Tesla, this cyber truck, $100,000 for a cyber truck that I have a Maverick. Apparently, this does not have the payload of a Maverick, which fits in a small parking spot on any urban street in this country. I checked in the durability of the metal is not there. I wonder whether this man can sell even 50,000 of the 200,000 cyber trucks, and this may be for zero after all of the storm and drying about Sean Fane and how he took it to farm.
Welcome to Electrified. It's your host Dylan Loomis. First up today, Gary Black drove home the points we were making yesterday well, saying recent concerns that ED adoption has stalled are simply incorrect. GM and Ford, their decisions to delay EV capacity expansion are due to their inability to manufacture EVs cheaply and internal pricing mistakes. But if you zoom out and look at most markets globally, EV adoption is still growing.
With the UAW reaching tentative agreements with Ford GM and Stellantis, this is definitely not the end of the story of course we still have voting to take place, but now the UAW will be shifting its focus to non-union plans and yes, Tesla is going to be on their list. As a counter move to this, we just talked about Toyota raising some of its non-union wages in the US to deter its employees from wanting to unionize to give you some context of scale. Toyota employs 170,000 workers at 10 US production facilities, all of them non-union. Recently Sean Fane reiterated he intends to move quickly to organize non-union plans and a labor historian said other non-union automakers will be responding in similar fashion as their workers see what unionizing can win them. A former Tesla employee back from the early days just said he doesn't expect any unionization drive to win at Tesla mainly because all Tesla employees are able to buy stock at a discount through the ESPP employee stock purchase program. This is what we've mentioned many times in the past, yes GM Ford, Toyota they can all raise their wage prices but they really don't have the same potential stock price appreciation as a company like Tesla. And yes I know that's absolutely a debatable point but to those really in the know that watch videos like this every day most of us would most likely agree. One thing to keep an eye on in the months ahead with these new contracts with the big three in the UAW, they allow unionization of the big three's future battery plans if a majority of their workers sign cards saying they want to join and that does not require an election. We know GM's Altium plans already voted to join the union and now there's a big question mark with Ford's major battery project what degree will they continue with that after scaling back some of their EV plans.
And because people often ask me what I think the chances of Tesla unionizing are right now if I had to put a number on it I would say it's less than a 5% chance and saying that out loud actually feels a little high. Why? Well beyond the red tape that unions can put on an organization it's really the antithesis to Tesla's agile manufacturing techniques and I just believe that Tesla will continue to take care of its workers it'll do what it needs to do to make sure they remain happy. And the truth is the smaller minority at Tesla that may not be happy could relatively easily be replaced because they get millions of quality applicants every year.
Just a bigger storyline to keep in mind now we have some Chinese EV component suppliers actually looking for new customers in the Japanese market because the competition in China is so fierce. One of those suppliers who works with BYD just said we are here at the Japan mobility show because the competition at home is crazy and we hope to find some Japanese clients profit overseas is much higher than from domestic clients. The number of EV suppliers in China is so excessive that clients would push our prices extremely low leading to a very low profit margin. Meaning not only are the Chinese EV companies battling in a price war but we also have all the way down the supply chain the component makers in a very similar situation. So this over supply of supply chain companies and ultimately EV companies that over the past year or so has indeed been consolidating has been a big driver in the lower cost and why Tesla is turning gigashang high into its main export hub.
Speaking of that consolidation taking place, there were hundreds of EV manufacturers and power battery makers at the height of the boom but now only a couple dozen of each remain.
Now we have US lawmakers expressing concerns about signing a limited free trade agreement with Indonesia, the world's largest nickel producer. A bipartisan group of senators argued the country's mining and refining industry is dominated by companies from China. They said we strongly believe eligibility for the critical minerals credit must prioritize domestic producers and existing free trade agreement partners like Canada and Australia. From everything that I've read, there's no way around it, the United States is going to have to import nickel to meet the ultimate demand.
As we speak, negotiations are underway between the US and Indonesia to sign a limited FTA, which would allow Indonesian critical minerals, primarily nickel, to be covered by the subsidies. The CEO of an Australian mining company said Australian nickel is at a cost disadvantage compared to other jurisdictions like Indonesia, but it has the world's best environmental standards. Welcome to the never-ending power struggle of profits and true sustainability.
Right now, Thailand has an EV subsidy scheme of about $2,000 to $4,000 that expires at the end of this year. Now, Thailand is planning a new subsidy scheme for EVs of about $2,760 per car starting next year through 2027. This EV 3.5 scheme was agreed on today, although they have not revealed the budget for these EV subsidies. We know that BYD is building a factory in the region and Tesla entered Thailand toward the end of last year. The outgoing subsidy program, the one ending this year, helped to put 50.3,000 EVs on the road in the first 9 months of 2023, far above the 9.7,000 units for the entirety of 2022.
Just to touch on commodities because, of course, in the background, this plays a huge role in what Tesla's margins ultimately are, and when there are changes, it could be a few quarters before we see anything hit the financials because Tesla, of course, works on long-term supply deals for many different commodities. Although for a resource like lithium, Tesla in the past has said they do around 10% of their volume on the spot market for lithium deals.
Right now, we have the benchmark 3-month copper futures 15% below the year-to-date high that was back in January. We also have nickel tumbling 43%. When it comes to copper, it's a matter of oversupply. We have dozens of new smelters that had been planned to lift output in anticipation of robust demand that are now open as demand slows. The expectation is there will be a copper supply surplus of 467,000 tons next year from the 27,000-ton shortfall expected this year.
As we just talked about the US potentially setting up an FTA with Indonesia, there are expected to be 53 nickel and other smelters built in the region in 2024. Looking at nickel futures prices, we're now back to levels that we haven't seen since the end of 2021. So not only did we have a massive influx of supply being prepared when this spike happened but with more and more automakers in this cost competition, they're now looking at LFP which does not use any nickel or cobalt. This is definitely not going away for EVs any time soon but over the next two decades or so, most of the industry will be transitioning to LFP chemistries, and the same is true on the energy storage side.
Shout out to Luca Greco on X4 putting this one on my radar. Here's a new company to keep an eye on. We have Canadian auto parts maker Lina Mar building a factory that will open in 2025 for giga casting. This will be the first giga casting planned, owned, and operated by a North American parts maker. There are 15 or 20 Chinese suppliers looking to put this type of capacity in China but from a European and North American standpoint, we are the first one according to the CTO. Initial plans call for the installation of three 6100-ton giga cast molding machines. The plan's production is earmarked for one specific customer, but he said they're concerned about the secrecy of the vehicle because it has not been announced. Lina Mar also has a site up and running in France and from there, they'll supply the first giga cast to its OEM customer here so it can move forward with its vehicle development program before going into full production after the Canada plant comes online. They said they can get 72 or 75 castings on a tractor-trailer, so when you start shipping higher volumes, things don't ship very well, meaning the giga cast we need to be close by.
As North America tries to build out its own EV supply chain, although this feels like a very small step, you have to start somewhere.
随着北美尝试建立自己的电动汽车供应链,虽然这只是一个微小的步骤,但是你必须从某个地方开始。
A quick PSA from Holmars: he was trying to pull out of a narrow garage, the park assist was beeping at him, but he ignored it because the vision-based system has a big margin of error that he thought it would be okay. Well, it turns out it was not okay.
I'm on the forums every day, one of the biggest and most upvoted complaints I see is the vision-based park assist compared to how it used to work with the ultrasonic sensors. So yes in the long term I'd still have confidence the vision based system will be good enough if not better but we're definitely not there yet according to most of the anecdotes I read. But the takeaway I wanted everybody to have for now you might need to trust your ears more than your eyes with a vision based system.
Gregor truck on X shared a photo saying that the new model 3 actually includes an air compressor accessory but I've also seen other reports that local deliveries in China do not include this accessory so I believe this is going to be region specific and in certain locations something like this is actually mandated. So I just wanted to add I do not think this is going to be for everyone everywhere.
Well exandra Tesla boomer mama shared this article from ottamas intelligence and I love visual learning so here we have the top eevee cell suppliers globally January through August of this year CATL 31% of the total followed by LG and BYD specifically for Tesla. Automas has said year to date for 2023 Panasonic has supplied Tesla with 33% of its battery supply CATL now its main supplier with 35% and LG in third place making up 26% of Tesla's battery supply and 4680s making up the remaining 6%. And yes I know Tesla is also most likely sourcing batteries from BYD specifically the blade battery for giga Berlin so I would take those automas numbers with a 1 to 5 percentage point plus or minus just because they don't know for sure they're just estimates but overall BYD supply to Tesla is most likely still small relative to their other suppliers.
Here we have some heuristic comments from BMW on Tesla their starting production of their first battery cell samples which they plan to use in their new class of EVs in 2025. Their production boss said this Tesla needs to close the gap with us in fact we don't see a gap to Tesla this when he was asked how BMW would close the gap with Tesla apparently he doesn't see it that way. He's also confident because BMW believes its on track to have battery costs with its new so called gen 6 cells taking a page right out of the Toyota Candyland playbook. It wouldn't be a battery breakthrough article without some numbers without any backing so they talk about 20% more energy density, 30% more range, up to 500 miles of range on a single charge. Not to mention 60% lower production related carbon emissions.
However BMW ruled out undertaking the high volatility of large scale battery cell production exactly what Tesla has chosen to take on with 4680s. Metal production or volume production of the battery cells will be carried out by suppliers including CATL and EVE which will make them at 6 factories 2 in Europe, 2 in China and 2 in North America. BMW said it would rather focus on doing deep dives into the battery technology in house so it'll focus on the recipes and the chemistries and then once it finds something it'll then ship it off to somebody else to make.
And look I know I'm giving him a hard time and the truth is I'm not sure how many of these legacy companies should try to make their own batteries. That's something that really maybe only Tesla can end up doing well, they've had a long time to develop it. These legacy OEMs need to focus on selling EVs first, working on the software and we know that in the long run yes vertical integration is the way especially if you want to have competitive margins but is it going to be biting off more than these legacy OEMs can chew given that they don't have the required talent to do something like that.
This shift does have BMW moving away from prismatic cells to cylindrical and they said the cylindrical cell is the way to go, it's our choice, it offers more flexibility. Their product chief also said we're working on our own design of electric engines and they're completely different than others in the market. Personally I find it interesting that BMW has the audacity to say that there's no gap with Tesla and that Tesla has to close the gap with them when they're literally only at the sample stage and they won't be implementing these cells into any real world product until 2025 at the earliest.
And yes I know these legacy OEM leaders can't come out and be candid and say hey Tesla's crushing us right now but at the same time I think customers, investors and the general public just want relatability and honesty and you don't have very much of that in this space as of late. It's just been the same story over and over for 10 plus years now. Empty promise after empty promise, missed target, delayed target so at this point legacy OEM promises carry very little weight in my book right now.
In October Tesla wholesale in China did 72.1 thousand vehicles down slightly from September. So here's a quick look at the table we're yet to get the official domestic and export breakdown but in the next few days we should have that. Over the past few weeks we've already talked ad nauseum about all of the asterisk situations for September and October given the Model 3 Plus and the Model Y partial refresh. So personally I was not at all expecting some sort of record here for October. It will be interesting though to see the breakdown of Model 3 and Y. And just taking a quick zoom out to look at the overall market for any of the wholesale sales for October you can see BYD doing silly numbers even if you do half full B.E.V. that's still 150,000 for the month.
Yesterday we talked about the Subaru Solterra and today we get their sales figures for October in the United States but first year to date they've sold 6973 of what's basically the busy 4x clone. And although the chart makes it look like they're seeing really nice growth for October they're still below 1300 units sold for the month in the US. Responding to that Ron Barron interview from yesterday Elon said we do need to knock the ball out of the park several times to achieve that value for a trillion dollars but I think we can. FSD, Optimus, Cybertruck, NextGen platform, Rubotaxi, Van, Dojo, those quickly come to mind and encouraging data point in the midst of all the EV negativity as of late in the first 9 months of this year EVs made up 21.5% of cars sold in California then if you include hybrid plug-in fuel cell that number jumps up to 35.4%. And those numbers aren't just for one month that's year to date. Also year to date in California Toyota remains the number one brand sold at 15% market share, Tesla and a close second 13.5%.
Taking a quick look at Ford's October sales in the United States EVs 6.8 thousand for the month up 9.1% over last year and they've told us they're going to start focusing more on hybrid vehicles but already they've sold 13.1 thousand hybrids in October up 37.9% year over year. For October though Mach-E sales were down 10.6% compared to October of last year to 2.7 thousand. Year to date the Mach-E has sold 31.6 thousand units up from 31.1 thousand over the same time last year and the F-150 Lightning sold 3.7 thousand units for the month up 52 compared to last year and year to date the Lightning has sold 15.9 thousand trucks up 42% compared to the same time last year. I would highlight on their production table you'll see Mach-E production had ramped up over the summer to 13.6 thousand units but we have seen a decrease since then with two months coming in below 8 thousand units produced.
Just a quick blurb from auto news Toyota said it ended October with a 30 day supply of vehicles or 230.3 thousand cars and light trucks in US dealer stock or in transit. Keep in mind this 30 day supply is only for Toyota's US business but we can still take a look at Tesla's global days of supply at 16 and get a little context. They said here Toyota is still struggling with some of the industry's lowest inventories at 30 days of supply Tesla sits at half of that. Yet we have some media outlets talking about Tesla's growing inventory problem implying that Tesla's is too high at 16 days of supply. Thanks for this one Travis. Good to know.
We need to be watching what happens with crews in the weeks ahead because as we all know it's currently in very hot water. Let's go back in time 2022 a person claiming to be a crew's employee warned regulators in California that crews development approach was not consistent with a safety first culture. Crew's leadership hit information on crashes from a team that worked on critical safety systems. This is exactly what happens when you put profits over people. Many of us know Missy Cummings for her bashing on Tesla but for now she has a new target. She said companies with safety culture problems blame everyone but themselves referring to crews. Crews should wipe out management clean house and bring in some people who know what it means to have a safety culture. I really think that's their only choice going forward.
This one's pretty comical early this year. Kyle vote crews CEO said the business has grown up in so many ways and reached this rapid scaling phase where we're no longer trying to prove this technology works or even that we can do it inexpensively as they had those endless problems and incidents and accidents. And oh yeah they were also losing hundreds of millions of dollars. All regulatory and governing body eyes are currently on crews and the word on the street is that if crews doesn't clean house and basically start from scratch at least in terms of management it's not going to have a great chance to get its vehicles back on the road.
The first Ford factory to vote on this new deal with the UAW has overwhelmingly voted in favor of the tentative contract agreement. Voting on the Ford deal will continue through November 17th and one of the biggest assembly operations is set to vote on the deal on November 12th. I don't know what type of signal this first factory voting will be for the rest but nonetheless a good start for Ford.
You may recall over the summer we learned that Tesla energy was working to launch a virtual power plant in Puerto Rico using the power walls already there. Drew Baglino said we have over 350 megawatts of power walls in Puerto Rico that could help the grid shortage in Puerto Rico overnight. Now according to Tesla's blog page it looks like registration is currently open. For now participation in the program allows customers to earn $1 for every kilowatt hour their power wall supplies during events. And as Drew Baglino just said Tesla is working with its partners on this project to make it potentially the biggest virtual power plant in the world. As we have 75,000 power wall owners that can now get paid to support the grid. This right here is the future I would love to see.
You may have heard Toyota has been spending time and R&D resources on a manual EV prototype. Well Toyota is going even further as now they're also apparently working on an EV prototype that can simulate multiple internal combustion powertrains. They have different programming to limit the torque application based on gas engine power curves, acceleration would be cut at specific times to simulate the automatic transmission shifts. Exactly what all EV drivers want their acceleration to be artificially limited.
Just a quick note from yesterday's video on John and Dr. Know it all bringing up that question about will the end to end neural nets find it harder to solve for edge cases. I know a lot of you brought up Tesla simulation and of course that's a great point. Yes Tesla can simulate any of these edge cases. My whole point was I just want to hear Elon and the team talk about some of these situations. Maybe they can add some color or context. Does the simulation have any limitations compared to the real world? Specifically when it comes to end to end neural nets because we've heard Elon say that the difference in photons from one camera to the next does actually make a difference when it comes to the training of the software. So given that the photons in a simulation might be somewhat different than what they see in the real world, what type of impact if any would that actually make.
So just to be clear I was not at all trying to argue I think Tesla's gonna have problems solving for edge cases now. It was really just a matter of I would love to get more information on topics like that rather than some of the basics say questions that we always get. You can find me on X linked below. Please like the video if you did. Hope you guys have a wonderful day and a huge thank you to all of my patreon supporters.