Hey everybody, Rob Maurer here and wow, today turned into a pretty significant news day. We have a massive announcement from Ford and from Tesla this afternoon. I will talk about that partnership that is forming. We've also got updates on hardware for a report over in Germany about some data protection issues for Tesla and a few other things that are a little bit more exciting than that to talk about. So, pretty big news day today.
We'll start off with the stock. Tesla up about 9.10 to a percent to close to $184.47 underperforming the NASDAQ pretty significantly, which was up 1.7 percent on the day today. Tesla not doing much in the after hour session despite this announcement that we'll talk about with Ford and Tesla, only up about 2 cents of a percent in after hours right now.
So, let's get right into this. A little bit to go. Ford and Tesla via Jim Farley and Elon Musk held a Twitter space to make this announcement that we see from Ford here. And that is that Ford customers are going to access Tesla's entire Supercharger network in North America at least they say 12,000 Tesla Superchargers in North America beginning in early 2024.
So, that should be most of Tesla's network in North America, maybe not 100 percent, but a very high percentage if not 100 percent. And then probably just as significantly, Ford also announced that they will be offering the North American charging standard connector built in. So, this is the Supercharger plug, which we can see here.
This ECS obviously a lot smaller, a lot easier to wield and just hopefully a better system overall for charging EVs in North America. We talked about this news, I think back at the end of last year, that Tesla was going to be open sourcing this so that any automakers could be using this.
Whether any would adopt that was an open question, but we now have Ford saying that they are going to be using that beginning in about a year and a half. So really, really exciting to see that major announcement here. The other thing that isn't covered in this press release that they did talk about on the Twitter space is that Tesla is going to be giving Ford access to the API to integrate basically what we see in the Tesla app with Supercharging into Ford's app as well.
So they should have a very native experience when using Tesla Superchargers because of that API access and because of the Tesla, what used to be the Tesla proprietary connector now the North American charging standard connector being used. So it's difficult to understate the size of this partnership. Hopefully, this leads to other automakers adopting this as well.
Elon did sort of hint on the call a little bit to that saying we're making this partnership with Ford and he said and perhaps others. So obviously I'm sure there are other conversations being had before the first one to jump on this partnership. So it's incredibly interesting.
Obviously for Ford, this is a massive benefit for them to for their charging network should add cost reductions just with a hopefully simpler to manufacture charging system here and just allowing them to integrate with Tesla and get some help with Tesla on this.
I think will be beneficial for them as well. It sounded like from the conversation with Jim and Elon that there might even be further partnerships in the works down the line. They talked a little bit about software and Elon said you know anything that we can help with on software we're happy to do.
So it's incredibly interesting to see this and what I think this does is establish Tesla as sort of the you know the infrastructure provider and we've already seen that's how that's benefited Tesla over the years and so far. But if this now expands which were in the very early stages of seeing with third party super charging access and now even with the you know sort of dedicated charging connector being adopted.
I think it really puts Tesla in that leadership position and puts pressure on others to then adopt this which you know strengthens Tesla's sort of foothold in that space. Obviously, we've seen efforts from companies like Electrofie America to make headway in the infrastructure department but really no one is coming close to the experience or the coverage of Tesla right now.
So you know the benefit to Ford is very clear. Elon talked about the benefit to electric vehicles this should help with accelerating the advent of sustainable transportation helping Ford sell their EVs that they're going to be producing. The benefit to Tesla is a little bit less clear and that was not covered on the call.
I did request to ask a question about that. I think it was a little bit late in making that request they were kind of wrapping up the Twitter space but the question that I would have had is you know benefits to Ford's clear for EVs it's clear. Aside from advancing Tesla's mission is there any benefit here to Tesla other than just sort of you know making making headway in terms of making this the actual standard in North America is for going to contribute to further build out of the supercharger network is there going to be some sort of payment from Ford to allow Tesla to do that or to make up for the infrastructure that is being provided or is Tesla going to just leverage the infrastructure and attempt to earn profit off of you know marginal use of the network. I think there's a lot of different ways that could be structured probably some combination of all those things really some of those things but right now that's a little bit unclear and going back to the stock I think until some of those things are maybe a little bit clarified probably not going to see some huge reaction this is going to be I think largely you know overlooked despite how massive of a deal this is. So definitely curious to hear people's thoughts let me know in the chat let me know in the comments today but again it's hard to overstate you know how impactful this is going to be and I think it's something that you know people are going to look back on and view this as kind of an inflection point for really the whole EV industry in North America and perhaps beyond that because it's going to put again pressure on other automakers whether those are domestic players like GM or foreign importers or foreign brands that are manufacturing in the US there's going to be pressure on them to adopt this as well to get access to the charging network which you know is it's going to be a pretty clear differentiator for both Ford and for Tesla so obviously between Ford and Tesla we can Tesla's mode a little bit and that's where I do hope that there's you know some benefit other than just kind of advancing Tesla's foothold as the infrastructure provider.
That being said though you know obviously there's a lot of value to being that most people view Tesla as a car company most Tesla bulls understand why that's not really the case and hopefully over time this sort of you know brings that idea a little bit more to the forefront. So a lot to discuss on that I think again let me know in the comments what your thoughts are and I'm sure we'll come back to this topic many times in the future.
Alright, some other exciting news today. It looks like the Model Y is now starting to ship with some hardware for components like we've seen in the Model S and Model X for the last couple of months. A few months here, so not a Tesla app seeing some allusion to that in the source code for the inventory vehicles that are posted on Tesla's website. Then, from black model 3 on Twitter, we're seeing him spot at – not sure if this was at Fremont to where this exactly was – but seeing some hardware for signs show up on Model Y vehicles. And then, kilowatts also seeing the same, so it looks like we've got pretty strong confirmation of this starting to be the case now. Not all the Model Ys that they were seeing had hardware for, so you know it's probably in the process of being rolled out right now. But exciting to see that after we've seen it now with the S and the X, and obviously Tesla not giving much attention to this as probably that transition happens. Once that's more complete, hopefully, we hear a little bit more from Tesla on, you know, the advantages of that. And there's still the possibility that, you know, potentially more sensors in terms of cameras could be added later on down the line. We've heard sort of mixed rumors on that. So nonetheless, exciting to see continued rollouts of hardware for.
As for FSD beta, that has continued to roll out like we had talked about yesterday, but kind of interesting some sightings in some other countries outside of the US. So version 11.3.6, it looks like that has been accessed on a couple of vehicles in Canada, a couple of vehicles in Germany, also Australia, and then one in Belgium. So according to Tesla scope, state of here, it looks like maybe these are, you know, Tesla test vehicles that have installed this version, where Tesla is now testing this out in broader geographies. Particularly Australia is interesting. I think we've heard previously that they're, you know, then some testing vehicles doing this in Europe, but to my recollection, this is the first time we've heard this for Australia, which is obviously, as long as my recollection is not failing me here, I believe right-hand drive and obviously it would present a different challenge for, you know, sort of the FSD coding system. So it'll be interesting to hear, not that we'll probably hear a ton on that, but at least interesting to see that that sort of testing is underway.
Alright, next up here, this picture showed up on Twitter. I'm not sure if this is the original source from YYDS here on Twitter, but a photo of the interior of the Cybertruck just kind of out of nowhere. It looks like this happened at the shareholder meeting based on the setup in the background, which I would also draw attention to just the fact this is, you can very clearly see a lot of lens distortion here. So we talk about this for exterior shots a lot, but this is probably a wide-angle photo here. So just keep that in mind when you're looking at things like the dash and sort of the perspective that's going to throw things off pretty significantly, which again, hopefully, that stuff all makes clear, but I think is a good reminder. If we just look at some of the details here, obviously we had previously known about sort of the I don't know, hexagonal wheel here, sort of the Cybertruck aesthetic, a little bit more angular. Looks like there are no stocks, so I think that's going to be disappointing to some people. Looks like it's the touch button for the blinkers for the turn signals. And another kind of interesting detail, obviously no bench seat here. I'm still wondering if that might be an option at some point, but the center console sort of having the aesthetic of the tunnel cover. With the sort of cover on the center console here, so kind of interesting to see that. I'm not sure outside of those things there's too much to see. I mean, you can see sort of the pillars here, you can see what the dash looks like. There's no guarantee that this will be the final interior, though, you know, Tesla could be, as as. we've seen them do make many iterations and could still be finalizing things like that but probably gives us a pretty good glimpse at what the the first version is going to look like so cool to see that if you do see any other details in there let me know you know what you're noticing obviously the display here from what I can tell again perspective a little bit weird but I think this would be potentially even a little bit larger display than what we see in the S and the X
Alright another exciting story for today on top of many other exciting stories apparently according to motor one which is combining up sales data from I think 53 different countries looking at estimates for 31 other countries using J to data they are saying that the model Y in the first quarter was the best selling car in the world so we've heard this in I think it was in Europe the best selling car not vehicle overall in the United States I think last quarter and then I think the top SUV in China was what it was so combining all these things together model Y now taking that top slot sort of a long time coming building up to that sort of this sort of moment which is you know I think it's difficult to just talk enough about this because it's so impressive when you look at the competition at these types of volumes I mean number two is the Toyota Corolla which as the Sarticle points out is available in pretty much every country in the world the price point is what I mean probably about half of what the model Y is and still the model Y is able to out sell a vehicle like that with you know multiple different sort of configurations and trims worldwide and availability in more countries so it's crazy it truly is crazy and Elon Musk anticipated this coming I think this was the year he kind of said that you know by revenue should be the best selling vehicle in 2022 and 2023 perhaps even by unit volume at this point and it looks like Tesla could be on track for that for this year obviously just one quarter an annual basis would be even more impressive but hopefully again this is just the start and we should see model Y with Berlin and Texas ramping up throughout the year continue to have strength throughout the rest of the year so again extremely exciting to see that performance.
Alright next thing that got quite a bit of attention today was a report from handles blatt that is talking about some I guess it's a pretty significant amount of data that has been passed to them which apparently is coming from Tesla's internal system. I believe this was passed on by previous employees, is kind of what it sounds like. The report and its entirety is paywalled unfortunately, but if we look at this article from Jolopnik we can see a couple of snippets of this report.
So basically, 2300 internal files from Tesla have been passed along the handles blatt. Not sure exactly what the legality of that is, so it's raised a couple of concerns. The first is just on the level of access that whoever distributing is distributing this information had to be able to kind of get this information and pass it along in the first place, that potentially raises some concerns with you know data regulation and things like that with Tesla internally, although I would say if this is an employee that's doing that you know people at some point in the chain are going to have to have access to data so there's there's really only I think so much you can do on that front.
The other concern that I guess the other piece of attention that it's getting is around sort of safety reports relating to Tesla's driver system, whether that's autopilot, automatic emergency breaking, whatever else. From the Jolopnik article here, we can see that apparently the files contain more than you know 2400 reports of self-acceleration, more than 1500 breaking function problems, 139 cases of unintentional emergency breaking, 383 reported van themselves resulting from false collision warnings number of crashes more than a thousand. So you just got kind of a list there of you know potentially issues that have arisen.
They say in total customers have expressed more than 3000 safety concerns from the entries in these files. Ok, sounds maybe even kind of bad. I don't even think that sounds that bad, but when you bring in the context of this being data from 2015 to March of 2022, seven years of data, and you're talking about about 3 million vehicles over this period of time that Tesla is really sold, 3000 entries is really nothing I think that's you know 0.1%. So if this report was flipped and it was like 99.9% of vehicles have not experienced these issues, I think that would look phenomenal.
I don't think the expectation from anyone should be or really is that these drivers and systems are perfect and don't result in any issues ever, like that is not the bar that Tesla should be held to, that's not the bar that any other automaker is held to, the overall goal of the system is obviously to incrementally improve safety obviously, in some cases doing that is going to result in you know potentially false positives that then cause an issue, but as you on the set in the past, you know you're you're going to get flack for the one thing that does become an issue and not the 10 things that are not an issue because of this system that no one knows about because it doesn't get reported on because there's no issue in that case, it's it's an issue that is avoided that does not materialize so there's really no way to report on it other than just the overall safety safety statistics that we see from Tesla you know every quarter.
Again I don't think there's anything too crazy at least from from what I'm seeing here from the report. One of the other parts in here talks about like how the company dealt with complaints and it said that you know Tesla was telling a service people to communicate verbally with customers rather than put things in in text or email which you know they they paint it in a light that makes it looks like Tesla's trying to hide something but to be honest that's you know in general probably just sort of smart liability management you never know if a service technician or someone is going to put something in text that does not represent how Tesla would want something to be indicated it, and then that could add liability sort of unintentionally even if they're they really shouldn't be any on Tesla's end so you know just kind of create something extra but obviously they they painted in a way that makes it look like Tesla's trying to be shady about things and not put things in text for specific reasons but you know it's probably just sort of the lower liability practice that you know Tesla could employ.
So those are kind of my thoughts on it nothing else that I'm really seeing in there again don't have access to the full article because of the paywall but from what I can tell it's nothing nothing too crazy pending you know how that data was really collected and and then eventually obviously distributed you never want to see that but you know if someone is sort of made up their mind to do something like that there's I think limited amounts of control that a company has over something like that.
Alright last couple of things here so we talked yesterday about Tobias Lins report. that it looks like there was an event being set up at Cigar Berlin he commented on the video yesterday saying that it looks like it's going to be a family day for employees on Saturday so not sure exactly what sort of festivities Tesla has planned there but looks like they'll be doing you know something a little bit fun for for employees and their families so we'll keep it out for you know any reports on that but kind of nice to see that but probably nothing too major for us to have on our radar.
And then lastly outside of Tesla we've got an update from NERLINK today they have said that they're excited to share what they've received the FDA's approval to launch their first inhuman clinical study for NERLINK. so that's a huge milestone for them to get this approval obviously we're gonna have to wait until this moves forward and actually conduct study but it should be a very exciting time for NERLINK as they move into this stage which you know pretty massive step forward to get to this level so congratulations to NERLINK.
And that is where we'll leave it for today and most likely for the week again doing some traveling tomorrow for the long weekend unless anything crazy happens which hopefully we got a lot of the news out of the way today unless anything crazy happens tomorrow probably off as well so that'll wrap it up for today and hopefully for the week and you can also find me on twitter at Tesla Podcast make sure you're subscribed and sign up for notifications and we'll see you most likely on Tuesday for what should be the May 30th episode of Tesla Daily thank you.