He gets up every morning thinking what can I do for humanity today? How can I do something that will be impactful to humanity of the future? That's what he's focused on. Welcome to Electrified, it's your host Dylan Loomis. Real quick, yesterday I mistakenly referred to Ashley Vance as a she when in fact he is a he so my apologies. My COVID brain isn't as sharp as usual and if you missed yesterday's video, that's why I'm still not back to being on camera. Hopefully that'll change later this week.
The European Union has cut its planned extra tariff on Tesla EVs imported from China by more than half. This new reduced rate is going to be 9% which is lower than the 20.8% that we were expecting it to be back in July. These new tariffs are on top of the EU's standard 10% duty on-car imports. Initially when the tariff rate came back for Tesla at over 20%, Tesla requested a recalculation of its rate and the commission just said it verified that Tesla received less subsidies from the Chinese government compared to China's ED makers which Brussels has investigated.
This is not official yet though as interested parties have until August 30th to submit their comments. For comparison, BYD's new tariff rate is 17%, Glee is at 19.3%, and SAIC is up at 36.3%. And the other companies that have cooperated with the EU investigation will see tariffs of 21.3%. Then for those not cooperating they'll see tariffs of 36.3%. Right now on Tesla's Chinese configurator the cheapest model 3 variant is $32,500 so the base 10% tariff would be $3,250 and then the additional 9% tariff would be $2,926. Thus the new total tariff rate for the cheapest model 3 from Shanghai to go into the EU is now going to be around $6,177. So yes it's great that Tesla's tariff is not over 20% because that alone would have been $6,762 on the base model 3. So while it could have been much worse for European customers wanting a Tesla from Shanghai, this is still going to be an additional $2,900 cost that these customers have to bear. And I said the customer will bear those higher prices because it's likely that's what actually happens after the first round of EU tariffs took effect in July. Tesla did decide to hike the price of the model 3 in Europe by about 4%.
I think the most likely outcome is that Tesla may raise the prices of Giga Shanghai vehicles headed to the EU by a few percent and then Tesla will bear the burden of the remainder by accepting lower margins. And it's worth noting that competitively speaking given that most other automakers were hit with tariffs over 15%, that does actually increase Tesla's competitive positioning relative to those other Chinese EV makers sending cars to the EU. EU officials did say one reason Tesla got the lower rate was that Beijing appears to provide fewer subsidies to foreign-owned companies. The bulk of the benefits Tesla got were in the provision of batteries at below market value and they got perks like land use rights, income tax reduction and grants in different forms including a national subsidy that all exporting producers received. The European Commission will publish a final regulation on the tariffs by October 30th. The duties would then remain in effect for 5 years and could be extended after a review.
When it comes time for EU member states to vote on the final tariff numbers, there would have to be a blocking majority for these tariffs to actually be stopped. And despite some companies like Germany and Hungary being against these tariffs, it seems unlikely that they would get a majority vote against. On LinkedIn logistics company NFI said over the past few weeks they've been piloting Tesla semis in their daily operations. Their team delivered goods on routes between 250 and 450 miles. Over 6000 miles the semi demonstrated an efficiency of 1.64 kWh per mile, with 60% of those miles covered at speeds of 50 mph or greater. NFI has also been testing some Freightliner E-Cascadia's and some Volvo VNR's. The numbers from NFI were even better than the numbers that PepsiCo was talking about as they were citing an average efficiency of 1.7 kWh per mile with the Tesla Semi. Both figures materially better than the 2 kWh per mile that Tesla has been advertising on its website. Just some basic math, we know that the Tesla Semi has a 900 kWh battery pack, so if you divide that by 1.64 kWh per mile, that would give you roughly 548 miles on a single charge. If you haven't been following along, effectively all of the public feedback from all of these different companies, testing the Tesla Semi have been incredibly positive.
On Weibo, Grace Tallin said Tesla's Megapack factory is now sitting at a progress of about 45% striving to run at that Tesla speed. Don't forget, this factory broke round toward the end of May this year, so in under 3 months time the factory is already nearly 50% complete. This megapactory is set to cost $204 million, and at 10,000 megapacks per year at full capacity, if they charge $1 million per megapack like they do in the states, although it may be a bit lower, we'll just use that number, that's $10 billion in annual revenue. And if you put a 20% gross margin on that, that's $2 billion in gross profit per year from this factory that only costs $204 million. This factory will largely be exporting to the Asia-Pacific region, but hopefully we see another 2-3 of these megapactories globally over the next 2-3 years. ACSI or the American Customer Satisfaction Index put out its 2024 report on automobiles. Just so you know, the ACSI auto study for this year was based on 12,173 completed surveys. These customers were contacted between July last year and June of this year. Tesla is in the luxury category, and they had the same score year over year, staying steady at 83, tied in first place with Mercedes-Benz, who went from a satisfaction score of 80 last year up to 83% this year, which was largely driven by their customer satisfaction with hybrid offerings. The study said Tesla's pricing strategy may be helping with value perceptions while improved complaint handling appears to offset some customer concerns in other areas over the past year. In last year's study, Tesla was tied with Toyota and Lexus for the first overall spot. Now they're tied with Mercedes this year. Zooming out, based on fuel source type, it showed that hybrid drivers scored 82 on average, and they're more satisfied than gasoline drivers at 80 and EV drivers at 77. Additionally, hybrid vehicles have the highest average customer satisfaction for both the mass market and luxury segments.
The weekly Tesla China number came in at 14,300, comparing that to the same week in quarter two, that number was 13,900, and oddly enough, if you compare that to week seven, quarter three last year, that number was also 13,900. So quarter over quarter, Tesla China is now up 34% and year over year, they're up 16.6%. For Tesla China domestically to have a new record quarter, they would have to average just over 14,717 for the remaining six weeks.
Uber just had a really nice hire, acquiring former Tesla executive Rebecca Tenucci. Rebecca was let go from Tesla earlier this year as the senior director of Tesla's charging infrastructure. She'll start at Uber on September 16th as the global head of sustainability. Uber's aiming for all of its rides and deliveries globally to use zero emission vehicles by 2040, but they're looking to do this in the US, Canada, and some European cities by 2030.
While at Tesla, Rebecca was instrumental in closing the legacy OEM supercharging deals that opened up the Tesla supercharger network to other companies. At the end of Q1 this year, Uber said 8.2% of their rideshare trip miles in the US and Canada were completed with zero emission vehicles. In Europe, it was up at 9%. So Uber has a lot of electrifying yet to do, but Rebecca is a great person to help them do it. And as I've been saying, I'm confident we're going to see a lot more from Uber and Tesla together over the next few years.
S&P Global put out a new report tracking what powertrain buyers purchase when returning to market for a new vehicle. When looking at all BEV return to market activity, there's an overwhelming commitment to the powertrain with around 68% of those households remaining loyal to full EV. However, a key driver of this loyalty is the strong retention and popularity of Tesla, which accounts for most of these households. Tesla's industry leading 67% brand loyalty and 65% share of all BEV return to market volume makes them the primary driver of any activity among BEV owners with the households next purchase. However, without Tesla in the mix, return to market activity among the BEV households shows less of a commitment to the electric powertrain. Only 47% so less than half of non-Tesla BEV households choose another BEV vehicle for their next purchase, preferring instead to move to either a gas vehicle at 38% or a hybrid at 14%. Translation, less than half of non-Tesla EV owners buy another EV when returning to the market. This figure with Tesla owners is up near 70%. And if you look at just Tesla, the loyalty numbers are even higher, 76% are loyal to the fuel type, so full BEV and 67% are loyal to the brand Tesla. Removing Tesla from the mix causes a drastic shift with loyalty to full BEV dropping to 47% and brand loyalty falling to 42%. What the data shows is non-Tesla households who come from either a hybrid or BEV are not very loyal and are more likely to defect away from both the powertrain and the brand with the next purchase. I don't think this will be that surprising, but relative to Tesla, legacy OEMs are struggling to maintain their EV customers when those customers return to the market. But in fairness, you always have to keep in mind how these numbers can be manipulated. You have to remember all of these legacy OEMs do now have more and more hybrids available, which gives these customers more options than just Tesla, they don't have a hybrid option. That definitely skews the non-Tesla numbers, but there is certainly some truth in that customers are not super satisfied with legacy OEM EVs.
Tesla Energy posted on X congrats to the Tesla Nevada team for hitting a new record of more than 500 powerwalls in a single shift. A director from Waymo just said that their cars are no longer going to honk at each other when they're near each other. He said the cars honking was an intentional feature for taxis cruising on public roads to avoid collisions, but honking at each other while idling in the parking lot was never intentional. The taxis have now all been updated to solve the issue. The co-CEO of Waymo just said she's thrilled to share they've surpassed 100,000 paid trips per week. Thus if you assume about 5 million paid rides per year and let's just say on average they charge $15 per ride, that would be about $75 million in annual revenue for Waymo in terms of a run rate using this data for the next 12 months.
And if you assume Waymo has a fleet of about 700 vehicles right now, that means each week each vehicle is doing about 143 trips divided by 7 would be roughly. 20 trips per day per car. Joe Tettmeyer confirmed that at Giga Texas they have transitioned to a new e-coding system for the Cybertruck when previously they were using the same system for the Gigacast to e-coat these castings for the Model Y and the Cybertruck. And Joe said this was a significant change because previously this was actually a bottleneck for both Cybertruck and Model Y production. In early July the new Cybertruck specific e-coding which is the picture on the right which is black, started operations. Significantly improving production capacity at Giga Texas and simplifying the production lines.
Now my understanding is that this electro-coding is essentially for extra corrosion protection. Shout out to Luca Greco on X for being in touch with TPI technology or thixotropic piston injection. They have some upcoming products that will enable Giga castings that are 30% lighter, stronger and more cost effective. TPI has some technology using magnesium instead of the aluminum that Tesla currently uses for their Giga cast. So the Model Y with one of these magnesium Giga cast would theoretically be about 22 kilograms or 48 and a half pounds lighter. So it's great that effectively the problem here has been solved for magnesium castings but it's likely going to be a few years before we see this in production on a commercial scale outside of China.
The supply chain needs to get built out and the technology needs to be adopted but this seems to be where things are headed in the coming years. Starting tomorrow Wednesday in Beijing the 2024 World Robot Conference will begin. There will be a total of 27 different humanoid robot manufacturers showcasing their products and one of those is indeed Tesla. Tesla will be showing off its optimus but also the Cybertruck and FSD along with some other products and tech. I doubt we'll learn anything new about optimus from this event but just another opportunity for Tesla to begin earning its designation as a real world leader in AI, not just a car company.
A senior leader at Rivian has just left the company Rivian's vice president of manufacturing operations Tim Fallon has left forced Atlantis. The royal family is looking to include some EV chargers at Buckingham Palace as King Charles is hoping to electrify the entire royal fleet in the coming years. In a letter it said after trialing the EV chargers for a few years the royal household intends to take a step forward and shift their car fleet from petrol to electric vehicles. There's some speculation out there that Tesla may have removed the no sale clause from the Cybertruck order agreement and it would make some sense given that most people that want a foundation series Cybertruck now have access to one.
But for me I think the prudent thing to say here would be just look at your own Cybertruck order agreement to see what yours specifically says because this could change theoretically day to day week to week. The last thing I would ever want is for somebody to see this video and think it's. free rain out there and then they end up getting blacklisted from Tesla because of this post right here.
On X Brett Winton from Arc said generally I think people underestimate the operational complexity of Uber's model relative to Tesla's positioning. Recruiting drivers, qualifying in cars of varying quality, trying to do quality control, appropriately incentivizing the drivers and retaining them, spinning up the eats business including all of the restaurant partnerships, menus in every city. These are massively costly labor intensive on the ground operations. Tesla conceptually has a much lighter lift to which Elon said yeah.
Tasha Kinney from Arc shared a post about her Weamo experience in LA that really wasn't what I wanted to highlight however if you scroll down. Also rumors suggest Weamo's vehicles cost over a hundred thousand dollars a contrast to the Tesla Model 3 around 40,000. If Elon's predictions hold true we might soon have the chance to compare these services directly.
Elon has high confidence Tesla could deliver a fully driverless experience by the end of next year to which Elon said the trend is promising. It's tough because one of these times Elon is going to be right about FSD but until then I'll be honest I have very little confidence in his FSD predictions. He did say FSD 12.4 was going to be 5 to 10x better in miles per intervention than 12.3 and 12.4 never even made it to a wide release. And as far as I can tell 12.5 has not fulfilled that expectation either.
Tesla stock closed the day at $221.10 down 0.73 percent while the NASDAQ was down 0.33 percent. It was another quiet volume day for Tesla trading about 28 million shares below the average volume the past 30 days. Thanks again for your patience with me last week and this week. Hope you guys have a wonderful day. Please like the video if you did. You can find me on X linked below and a huge thank you to all of my patreon supporters.