And the very last word is the totally automatic car, no driver at all. The whole thing is remotely controlled by cables and electric routes under the road, steering, accelerating, gear changing, braking and stopping. All the switches and electronics in the car could be provided for £100.
The radar device on the front will one day be able to tell how near you are to the car in front of you and slow you down automatically. And the day may come when the driver becomes totally redundant.
前方的雷达装置将有一天能够判断你与前方车辆的距离,并自动减速。而有一天司机可能会变得完全无用。
Here's my car, the way we go! You know, a mere 53 years later and we're much closer but still no cigar.
这是我的车,我们上路吧!你知道的,仅仅53年过去了,我们离得更近了,但仍未成功。
Welcome to Electrified, it's your host Dylan Loomis. We have to touch on it, yet again this year the Dawn Project ran an ad during the Super Bowl. This time the main message was Boycott Tesla due to their unsafe FSD practices. If you didn't see the ad, it's because it was not national, it was only aired in a few local locations.
In the description of the YouTube video, Boycott Tesla to cut off funding for Elon Musk's depraved human experiments. They also say 90% of people agreed that the safety defects in Tesla's self-driving software mean it should be banned immediately, but Tesla refuses to fix the safety defects.
This year's campaign for the Dawn Project cost $552,000 just lower than their $598,000 ad buy for the Super Bowl last year. A spokesperson said, we are running it in fewer areas but have doubled the airtime with two commercials this year instead of one. Noting Washington is the biggest focus as it's the home of the politicians and federal regulators. On X the ad did get community noted.
The news video of the child being hit by a driver was actually not a Tesla FSD incident. All news articles say the driver was driving manually. Mr. O'Dowd has been known to use cheap devices on Tesla steering wheels to trick the car into driving itself.
In the ad they show a Model 3 driving down a cone lane and hitting a child-sized dummy. The problem with the ad is it doesn't show the car being in full self-driving, only traffic-aware cruise control. Even in the crappy 480p quality, you can obviously tell full self-driving is not enabled.
The 2023 Model Y won the IIHS Top Safety Pick Plus. Not only that but for front crash prevention vehicle to pedestrian it achieved a superior rating. And the same tests at night it also achieved a superior rating. Yes, superior is the highest one can earn.
In response to this ad being aired the National Transportation Safety Board put out a press release today about the Dawn Project. That's because their ad featured the official NTSB seal. Thus they clarified the NTSB had no involvement in the production of this ad, did not authorize the use of its seal, nor does it endorse the work of the Dawn Project. The agency has asked the group to stop the unauthorized use of the NTSB seal.
Back in 2022 when the Dawn Project started running some of these ads, Tesla did threaten to sue. In Tesla's cease and desist message it said it's come to our attention that you personally and the Dawn Project have been disparaging Tesla's commercial interests and disseminating defamatory information to the public regarding capabilities of Tesla's FSD. Tesla demanded the Dawn Project remove the test track videos, issue a public retraction, disclose funding for the tests and the commercial, and to say whether any regulatory agencies endorsed the methodology or the results.
Then in the Dawn Project's official response to Tesla's cease and desist letter, they said Elon is just another crybaby hiding behind his lawyer's skirt. He's obsessed with stopping me from exposing that his FSD cars could mow down a child, dressed in a safety vest in a school crosswalk. You can read the whole thing if you like, but the conclusion, Tesla's FSD has no future. It's the most incompetently designed, implemented, and tested commercial software I have ever seen. All it does is take a perfectly good Tesla car and make it occasionally try to kill the driver, the passengers, and innocent bystanders.
Despite the fact that this ad only ran in a few markets during the Super Bowl this year, it's still likely that hundreds of thousands of people have seen the ad. So yes, I think it's time that Elon and Tesla put some of those lawyers they've been hiring to good use and sue the Dawn Project in Danno Doubt.
I'm not sure if the Dawn Project using that NTSB logo gives them any extra grounds to do so, but I think they would have enough to go on even without that. It may be true that Elon views this situation as something beneath him and not worthy of his or Tesla's time and attention, but if we're being honest, Elon's perception of the public's perception of Tesla has not always been super accurate.
Tesla is at that critical juncture where they're now trying to bridge the gap from the early adopters into the mainstream market. I think most of us would agree, first impressions can be pretty difficult to overcome no matter how good your advertising is and if the mainstream market's public perception of Tesla is being formed by the likes of Legacy Media and the Dawn Project, it's just making things that much more difficult for Tesla. In the end, I do believe the truth and the technology will indeed win out, but along the way, who doesn't love a little bit of justice?
We got a few images of the Tesla UI now showing third-party charging locations in the Tesla UI in Australia and New Zealand. Chargers over 75 kilowatts or more appear in the 3 lightning bolts section. Those under 75 kilowatts appear in the 1 lightning bolt section. So far, the third-party network spotted are ChargeFox, EV, BP Pulse, and ChargeNet. However, not all of the sites are included right now. Navigating to one of these third-party sites does result in the car preconditioning. The navigation system does not automatically include these in the route, even if charging is needed. They do need to be manually included. For what it's worth, Australia and New Zealand use the CCS2 as the charging standard and these public stations use that connector as do Teslas in those regions.
Drive Tesla Canada reported that in Europe, Tesla has been approved for adaptive headlight functionality now for the Model S and X. Thus, as it stands now, most Tesla vehicles across Europe are now actually approved to receive this adaptive headlight functionality. Still no word on when this technology will roll out to Tesla vehicles in Canada and the United States, despite it already being approved by NHTSA.
Drive Tesla Canada报道称,在欧洲,特斯拉Model S和X现已获批适应性大灯功能。因此,目前在欧洲,大多数特斯拉车辆实际上已获批接收此适应性大灯功能。尽管该功能已经获得美国国家公路交通安全管理局(NHTSA)的批准,但仍没有关于何时将该技术推出到加拿大和美国特斯拉车辆的消息。
Tesla Scope got its hands on some internal communication between Tesla and some delivery advisors with regards to the upcoming Model Y project Juniper. Tesla said, We heard your feedback that some customers are waiting to place their Model Y order as they anticipate a refresh similar to the Model 3. It's important we communicate transparently there is no refresh for the Model Y launching this year. On one hand, it's good that Tesla is finally communicating this to avoid the Osborne effect, which clearly was taking place. But two, for those waiting, now you're going to have to wait a bit longer, most likely until sometime in quarter 1, 2025 for the North American market. I would still expect the Model Y refresh to happen in Shanghai sometime around the summer of this year. I'd still guess there's maybe a 5-10% chance that Tesla is just saying this to encourage orders now and to avoid people waiting, and that maybe they do actually have a chance to roll it out ahead of schedule toward the end of this year. But most likely, no Model Y refresh in North America this year, we will be waiting until Q1 2025.
From Charlie Ballello, the street continues for used Tesla pricing. It has now declined 19 months in a row, going from 67.9000 to a record below 33.9000 as of today. Over a 50% decline. This is exactly why some of these rental car companies have been offloading their Tesla vehicles, they can't handle this type of depreciation. We've talked about this chart in depth before, but I do want to highlight, there will be a long-term downward trend line, something like what I'm highlighting on the screen, given Tesla's ongoing cost cutting efforts, and their striving to make their vehicles more affordable. So this short-term bubble and peak right here is an anomaly it was from the illness-related supply chain restrictions. Had this spike anomaly not occurred, these figures really would not be nearly as staggering. Plus, when you add in new vehicle incentives, the IRA tax credits, this fleet of used Teslas continually aging, all of the hurt sales, etc., you begin to see the picture.
The chairman and CEO of Dell, Michael Dell, just got a tour of Gigataxis from Elon himself. Elon replied, saying, good to see you. It's good to see Elon and Michael Dell seemingly on good terms again after the last few years they were at odds over that 12 GHz spectrum that was proposed for 5G service. At the time, RS Access, a Dell company cited SpaceX's long history of misleading information, rule-flaunting, and ad hominem attacks.
On Friday, Tesla Scope said FSD beta 12.2 is now going out to Tesla employees and special groups for the first time. In terms of a wider release of FSD 12 for the general public, Tesla Scope said, a good chance of this we've been told the goal is to release an update any day now to the public. Version 12.1.2 went to both hardware 3 and hardware 4 vehicles. Version 12.2 is back to hardware 3 only so we're unsure how Tesla intends to proceed.
Bloomberg shared an article about Tesla and their regulatory credits they've earned over the years for the full year 2023 Tesla made $1.79 billion in regulatory credit sales, which is basically pure profit. Since 2009, Tesla has cumulatively earned about $9 billion from reg credit sales.
I had to touch on this though because you may recall back in 2020 when Zach Kirkhorn was still the CFO on a Q2 call he was talking about how Tesla was in the future expecting lower reg credit sales and confirmed they were not relying on this business into perpetuity. Thus from summer 2020 on, the market was expecting Tesla's reg credit sales to continually decline.
However, for the last 3-4 years, their reg credit sales have been anywhere from 1.3 up to 1.8 billion dollars per year. Meaning that slowdown has not happened. Plus, we know that many of these EV makers are now pulling back on their sales and that's now being paired with other places like Europe and the UK implementing even stricter emissions regulations. The takeaway? Tesla's regulatory credit sales may still have another few years of operating before they see any significant decline.
Of this program, the former chair of the California Air Resources Board said it really makes the mad that Tesla got so much of a boost out of being the only pure EV manufacturer out there. In effect, they helped to finance this upstart company which now has all the glamour. As a Tesla Clean Energy fan, this program really is a beautiful thing because it's quite literally other OEMs who are producing more emissions than they should, giving Tesla money to continually build its lead with electric vehicles.
The Economic Times reported Tesla can apply for incentives under the national program on advanced chemistry sales for battery storage. This in response to a question on whether a separate policy for providing incentives to Tesla was being formed. I do think it's fair to read into this one that, at least for now, India is not focused on a separate policy for Tesla alone.
The main Tesla account on X posted the world's best-selling SUV is $1,000 off for this month alone. Prices will go up again in March. Elon quoted it saying, since most people don't love to buy cars in the middle of winter, Tesla is offering a $1,000 incentive to do so. This is the essential quandary of manufacturing. Factories need continuous production for efficiency, but consumer demand is seasonal.
In addition to that, as Sawyer pointed out, Tesla has lowered the down payment required to get that $379 per month lease starting price for the Model Y to $2499 from $4,500 before. And then, in response to Snoop Dogg basically asking Elon for a free Tesla, Elon said everyone pays full price for a Tesla, including me.
Today, Joe Tettmeyer was reporting on Gigatexas saying, Big News, the new vehicle outbound lot in transport truck pickup has been moved to the new West outbound The old lot on the east side is now devoid of cars. This is a significant moment as production ramp capability is linked to the new end of line and outbound lot operations.
It's absolutely true that historically auto demand is cyclical, but don't forget the other aspect of the supply and demand ratio we also have the supply. So if Tesla is increasing the production capacity at Gigatexas, which seems to be the case, that could also be at least a small part of this $1000 price reduction.
Stillantis, finally, is the last major OEM to get off the sidelines and adopt the NACS standard. In a press release, they didn't really mention Tesla at all, they just referred to the SAE J3400 standard which is the NACS, and said this will start for BED models launching in North America for the 2026 model year. For the rest of the press release though, they really just went on to talk about their Iona joint venture with the 6 other OEMs working on building 30,000 charge points in urban and highway locations across North America by 2030. All of those sites will be open to all BED customers with CCS and the J3400 connector. The first stations from this joint venture are expected to open this year. In this entire press release, they did not mention Tesla or the supercharger network even one time.
Now we know that Tesla is slowly opening up its supercharger network, it's not going to flood the market with all other OEMs at one time, so this is going to be a gradual multi-year process. And just because this press release didn't mention Tesla, I still firmly believe that in a few years, Stellantis electric vehicles will have access to the Tesla supercharger network.
Here we have it, all of the major OEMs are now confirmed to have adopted the NACS, the only remaining holdouts are much smaller players with some EVs, Vinfast, Faraday Future and Canoe.
Today we also learned a lot about this new 7-company joint venture that now has an official name Iona. Effectively, if you're familiar with Iona in Europe, this is going to be Iona in North America, hence ION, North America, Iona. The CEO of this joint venture is Seth Cutler, previously president and COO of the Charged Network EVGO and a Chief Infrastructure Engineer at Electrify America, not super-engouraging.
Some of these sites will be flagship stations with facilities that, according to a source, may be akin to airline lounges, including bathrooms and refreshments. Both the CCS and the NACS ports will integrate with the car maker's apps and in-car route planning. They said the new CEO will not do any interviews for three months so he can get settled, get some things going and have some good news. The 7 companies involved, BMW, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes and Stellantis.
They're saying the goal is to have 6-10 charging cables capable of 350 kilowatts each. These will be sheltered from the elements in safe, well-lit locations. So, let the rollout of IONA in the United States begin.
I have one casting. I'm a machine in a couple of places and I'm done and it's perfect. Do you know what perfect on a factory floor does for you as far as efficiency? It makes you impossible to impossible because it's perfect. I will never have to worry about variation. I will never have guys with 2x4s and and peening hammers. I don't need any of that stuff and the reason for that is because the castings are always perfect.
Now, they were good, good when we were looking at the model Y. But now, Elon and his famous material science guys, they've come up with a new aluminum, different than what they've used in the past. This new aluminum allows them now to basically shoot the aluminum faster. The reason for that is because they've figured out something that makes it a little slippery, a little more viscous than the old aluminum. The other thing that they've got going is that they've developed a new software package that does mold flow. And it helps you, I think it's an AI kind of a program, it helps you redesign the casting molds so that it flows better and flows easier.
So in the case of the front module for the Tesla, that's only a 6,000 ton press. I don't know how to, when they told me that, I was totally blown away. That's not what it should be, an 8,000 ton press. So let me put things into perspective. A thousand tons is worth about a million bucks. So to go from a 6 million dollar machine, sorry, an 8 million dollar machine to a 6 million dollar machine, that's a lot of money that you don't have to invest in. The same thing is true with the molds. The molds now seem to last longer for some reason or other. Again, going back to the material science that, again, that has to be a leadership decision to say, hey, I want you to develop a new aluminum so that we can cast it faster and better. Not very many leaders in the auto industry are willing to toss money at that kind of R&D, but Elon did. So that is put them now another three, four, five years ahead of everybody else because everybody else is still doing it the old fashioned way.
Just a friendly reminder that even though some of these OEMs are slowly starting to adopt the gigacast technique, they are not all created equal. Even more exciting, Sandy did confirm they have a cyber truck on order. So in the next few weeks, most likely they will get that vehicle and then the teardown will begin.
I'd assume sometime maybe toward the end of key one, if not into quarter two, those videos will be ready to go on Monroe live.
我会假设在关键的一段时间结束时,如果不是进入第二季度,那些视频将会准备好在蒙罗演播中播放。
Maybe you already saw this story from Reuters pointing out that Tesla doesn't make as much revenue per employee as General Motors are Ford. It showed that Tesla generates $680,000 in revenue per each employee, while GM generates over a million dollars and Ford gets 937,000. But what this story fails to take into account is the difference in vertical integration at each company. GM and Ford by 80% of the value of every vehicle they make from suppliers. So much of their headcount is actually in the supplier industry. Tesla is almost exactly the opposite. It makes most of its parts in house.
So here's a metric that we think is much more important to look at. Last year, Tesla made $4,900 in operating profit for every vehicle it sold, while GM made $1,600 and Ford made $1,200. So Tesla makes far more profit per vehicle than GM or Ford.
Let's see how many of you are actually paying close attention on the screen auto line listed profit per employee when in reality these figures are indeed actual profit per car and that's operating profit per car. Doing the math for operating profit per employee for Tesla last year would work out to around $63,500 per employee. That's using employee headcount of 140,000 and Tesla's operating profit last year of $8.9 billion.
Here's the storyline worth keeping an eye on when it comes to Tesla's relationship with Indonesia. We've seen the Indonesian government reach out to the US administration trying to get some of its nickel to actually qualify for IRA credits so far the US has not responded. The current administration in the DRC when it comes to nickel is actually using substantial financial support to capture metals for US companies. However, when it comes to the same resource in Indonesia, the current administration has been hurling insults and just a lot of talk. The main US concerns over Indonesia's nickel industry is lax environmental and labor practices at the mostly Chinese own nickel smelters. The takeaway is that so far the public facing sentiment of the current administration toward Indonesia nickel has not been a favorable one. It's true the industry is quickly moving away from nickel toward LFP chemistry but nickel is not going away anytime soon. Given that fact this situation brings some uncertainty into the conversations between Tesla and Indonesia.
From the Nikkei Asia there's a new consortium of research companies, actual companies, government entities forming one group for solid state battery advancement. It's called K-SIP the China all solid state battery collaborative innovative platform. They said we need to be prepared for the risk that all solid state battery technology could overturn China's current advantage in lithium batteries. The consortium will work on basic research key technologies and joint development and manufacturing of the these equipped with solid state batteries in addition to setting up a supply chain for them of the companies included in this group C-A-T-L and BYD. Here's a list of the government entities involved including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and as mentioned some government affiliated research institutes as well. They said AI is changing the way we do materials research and development and it'll vastly accelerate the speed of all solid state battery R&D.
If you like getting into the weeds of the lithium space keep an eye on this California startup lilac solutions they eventually plan to produce up to 20,000 tons of battery grade lithium per year at a new site in northern Utah. They're announcing this week they raised 145 million dollars from investors and they're also in discussions with large battery manufacturers and automakers interested in securing a domestic supply of battery grade lithium. Lilacs process is different because they do not use evaporation ponds. The word is it's going to take lilac about two years for them to build this plant. Lilacs method deploys reusable ceramic beads that attach to lithium atoms to separate them from the brine.
Later this month the first of the row row roll-on roll-off ships ordered by BYD will stop at ports in the Netherlands and Germany. Essentially to date Chinese EV companies have just been buying up certain slots on all different kinds of ships that they don't actually own. As you can imagine sometimes that doesn't work out well so to bypass this competition and BYD plans to secure eight row row vessels within two years each capable of carrying 7,000 EV units for its own exclusive use. A German analyst said we certainly expect an increase in 2024 from Chinese models to smash one of the largest hurdles so far a lack of appropriate shipping vessels. We've talked a lot about the Chinese aspirations to get their EVs into more global markets outside of China. I think it's worth mentioning that Sandy Monroe now also believes that Chinese EVs will eventually make it to the American market.
F-150 Lightning deliveries have now begun in Europe specifically in Norway. Shell just put out this brief press release saying we will no longer be operating hydrogen light duty passenger fueling stations due to hydrogen supply complications and other external market factors. Effective immediately the following stations will be closed permanently. Looking around it sounds like before these closures there were only 55 total retail hydrogen stations in California. Nearly 13% of those are now closing immediately and they're saying a majority of the hydrogen stations in Southern California are offline or operating with reduced hours. Some are also down for repairs as many hydrogen stations suffer from serious reliability issues.
Speaking of Mercedes they're now announcing some new changes for its upcoming electric vehicles. Their lineup will feature a less streamlined design in order to appeal to a wider group of customers. Their VP of engineering just said the design is one of the reasons models like the EQE and the EQS have not sold as well as executives hoped. They said the EQ name will stick around in the foreseeable future but that not every car will get it.
GM confirmed the base model of the upcoming Chevy Equinox the EV1LT will start at $34,995. GM said order books will open soon for most models but the base variant will be available to book later in 2024. GM is expecting the Equinox 1LT to become the most affordable electric car in the United States with over 300 miles of range. The 2LT front wheel drive that will be available first starts at $43,000 and the lineup goes up to $46,000 to $46,000 but to start all vehicles will be front wheel drive with all wheel drive available later. The Equinox EVs are expected to be eligible for the full $7,500 tax credit. The word is the all wheel drive variant will get an EPA estimated range of 285 miles. This car has been delayed now by GM a few times but if they can stay true to their word which is certainly a big if having an EV over 300 miles of range under $30,000 after the tax credit is a very appealing offer from GM. We definitely need to see this vehicle in customer hands to get a feel for the infotainment, house the software because historically this has been a big problem for GM specifically on their EV releases.
通用汽车(GM)确认即将推出的雪佛兰Equinox EV 1LT的基本型号起价为34,995美元。GM表示,大多数型号的订购将很快开放,但基本型号将在2024年晚些时候开放。GM希望Equinox 1LT能成为美国最实惠的电动汽车,续航里程超过300英里。第一款将推出的2LT前轮驱动车型起价为43,000美元,该系列车型的价格范围从46,000到46,000美元不等,但所有车型起初都将采用前轮驱动,后续将提供全轮驱动车型。预计Equinox EV将符合7500美元的完全税收抵免条件。有消息称,全轮驱动车型的美国环境保护署(EPA)估计续航里程为285英里。尽管GM多次推迟了这款车的发布时间,但如果他们能言出必行,也许这将是一项非常诱人的优惠,即在税收抵免后,雪佛兰提供价格低于30,000美元的续航里程超过300英里的电动车。我们肯定需要看到这款车辆在客户手中,以了解其信息娱乐系统和软件运行情况,因为历史上这一点一直是GM在其电动车发布中的一个大问题。
Deliveries of the Equinox are expected to begin by mid 2024. Rivian just cut $3,100 off its entry level R1T and R1S units. Cruz just named Steve Kenner as its chief safety officer who will oversee Cruz's safety management systems and operations. Previously he's worked at Ford and most recently he was vice president of safety at self driving trucking company Kodiak and also worked at Apple, Uber, Locimation, Chrysler and Aurora.
Marco is reporting that Tesla has filed for a 164 stall site that is planned in Kern County, California. The site will include 16 pull through chargers and solar canopies above every parking stall. If this goes through, Marco is saying it'll be the world's largest supercharger location. As we expected the dominoes are now falling, Neuralink has filed to incorporate in Nevada leaving Delaware. Tesla stock closed the day at $188.13 down 2.81% while the Nasdaq was down 0.3%. It was a lower volume day for Tesla trading about 13 million shares below the average 30 day volume.
A quick note for all patrons, I do update the outro screens now at the end of every month. If you don't see your name on the list and you think that you should be, just shoot me a message. The most likely reason is your card has been declined. Also if your name is in orange, it just means that for whatever reason you're not in an official tier so it's mostly just for me to make sure that your name actually makes it onto the list. Because when you're not on an official tier, Patreon makes it look like you're not active.
Hope you guys have a wonderful day, you can find me on X linked below. Please like the video if you did, and a huge thank you to all of my Patreon supporters.