at the beginning. No second half, sorry, second half of 2027. So they unveiled this early as hell, almost a year away from delivering this in the US and uh, they expect it to come at $45,000. So this is going to be like a uh, funnel model. Yeah, I haven't been in a Mercedes in a minute. All right. This was a big uh, news item this week that was interesting and that Elon Musk even commented on. Volvo confirmed that um, the lidar sensor on the EX90 and ES90 is never gonna work. Uh, so it's in there, it's on the car, you have this beautiful little indentation on top and this technology behind it. But uh, it's, it's dead weight. It's literally not gonna be used. Uh, so they are compensating owners for it. So they are starting to roll out these uh, uh, compensation. It's, it's roughly $2,000, uh, 1500 to $2,000 depending on the market. Um, and uh, yeah, they're starting to, to reach out to affected customer. Basically what they're saying is that um, they're not giving up on lidar, you know, because, because it wasn't long that you had Elon Musk commenting on this. Elon Musk, you know one of his uh, yes, men on Twitter was like, oh, my God, he keep. He can keep getting away with being right. Talking about Elon Musk regarding this news. And then Elon said, I did try to warn them. So basically what they're saying here is that lidar is not working. LIDAR is not necessary for autonomy. And this is proof of it. It's not that. It's not that at all. And I'm not. I'm not saying that lidar is needed for autonomy. I'm just saying that this is not an example that lidar. Volvo's supply chain is not great. And Volvo should not have made, uh, a deal with Luminar, the supplier here, which went bankrupt and stopped supporting the lidar. And, um, they now they cannot use it. It's not. It's not useful for them in their, in their sensor suite, which still has four radar, by the way, on the. So it's not like. It's not like they're going vision only. They're. They still rely on those lidar, they still relies on the ultrasonics, they still rely on the camera. And it's just that they got screwed on their LIDAR system. So Elon Musk is wrong to say to get involved with that at all. And not only that, when he wrote that, I was like, elon, Jesus, you have some guts to report all this, because you should take note that if you deliver a car to customers with a promise of something working and it never works, what you do is what Volvo is doing right now, and you compensate those customers delivering. And, And Tesla has not been doing that with its own issues with. Is autonomy hardware that is not sufficient inside its vehicle to deliver.

Speaker A: I wonder if that tweet will be, uh, an exhibit in a upcoming lawsuit.

Speaker B: For sure. For sure.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I think. I think what's really bad is, like, you didn't. And it's a problem with a lot of people nowadays on social media is they didn't even look into the story. They look at the headline and they're like. And obviously the. It helps Elon when the guy retweet the story by saying that, oh, my God, Elon is always right. Uh, so, you know, he's always. He's already saying I'm right. There's no even need to confirm that I'm right. You know, we all love to hear that we're right. So we don't want to look in too much into whether the person who says that we are right is right. And, uh, in this case, you know, you look into It. And it's, it's so clear that Volvo has. They're not. They love lidar, it's just they got screwed with luminar. Uh, and I. So people always like attach this to me too, that I'm like kind of a lidar salesman for, for whatever reason, which I don't care too much about lidar at all. Like, I don't have any lidar stock. I don't. Oh, that's not even true. That's not m. True. I do actually have a lidar stuck in China. But um, I don't, I don't, I'm not. I don't think that lidar is necessary for autonomy. I think, I think it can be done with vision only. I think it gets better with um, with radar. And lidar can also complements that. Uh, my favorite approach, the one I think that makes most sense to me is the expand approach. That is like Tesla on vision. So the primary system is vision, just like humans. So staying as close to the only thing we know can drive right now. But the goal is being superhuman. So obviously sensors that humans don't have is just a plus. But in the xpeng case, what they do is that they have radar. They don't have lidar, but they have radar for the automatic emergency system. So the active safety system. And that can override the vision driver just like it can override a human driver that is making a mistake. And then boom, you have the automatic emergency braking kicking in. I think that makes sense. I think if you have, if you're going to try to copy the human system vision plus neural networks, uh, it makes sense to also have a safety net on top of that. That's the best approach I've seen so far, the one that makes the most sense. All right, one last piece of news before we jump into the comment section is about BMW in the iX3. So the iX3, you know, on paper, one of the best car we've seen so far. Uh, the specs are just insane on this thing. A lot of variants do a lot of choices. Um, I'm not the biggest fan of the look of it, especially the interior. I, I keep. My brain keeps getting stuck by that screen. And though I love um, I cannot talk enough about the heads up display at the back, uh, I love this trend of the heads of display being a screen indented into the dashboard at the base of the windshield. But a lot of people are getting over the fact that that screen is crooked and they uh, are ordering this car. And um, BMW just announced A second shift at the factory. This is being built, by the way, set. I didn't know this. Uh, it's, um, in Hungary. It's at the BMW plant in Hungary. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but yeah, they uh, already produced the first 50,000 of them in, uh, just over eight months of production, I think. Um, and now they are getting close to 100,000 orders within the first year. So it's quite a successful vehicle program for BMW. And I, uh, might just be a hater when it comes to the design. Maybe.

Speaker A: Well, I think the design is probably a little polarizing.

Speaker B: You're muted.

Speaker A: Sorry about that.

Speaker B: Oh, no, you're good. It was a delay. Maybe it was a delay.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I think the design is probably polarizing, but the specs are everybody likes those. So the price is a little pricey, but people can pay that. All right. Uh, Sean Goggins says interesting China story. Elon denies, but of course we know to. That does not mean it's not true. We talked a little bit about that. We'll see what happens in the future here. William Pisano, Tesla not paying their bills. And then he continues. A lot of companies have penalty clauses if they don't produce enough a year. That's why Slate, Aptera, Rivian have a hard time finding part suppliers because they don't produce enough to care.

Speaker B: Yeah, but you can invest uh, into the tooling yourself as a client. So a lot of companies, they do that. And it sounds like it might be what this has done with the supplier.

Speaker A: Russell, uh, Zauner says. So we, so are we getting a rocket car then? Lol. Because I don't think the electric rocket is quite there yet.

Speaker B: There's some electric rocket technologies now. Uh, there's a guy I watch on YouTube called Zero as a very, ah, great engineering breakthrough. Videos, like videos that kind of explain engineering breakthrough. There's a new technology now that's uh, electric rocket technology that's very, very interesting. I don't think they are quite there to uh, for, for an actual like liftoff. But um, the roadster is supposed to be a rocket car, cold earth rocket and set. I don't know about you, but uh, tomorrow it's, it's August. August is when we're supposed to see the roadster. Now I'm, I'm, I'm convinced we're going to see it.

Speaker A: You think? What are the chances that they miss a deadline? Probably like 0 out of 100, right?

Speaker B: I mean have they ever missed a roadster deadline? I don't remember.

Speaker A: I think so. All right, uh, Rob lic685 says I saw my first Rivan R2 yesterday while charging at a Tesla Charger. Good looking car. Can Rivian convert Tesla Model 3Y owners to buy an R2? Uh, yes. Yeah, I'm sure the answer to that is yes. Uh, it's a, that's a great vehicle. Um, if you're in a Tesla and you want to go off road, I think the Rivian R2 is probably your first port of call.

Speaker B: And Rob is good to, to spotting the R2 too, because, well, I mean, if it's at the supercharger, it is probably. You know, if it's next to a Model 3 milli y, I can probably spot the R2. But just driving along on the road, I don't think I could tell you it's a R2.

Speaker A: Is that ribbon smaller? I know. They really just like shrunk it. Yeah, and it's like. Yeah, um, yeah, I think, uh, Rivian's gonna convert a lot of folks over. Especially perhaps people who aren't, uh, in line with Elon's politics and still like the ev. The technology forward companies.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: All right, stop hedging. Rivian lies more than Tesla. Lies about impossible range hucksters suck. Well, that's a, that's a little, that's

Speaker B: pretty much what I said. I think for the R2, I think Rivian went further than Tesla and they're in, you know, fudging the numbers with APA. But I'm also agree with set that, you know, prior to the R2, I felt like the Rivian numbers were always closer than the Tesla numbers.

Speaker A: And then we can add what, uh, skeptic says. I'm deep into the R2 space and there are owners posting far better efficiency numbers than what out of spec got. So maybe there's something to it. Maybe Kyle, uh, was destroying the tires a little bit before they, uh, went on their mileage test or something.

Speaker B: I'm pretty sure that was after.

Speaker A: But yeah, uh, Dean says I'd give Rivan a break for the performance. R2. Tesla has focused for many years on higher efficiency, like lucid. So they can achieve higher performance and higher efficiency more easily than Rivian.

Speaker B: Yeah, or our main problem, like it's still, you're still going to get like 230, 250 miles on the highway, uh, uh, easily. So it's not, it's not like it's a bad car or anything like that. Uh, it's just that we Want it to be closer to the EP number. It's just simple as that.

Speaker A: All right, um, Carl continues. Imagine is all these car companies admitted autonomous driving will always create an impossible liability and stop wasting time, money, effort to try the impossible. Winter is coming. Recession. Uh, I, I actually believe that autonomy is possible. I just think uh, it's going to be a little bit more of a slow roll than uh, what everybody's predicting. And I mean I would say we're close enough now where it's beneficial. So even if we don't get to full autonomy soon, it's already makes driving easier.

Speaker B: Yeah, that, that's, that's the thing I think a lot of people are missing. Like uh, FSD has value on its own. The main issue is complacency and, and Tesla needs as, especially as it gets better. So there's, there's these, this contradiction of like it's get better so fewer accident, but it gets better so complacency issues gets bigger so there's more chance of accident that and, and if, if the delta between the two uh, gets larger and larger and larger. It's, it's, it's good in term of uh, um, as long as safety is on top. But if complacency is on top you're, you're screwed. And uh, I think Tesla needs to do a bigger effort to, to, to address that. Um, but they have shown that there is value in these advanced driving system that are not really self driving like you're the one driving and that in itself is, is huge because that means that you can, you can just keep going in that direction until you do achieve a level that is you know, March of the nines and everything that you're 99.999999 performance efficient. Uh, it's what happens in between that that's difficult and then how long it takes to get there. You know, it's um, it's at this point I think uh, there's a lot, there's going to be a big in between where um, you know like the speeds are going to be limited. For example, you see, you see Waymo doing extremely well right now. Um, but highways is still, is still on and off. Like sometimes they still shut down their highway driving and do an update and everything is you know, because there are risk issues. So where the risk is not as big so lower speed. Um, I think we're quite there honestly especially with what Waymo is doing right now. So I think we're going to see uh, different adoption layers where uh, we're going to see more and more city lower speed autonomous system. It's already there. So I don't know, I don't know if I agree with you Carl, in term of uh, being such a bear on autonomy. I just, I think that um. But how many semi automatic features and product can kill you? Yeah, again it's dangerous technology. It's heavy machinery going at high speed. That's why I think lower speed is a lot easier too. So I think we're going to see a rapid expansion like revolutionary redeployment of autonomous driving system in cities at lower speed. But this dream that Tesla sold us like a decade ago that you could fall asleep in your car in Montreal and I could wake up, uh, go, go overnight to New York and I can get to a meeting in New York and I'm fresh. I just slept in my car for eight hours. Uh, that future is just legally uh, and safely is probably still five to ten years away.

Speaker A: Hey, I have a hypothetical say in a, you know, within a year like that, that exact view becomes very obvious to Tesla and others would. Do you think they would have remote drivers kind of like WHMO and Tesla and, and um, Cruz had for a while? Um, that you could say, all right, I want to drive from Montreal to New York overnight. I want to hire somebody, you know at like a Tesla service center or a call center or something and I want them to be awake and alert while I'm sleeping in the back. Do you think that kind of situation could happen?

Speaker B: I mean I think for the most part the technology can be there. Uh, I think, I think you have a big problem with um, dead spot though, like dead zones. Uh, so uh, there's Tesla is integrating the satellite in there, that helps. But uh, there's still. Starlink still has dead zones too. So uh, I think the connectivity is the bigger issue there, especially for long distances, like shorter distances that you could validate uh, the connection on, not too bad. But for longer distances where there's more value. So like Carl says, it's a train. Yeah, you're right. A train makes a lot more sense for those scenarios. But um, yeah, my point I was getting to though before that was like I think we're five to 10 years away from that. A consumer level vehicle like that that you can just go to sleep in and wake up at your destination legally and safely. Not legally and unsafely, it's already there and uh, I see it, I have a folder now and I want to do an article on this on electric at Some point I'm just, I keep building my folder on my, on my phone, on Instagram, but I might, I, I'm building my algorithm now to feed me this. But I see a worrying number of Tesla owners now just filming themselves, acting like FSD is level four autonomy and it's dangerous. And at one point we're going to get, I'm going to get in my inbox a video from someone that says, look, we, we just took that from this loved one's phone after they crashed their car and died. Look at what they were doing before they die. They were filming themselves eating noodles, uh, on a tree in front of their uh, steering wheel. It's going to happen. I know it and I don't want it to happen. These need to be more effort around that, make it clear it's not autonomous. I know I'm repeating myself a lot on this, but I, I fear, I fear that day. I fear the day that's going to happen.

Speaker A: All right. Dean says if you look at ADAs as being advanced cruise control, rather than expecting driverless capability, it is already very capable, useful and helpful. Agree. Take um, a train or fly. Laker Sales says highway convoys could work. Yeah. Somebody was saying earlier, Donald said something having car to car communication would be nice. So maybe in a fog with the car in front of you start braking would be, would relay the message backwards. I do. Like, I know, uh, some people have poo pooed the idea of convoys, but not only does it make uh, kind of driving easier when you know, you have somebody in front and back, but also it's more efficient, uh, you know, from an efficient uh, from a, you know, wind, uh, perspective issue for trucks. Yeah. So um, it'd be interesting to see if that's a solution in the future. I mean I would imagine once autonomy is pretty well working, like it would be really nice to be able to hook up into a convoy, save uh, some energy, uh, get, get smoother ride, et cetera.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think, I think the future at that, especially with AI is feasible where you could probably have these kind of like super highways that once you get into the highways you connect into a network where all the cars kind of talk to each other through a protocol and um, that way you can just increase the speed while keeping the safety up. Um, but even then I don't think we're going to see these kind of like, don't expect like autobahn speed or anything like that. But you know, there should be improvement in efficiency and traffic, especially traffic, uh, through something like that. And yes, car to car communication with the right protocol makes more sense in term of connectivity than if the idea of like a remote driver that gets you to your destination from a distance because of, again because of the dead zone. So yeah, uh, I think it's feasible. Are we going to see it in the near future? No, because I think everything needs to be driving at that point. Basically that's going to take a while. Again shrugs. You know, the idea of the Tesla semi that when the test SMI was unveiled 2026, there was uh, the, the convoy mode that they, they unveiled everything that, that could have happened sooner, I think. I just, I don't see it anytime soon. But it could happen.

Speaker A: Uh, Carl says seth, you sound like Musk. We need to trains, not robo convoys. Yeah, I, I would prefer a train. I actually, I think uh, I read somewhere this really interesting article that everybody would just have pods and they would be taken away by trains and little robot, um, you know, car, uh, like vehicles for their final mile. I think that would be. I think that's the final boss. Like you basically just have like a little roomy, you know, thing that you can decorate with your stuff and have the scents and posters and whatever. And you just sit in that pod and you got windows, whatever, and trains and gondolas and whatever take you wherever you're supposed to go. It's all robot, you know, robot. It's all super fast. Like on the trains that you're going far, they're you know, bullet trains. So I think that's the final boss. We just have to figure out how to get there. What do you think?

Speaker B: No, no, no, that makes sense. So uh, it's self powered for last mile and then that adds itself to another powertrain for longer distances. Just like a train. You do sound like Elon because part of that was uh, in Elon's original Hyperloop plans, you remember?

Speaker A: Oh yeah.

Speaker B: The Hyperloop is the Hyperloop. Okay. The Hyperloop is your train. And the idea was you can bring your car onto the Hyperloop train and then your car would go 500km an hours to the destination and then you can drop out. Uh, yeah, I mean that technically it's feasible. It's just like right now it's one. It would be such a giant infrastructure project and we don't have in America, at least in North America, we don't have the guts for those these days. It's sad. Uh, there's this project, I mean there's the uh, high speed Train in California project. Where. Where is that now? Is it. Is it actually being built? I don't even know where.

Speaker A: You know, it's funny. Um, the train, uh, that's in Florida right now, which is mostly diesel. Um, it's called, like, this sun. I don't know, they're. They're trying to build one to Vegas, uh, from la. Um, and I think they're having problems in Florida with money, and it's just kind of a train wreck, no pun intended. But, um, you know, it would be nice to see something like this, you know, exist. Like, let's put some money into it. Let's build, you know, the pod system or whatever. Um, and, you know, comparing me to sounding like Musk 10 years ago. I'll take that.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. That's what it was. It's like most about 10 years ago. Yeah. Though right now we're discussing, like, the, the submitted. Uh, uh, I think it was Trudeau before you left, though. But I also. I don't know how much alive it is right now, but, uh, uh, high speed electric train from, um, Quebec City all the way to Toronto, stopping at,

Speaker A: uh,

Speaker B: next to where I live, Montreal. Ottawa. I think that's it.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that covers like 80% of the Canadian population.

Speaker B: I barely exaggerating here. Like, it's a large percentage of the Canadian population. And, uh, yeah, you could get to Montreal to Toronto in a couple of hours. Um, yeah, yeah, we've seen a lot

Speaker A: of, like, you know, silly flights, too. You know, like, you don't need to fly from. Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it takes an hour to fly from Montreal to Toronto, but, you know, add two hours in each airport and, and, you know, so you, you arrive in Toronto and you're like an hour and a half traffic before you get to downtown. Yeah, there's. There's a lot of, uh, advantages. It's just in these big projects, they are hard to get off the ground. I don't have a solution for it. But, yeah, we are definitely pro public transport first, then electric public transport first, then personal, uh, transport. I, uh, would even say, like Trek, we're extremely pro personal transport. E. Bikes, scooters, all that. Then cars, electric cars, obviously. All right, that's it for us this week. Electric. I hope you enjoyed the electric podcast. If you did, please give us a, like, thumbs up. Subscribe, and we're, uh, going to see you same time, same place next week.