Welcome to Electrified, it's your host, Dylan Loomis. Quick shout out to my newest patrons, MP, CB, and Timothy G. Thank you for choosing to support the channel. I'm not the creator of this, but I did see it going around today. There's a petition on change.org for NHTSA to stop calling OTA software updates. Recalls. Personally, I'd be fully on board with this simple differentiation that is suggested in this petition that NHTSA differentiates between a hardware recall and a software update. Disclosure. I have already signed the petition. It will be linked in the description below if you're interested, and I'll remind you at the end of the video.
Luca Greco, who follows the giga press space very closely, is saying that based on info he's gathered at legacy OEMs, will start using gigacastings in their vehicles, sometime toward the end of 2025 into 2026. Those names include Volvo, Toyota, Hyundai, an undisclosed company he speculates is Ford, and another he cannot name. What I'm optimistically hoping for with this transition is that more of these OEMs actually have EV dedicated production lines and factories rather than everybody trying to do this modular platform where yes, they can build EDs, but they can just as easily build an ICE vehicle on that same line.
As I've always said, planning to use these, buying them, setting them up is one thing, but then figuring out the actual material or the alloy to inject to actually create the mold is an entirely separate thing. The Tesla and SpaceX material science collab over the years is a huge benefit to Tesla that other OEMs just don't have. We have Wes on X, a Cybertruck lead engineer chiming in on the Cybertruck Rust situation saying, Stainless is reactive and free iron that sits on it will rust. Its surface contamination only and can be cleaned off easily, barkeeper's friend works well, and if anything is stubborn, use a blue non-scratch Scotch bright pad as it won't leave any marks on the metal.
As we talked about earlier this week, these little spots customers have been concerned about, most likely just from real dust or free iron, surface level only, not really actual rust. Ordinarily I wouldn't check in on one month for one country, but I have been curious to see what's going on over in Germany for Tesla, so for January this year for full electric vehicles whether imported or domestically made, Tesla the number 1 BEV brand. 3.1000 registrations compared to Mercedes in second with 2.3000. I know some of you guys live in Germany so if any of you know why Tesla is still listed as an imported brand, despite most of their German sales coming from Gigabrelin, please let us know.
Another market we know to keep an eye on for Tesla has been Japan and Tesla Asia posted on X, Cybertruck ignites Tokyo with its first appearance in Japan. Speaking of Japan, according to the most two recent quarters of GDP data, it's now officially entered a recession if you go by that definition of the term. Those figures will still be revised so subject to change, but Japan's cabinet office has also indicated the country lost its position as the world's third largest economy to Germany.
Heinrich Zane gave us a quick updated look at the progress for the Tesla semi-factory at Giganuevada. Right now they're really just grading the land, maybe doing something with draining, which you're looking at on screen right now. I'm not sure Tesla still thinks they're on track, but the last we heard was a volume semi-production toward the end of this year, so hopefully we see some great progress throughout the course of the next few months. Farley's interesting comments continue this time around saying to forget about Tesla and focus on Ford Pro. Specifically he was urging Wall Street to forget about Tesla and FSD and told investors instead they should be focusing on Ford Pro's fleet business.
Heinrich Zane给我们快速更新了吉格纳瓦达特斯拉半挂车工厂的进展。目前他们主要是在对土地进行评估,可能正在进行排水工作,你现在看到的是在屏幕上。我不确定特斯拉是否仍然认为他们进展顺利,但我们上次听到的消息是年底前要实现半挂车的大量生产,所以希望在接下来的几个月中看到一些巨大的进展。法雷的有趣评论继续说要忘记特斯拉,关注福特Pro。他特别敦促华尔街忘记特斯拉和FSD,而是告诉投资者应该专注于福特Pro的车队业务。
He said quote, If you're looking for the future of the automotive industry, stop looking at FSD and Tesla, look at Ford Pro. It's got a half a million subscribers with 50% gross margin. Jumping quickly to Ford's financials, you'll see for the full year 2023, Ford Pro did bring in $7.2 billion in terms of EBIT, and that was at an EBIT margin of 12.4%. Now if you're not super familiar with EBIT, a lot of people mistakenly say it's the same thing as operating income. While it is indeed close, there often are some differences. Simply put, EBIT earnings before interest in taxes will include non-operating income, which can sometimes make the EBIT figure actually higher than operating income.
One example, interest income is a line item that could inflate a company's EBIT income relative to its operating income because that line item does not have to do with the core operations of the business. Ford said it expects revenue for telematics and other non-traditional subscription services to increase to $2,000 per vehicle annually, or $167 a month for Ford Pro in the years ahead. Farley said 20% of Pro's overall revenue is expected to come from such services by 2026. Ford Pro is kind of confusing for people to understand because it's not just one thing, it's really the overarching umbrella for operating Ford's fleet or commercial business.
But under that umbrella, you have many different aspects of Ford Pro like software, service, charging, financing, actual vehicle hardware. I think it's worth taking a minute or two to try to explain Ford Pro in a bit of detail to actually find out one, is there any truth to what Farley is saying and then two, if so is there anything that Tesla could learn from what Ford is doing with this Pro business line? I know some of you may be rolling your eyes but don't forget the F-series pickup line has been America's best selling truck for over 46 years and it's not just because of the actual vehicle, it's this ecosystem Ford has built around it. During Ford's most recent earnings, they said Ford Pro is nearly a $60 billion high margin hardware software and physical services business and most of that revenue is reoccurring. Their CFO said I believe Ford Pro is where the industry is going.
To prove it, in 2023 Ford Pro doubled its EBIT to $7 billion and now we're on track for mid-teen EBIT margins at Pro. Then he said look at North America, we are really dominant. We do very well on state and local government pro sales. These are very profitable and last year state and local governments increased their spending by $75 billion or 16% and a sizable portion of that is in infrastructure and people need super duties and transits. On the commercial side we're dominant in vocations like service construction, utility and government. But our biggest success is in total addressable markets where the market's biggest small and medium sized businesses are tradespeople. Our second biggest moat is upfitters.
Every one of our landscapers, plumbers, electricians, they all upfit their transits and super duties and rangers specific to their vocation. We've now already developed a digital upfit integration system and we share engineering specs with all of those upfitters. We've been working with them for decades and they really trust Ford. They're even able to move their upfit equipment from old Ford's to new ones. So just a few final thoughts. One, I do think it's a bit of an odd comparison looking at Ford Pro and FSD. They're really two entirely different things. The only similarity is that they both include an aspect of a software paid feature.
As for there being any truth to what Farley is saying about Ford Pro, maybe there's some but the problem is most of those Ford Pro profits are just being siphoned off into their electric vehicle spending where they're losing about $5 billion per year. And the one area where I think Tesla may be able to learn something from Ford Pro is when it comes to the tradespeople. All of those small businesses that currently have been trusting Ford now for decades. If Tesla can one prove that the Cybertruck is capable just from a truck perspective which I'm pretty confident they will step to would be driving the price down and then step three would be offering a more robust software ecosystem with more fleet management software. I will say for the next few years Tesla probably does not need to tap into the trades market. They're going to have enough demand and limited supply as it is. But for the long term I think this is an area where Tesla can improve.
Farley said while EV demand is slower than expected for consumers, fleet customers are actually adopting all electric vehicles faster than the company had anticipated. Soon, Tesla will launch another train headed to Gigabrelin. It's going to start operations on April 1st. It'll depart early in the morning to transport workers for the morning shift. This new connection was ordered and funded by Tesla and they explain that this new offering will also be available for free use to all other travelers. This train will be additional to the one that already runs to Gigabrelin.
Some Japanese players have shifted into crisis mode as they confront cutting edge technology and cutthroat competition from China, Silicon Valley and beyond. The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, a lobby is recommending a 2024 plan of action for its members, which include names like Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Subaru and Mitsubishi. It also plans to make policy proposals it wants Japan's government to act upon in June. Crisis mode in the Japanese auto sector which employs 8.5 million people if you include commercial transportation is clearly something to note. They've identified seven areas for improvement and they're going to focus on coordinated cross-industry efforts. Leading the tea leaves you know things are dire when for decades these companies have been competitors and now they may be collaborating together. They'll focus on electrification, software-defined vehicles and better energy management.
This one's long overdue but they're finally going to focus on infrastructure for charging EVs. They'd like to develop batteries and semiconductors locally. They'd like to shore up the supply chains for the resources needed to make those batteries and semiconductors. They want to promote trade and fun fact in 2022 Japan exported 3.8 million cars, trucks and buses, almost half of all the vehicles it produced. They want to pivot to renewable resources and they want to collaborate on data and parts tracing again focusing on these cross-industry cooperation.
Tesla Japan did post some b-roll of the cyber truck over in the country and this should help kickstart some of Tesla's advertising locally in the area to drum up some interest in the brand. There were some updates to Tesla's referral program for a short time you had the option to redeem 30,000 credits to then get your cyber truck within 45 days of redemption but that's already sold out. Good news though, this one may be back in the future. Factory tours at both Gigatexus and Fremont are available for 10,000 credits. Until March 1st if you refer a demo drive you'll get 1000 credits instead of 100 before. Then there's new sweepstakes for 1000 credits to win a foundation series cyber truck. And yes, somebody did already win the first one. The referral program is also now live in Thailand.
Elon posted about Powerwall 3 saying what matters most is that it can handle peak power of around 30 kilowatts which is enough to handle dryers and air conditioners. This means that a single power wall is now enough for most homes. Tesla dropped an interesting product, the dog mode that used to just be on the screen is now available as an actual product also in a miniature mode. Both of which are already out of stock. Lady Gaga was seen getting into a cyber truck that is presumably hers just with a driver and just as we predicted the cyber truck is already acting as that halo vehicle for the Tesla brand. I'm confident the cyber truck will continue to be a vehicle that entertainers, celebrities and people with influence are drawn to if for no other reason than the novelty of it.
Mercedes Ben spokesperson just said our long term strategy is to go all electric in the future where market conditions allow in the short term will leverage the strength of our top end vehicle portfolio and balance the short term with tactical flexibility on ice, EV and plug in to maximize growth opportunity and local market demands. That updated statement came after a meeting where Mercedes said they were shifting their focus to lower priced cars to drive sales. According to a dealer at the meeting last year was about profitability, this year is about sales growth. The plan is to increase the supply of gasoline and hybrid cars relying on the C and E class along with the equivalent GLC and GLE to be their bread and butter. Mercedes told dealers at the meeting no fewer than 25 new and updated models would go on sale in 2024. One dealer representative said I'd rather have entry level vehicles with a turn rate of less than 30 days that I can make a small profit on than carry a $100,000 EV for a half a year and lose money on. My first question is how low do they want those prices to go? And to long term could the brand take a slight hit losing some of that upper echelon luster.
As expected after China's export ban of some graphite material we now have a lot of activity taking place in the space. Over the past few days, three companies have struck major deals including GM, SKON, whose customers are Ford, Hyundai and VW and Panasonic all entering into new agreements. This stuff matters because 95% of all EV battery anodes are made from graphite. Further, China controls about 90% of the global anode production capacity and converts about 90% of the world's graphite into anode material. In 2022 China produced about 65% of the world's graphite. In the graphite world keep in mind you have natural graphite and synthetic graphite. Typically, the synthetic actually performs a bit better in EV batteries because when it comes to the natural graphite it's removed from the ground. Oftentimes it has certain impurities that result in poorer performance. As with most things in life though there are trade offs as that natural graphite is actually easier to process. It has a lower carbon footprint and it's often times cheaper to process. And for some context, according to S&P Global, today about 77% of the graphite used in EV batteries comes from synthetic sources. It sounds like the CEO of Stellantis is not going to let the company under any circumstances buy EV credits. This at least in part because during the FCA era they were often times buying credits from Tesla which proved to be a profitable business for Tesla.
The Dodge Ram CEO said it's not even a topic of discussion. We don't buy credits, we're not buying credits, we're not going to do that. Then here's a downside of sorts. Remember what I said earlier, Stellantis with the STLA large platform that will make EVs will also have the ability to support traditional gasoline models. So Stellantis's plan is to use the same platform to build EVs or ICE vehicles or hybrids, whatever they need to do to actually hit these emissions targets. They'll flex between those technologies within one platform, one manufacturing footprint, one supplier base, depending on whichever way the regulations go. Look, that might be a way to avoid buying regulatory credits but if I've learned anything from Tesla it's that it's probably not the best way to build the best electric vehicle you can build from a first principle standpoint. UAW Strike Talk is back on the table next Friday, February 23rd, 9,000 workers at Ford's plant in Kentucky could go on strike. Workers at the plant are now 5 months past the deadline for a local contract and these local deals are in addition to the national contract. UAW said the core issues in these negotiations is related to health and safety in the plant. The UAW said it has 19 unresolved local agreements across Ford as well as several with GM and Stellantis. That Kentucky truck plant for Ford is its most profitable plant and generates about $25 billion in annual revenue.
Last night Sean Fain had some pretty aggressive words for Ford and its leadership saying this contract was a major victory for working families across this country. If Ford is upset about that, that tells you a lot about the leadership of this company. Being continued, maybe Ford doesn't need to move factories to find the cheapest labor on earth, maybe it needs to recommit to American workers and find a CEO who's interested in the future of this country's auto industry. We're moving forward raising the standards across the industry from the big three to the non-union companies. We encourage Ford to stay focused on building the best auto industry in the world and not on an endless race to the bottom. I don't know the details of the negotiations and I of course support fighting for the American worker but the problem is if you fight too hard in this situation, there's not going to be any jobs to fight for. Every executive in the industry outside of those that Polestar honestly have said how important it is to focus on cutting costs and dropping prices when it comes to succeeding with EVs. Honestly, is it fair to put the burden of rebuilding the American manufacturing auto industry squarely on Ford? I don't think that it is because as a public company, Ford has a duty to its shareholders to maximize profits and to do that they have to make their vehicles in regions where it's cost effective.
The walls continue to cave in at Cruise now we have the head of hardware saying that he's resigned from the company. He was the senior VP for Autonomous Vehicle Platforms leaving after six years with the company. The co-president of Cruise said the Autonomous Vehicles Platform team was critical to Cruise's efforts to return its vehicles back to the road as soon as possible. Gary Barra is making more promises saying that 2024 will be the year of execution. She said we've got to demonstrate we can build all team based products and the market wants them and we can achieve our profitability goals. Even though we've said by 2035 our light duty portfolio will be all EV will be guided by the consumer. She said we'll have much better pricing and this year we're going to have the blazer and the equinox that get into that range of where the biggest affordability is and the charging infrastructure will be better.
GM is still intending to relaunch Cruise in a single city and they said in the pretty near future I think we'll be signaling where we're going to deploy yet this year. Meanwhile GM's president has said that Cruise could return to the road in the next one to two years but a spokesperson clarified that he was specifically referring to the Cruise Origin vehicles that are not going to be built in 2024. The Cruise relaunch in one city with the Bolt EVs is going to be with supervised driving. Mary said and this is going to be a really I think high performance year for GM. There's been plenty of speculation with this one as we have Farley and Mary Barra saying they're open to cooperation to try to compete with the Chinese. Mary said if there's ways we can partner with others especially on technology that's not consumer facing and be more efficient with R&D as well as capital we're all in. Oh I bet you are Mary.
Farley said specifically he wants Ford's next gen more affordable EV to compete with a car like the BYD Seagull. He said we can start having a competitive battery situation. We can go to common cylindrical cells that could add a lot of leverage to our purchasing capability. Maybe we should do this with another OEM. We just saw yesterday a Ford supplier sign that deal with a BYD subsidiary FinDreams for those blade battery cells. Farley said last year 25% of all vehicles sold in Mexico were sourced in China. We've talked about this a few times now but Rivians R2 launch is scheduled for March 7th. They did release this little teaser of the face of the R2. Samuel Garcia the governor of Nuevo Leon who I need to point out has definitely been wrong in the past is now saying that construction of Giga Mexico could start in March. The hype man himself is saying he spoke with Tesla management in Mexico and that they're going to lay the first stone this February at the latest although they later extended that until next month.
Then in an interview he was saying there's already the electrical issue, the water issue, the environment. They've requested an extension of the environmental permit because it seems like the plan is going to be bigger than Tesla thought. He said I asked them for Tesla to come by March at the latest to make a groundbreaking announcement and they didn't say no so I hope that very soon in less than a month Tesla comes now the company is going to do the project. The Wall Street Journal did a piece on Franz much of it was things we already know but they did say this around lunchtime Franz can often be found leading workouts in a parking lot behind the design studio. Sessions that started with a CrossFit trainer years ago have evolved into what some have taken to calling Franz fit. More importantly Franz said Elon remains very involved in the design process something I think most of us have known all along. End of the next gen platform Franz compared it to VW's Beetle or Ford's Model T, a product for the masses, albeit one that feels like it's a continuation of the idea of the future.
Tesla stock closed the week at $199.95 down 0.25% on the day while the Nasdaq was down 0.82%. It was a normal volume day for Tesla stock trading 3 million shares over the average 30 day volume. Don't forget sign that petition linked below if you're interested and if so share it around with everybody you know. Hope you guys have a wonderful and a safe weekend 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.