Tesla Plans Major Semi Route, Fremont Permits, Ford Restarts F-150 Lightning Production

Hey everybody, Rob Mauer here and today we've got an update relating to Tesla's semi-program. We also have news on Tesla's software, updated China-insured vehicle numbers, a little bit of news on Fremont and more. Quick look at the stock, Tesla today down 2.4%, closing at $261.7 while the NASDAQ was down for 10% on the day, but underperformed the Dow, which was up to 10% percent, usually indicative of worst days for high growth companies like Tesla.

大家好，我是Rob Mauer。今天我们将向大家更新有关特斯拉半挂车项目的情况。我们还有关于特斯拉软件的新闻，有关更新的中国保险车辆数量的消息，有关Fremont的一点小新闻等。先来看一下股票市场，特斯拉今天下跌了2.4%，收于261.7美元，而纳斯达克指数下跌了10%，但表现不及道指，后者上涨了10%，这通常是高增长公司如特斯拉最糟糕的时刻的指标。

Alright, we'll start off with the update on the semi. So this is a report from Bloomberg that Tesla is seeking almost $100 million from federal funds, which although Tesla is able to benefit from things like tax credits and regulatory structures, they don't seem to go out and seek funding too often, so pretty interesting. And in this case, they are reportedly seeking funds to develop a Tesla semi-charging network from Texas to California. This is according to emails seen by Bloomberg, they further report that, quote, the company proposed each be quipped with 8 750kWh chargers for Tesla's semi-vehicles and 4 chargers for trucks made by its competitors, its executive sat in emails to the Texas Department of Transportation between May and early July. So a few interesting things just in that statement, first, I mean the 750kWh thing, this keeps coming back up, the math continues to not make sense to me, but Pepsi keeps talking about that rate, now it's apparently showing up in these emails, maybe that is the rate, I don't know, maybe I'm just missing something, but it seems like the comments sections have previously agreed on that, so I guess we'll see. Anyway, also interesting that they plan for 8 Tesla semi-chargers and then 4 for competitors, I'm sure they kind of have to do that to have potential access to these federal funds, but if the North American charging standard continues to gain traction and truly does become the standard for light passenger vehicles, it's tough to imagine that that would not also happen for Tesla with their development for the semi-charger in a very similar way, but now with the benefit of some precedents for that already happening in the light vehicle segment.

好的，我们首先来看一下半挂车的最新动态。这是彭博社的一份报道，称特斯拉正在寻求近1亿美元的联邦资金支持。尽管特斯拉能够从税收优惠和监管结构中获益，但他们似乎并不经常寻求资金，所以这是非常有意思的。据报道，他们正在寻求资金来建立一条从德克萨斯州到加利福尼亚州的特斯拉半挂车充电网络。彭博社引用的电子邮件进一步报道说：“该公司建议每个充电站配备8个750千瓦小时的充电器用于特斯拉的半挂车，以及4个用于竞争对手卡车的充电器。”这是一份相当有趣的报告，其中有几个让人感到有趣的地方。首先，750千瓦小时的充电速率，这一点一直令我困惑，似乎数学上不合理，但百事可乐一直提到这个速率，现在似乎又出现在这些电子邮件中，也许这就是该速率，我不确定，也许我错过了什么。但似乎之前的评论区已经就此达成了一致意见，所以我想我们会见证到真相的。另外，有趣的是他们计划建造8个特斯拉半挂车充电站，然后再为竞争对手建造4个充电站，我相信他们可能必须这样做，以获得这些联邦资金的潜在机会。但如果北美充电标准继续得到推广，并真正成为轻型乘用车的标准，很难想象特斯拉在半挂车充电器的研发中不会以非常类似的方式受益，而且还可以借鉴轻型车辆领域已经发生的一些先例。

So, I think that number of chargers though, whether it's 8 or 12, that should be able to support a pretty significant fleet traveling along this route because obviously that means they could potentially charge that many simultaneously and each vehicle only needs to charge for somewhere around probably a half an hour, and in a logistics business you should be able to pretty easily plan around the rest of the fleet so that utilization is quite high because you can schedule a vehicle to arrive when you know another one is going to be leaving. It's not going to be 100% stuff will happen that throws things off, but theoretically even at about 50% utilization you should be able to charge a couple hundred vehicles each day at each of these stations. From Bloomberg's report it looks like there would be 9 stations planned along this route, each station about 2-300 miles apart, with the route kind of looking like it goes from Giga Texas to Tesla's Fremont factory, but that station in Texas that is actually a few hours south of Giga Texas, however I would imagine that if you start with a full charge at Giga Texas you could make your way west over to the Fort Stockton, Texas station to join up with this charging route, and this Laredo station is actually very interesting because that's probably on the direct path between Giga Mexico and Giga Texas and it's actually about 100 miles closer to Giga Mexico than Giga Texas. I'm sure that is not at all coincidental and this would provide a really nice connection for Tesla between Fremont, Texas and Mexico. So hopefully this will come to fruition whether Tesla gets federal funding support or not, although they did not comment on it directly, Bloomberg says that a representative for the USDOT said that they are currently reviewing applications and they expect to announce recipients later this year. A representative at California's South Coast Air Quality Management District also commented on this and said that Tesla is seeking $97 million in federal funding and planning to put up $24 million themselves. So that seems to corroborate the report and also interesting to see the total expected costs from Tesla.

所以，我认为无论是8个还是12个充电器，都应该支持一支相当大规模的车队沿着这条路线行驶，因为这显然意味着他们有可能同时给这么多车辆充电，而每辆车只需充电大约半个小时左右，在物流业务中，你应该能够很容易地计划其他车队的行程，以提高利用率，因为你可以安排一辆车在另一辆车离开时到达。事情不会100%按计划进行，但理论上，即使在大约50%的利用率下，每天在每个站点都可以给几百辆车充电。据彭博社的报道，沿着这条路线计划设置9个站点，每个站点相距大约2-300英里，路线从德州Giga工厂到特斯拉的弗里蒙特工厂，但实际上这个德州站点实际上是德州Giga工厂以南几个小时的地方，不过我想象如果你在德州Giga工厂满电出发，你可以往西前往德州Fort Stockton的站点，加入这条充电路线，而这个Laredo站点实际上非常有趣，因为它可能处于德州Giga工厂和墨西哥Giga工厂之间的直线路径上，实际上比德州Giga工厂更靠近墨西哥约100英里。我相信这绝非巧合，这将为特斯拉在弗里蒙特、德州和墨西哥之间提供一个非常好的连接。所以希望这能成为现实，无论特斯拉是否获得联邦资金支持，尽管他们没有直接评论这个问题，但据彭博社报道，美国交通部驻华盛顿特区代表表示他们目前正在审核申请，预计将在今年晚些时候宣布获奖者。加利福尼亚南部空气质量管理区的一位代表也对此发表了评论，表示特斯拉正在寻求9700万美元的联邦资金，并计划自己负担2400万美元。这似乎证实了该报道，并且有趣的是看到特斯拉的总预计成本。

Alright next up we've got another week of China insured vehicle numbers of course last week we saw a little bit of a drop in these weekly registration numbers. However that has spiked back up to 10,600 again this week. So looking like a more normal pace that's about 31,500 through the first four weeks, that is down from roughly 41,500 last quarter. So definitely off to you a little bit slower of a start but not anything that couldn't change over a couple weeks from here. We'll continue to keep an eye on those as they come in.

好的，接下来我们有中国保险车辆数量的另一周数据，当然上周我们看到这些每周注册数有所下降。然而，本周再次上升至10,600辆。所以看起来更接近正常的速度，前四周大约为31,500辆，较上季度大约41,500辆有所下降。所以起步稍微慢了一些，但并不是无法在几周内改变的事情。我们将继续关注这些数据的进展。

Next up today we do have a report of an investigation by the US government into Tesla. It sounds aggressive right? And I suppose technically correct this is a preliminary evaluation from NHTSA. On 2023 model year Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles due to some reports of inability to steer the vehicle and the loss of power steering. It looks like there have been 12 complaints filed relating to this issue and the estimated pool of possibly affected vehicles is about 280,000. So even though this is called an investigation by NHTSA's terminology, let's again remind ourselves of NHTSA's process in which an investigation is actually a step prior to recall. And of course recalls happen all the time in automotive.

今天我们要报道一项由美国政府对特斯拉展开的调查。听起来很激进，对吧？而且从技术上讲，这是美国国家公路交通安全管理局（NHTSA）的初步评估。该调查主要涉及2023款特斯拉Model 3和Model Y汽车，因报告称车辆转向能力不足和动力转向丧失而展开。据了解，已经收到了12起与这个问题相关的投诉，并估计可能受影响的车辆数量约为28万。虽然根据NHTSA的术语，这被称为调查，但让我们再次提醒一下NHTSA的流程，调查实际上是召回之前的一步。当然，汽车召回在汽车行业中时有发生。

Tesla gets a lot of attention for them but really nobody else does. It is a part of the business and Tesla does a good job of keeping their recall rates low. So even though this is a stage prior to a recall, the word investigation, the headlines around it make it sound even more serious, which isn't to say that possible steering issues are not serious. Of course they are. But the result of this investigation stage would ultimately lead to either no recall necessary, no issues, or a recall, which again is something that happens. So NHTSA is going to be looking at this, Tesla is going to be looking at this, figuring out the issue is figuring out how to resolve it. And then they'll do just that. Usually it's a pretty easy fix but obviously there's a potential here that this could be a costly recall for Tesla. We'll just have to wait and see as things develop.

特斯拉因其而受到很多关注，但其他公司却并没有。这是业务的一部分，特斯拉在降低召回率方面做得很好。尽管这是召回之前的一个阶段，被称为调查，但报道使得这件事听起来更加严重，这并不是说潜在的转向问题不严重。当然，它们是严重的。但是这项调查的结果最终要么是不需要召回，没有问题，要么就是需要召回，这也是常见的情况。因此，美国国家公路交通安全管理局将对此进行调查，特斯拉也将进行调查，找出问题并解决它。然后他们会采取相应措施。通常这是一个相当容易解决的问题，但显然特斯拉可能会因此面临昂贵的召回费用。我们只能等待并观察情况的发展。

Next we've got a quick report on Fremont from Tesla Roddy. This came out a little bit later in the day yesterday. But apparently Tesla started to file some permits again in terms of construction at Fremont. We've talked about a handful of these over the last few months, but Tesla Roddy now saying that the most recent filing is for a tool installation and fire monitoring system. Both of these were filed on July 28th with the permit for the tool installation saying that it was for demolition of existing equipment and installation of new equipment. So nothing surprising there with Elon having talked in the Q2 earnings call about upgrades to production happening this quarter. Plus we have previously seen similar permits for Fremont, but potentially a little bit more evidence of further upgrades here.

接下来是特斯拉罗迪关于弗里蒙特的简短报道。这个消息昨天稍晚一点发布。但显然特斯拉开始再次提交弗里蒙特的建设许可文件。在过去几个月里，我们已经谈论了其中一些，但特斯拉罗迪现在表示，最近提交的文件是有关工具安装和火灾监控系统的。这两项许可文件于7月28日提交，其中工具安装的许可文件称其是为了拆除现有设备并安装新设备。这并不令人惊讶，因为埃隆在二季度财报电话会议上谈到了本季度进行生产升级的计划。此外，我们以前也看到过类似的弗里蒙特许可文件，但这可能是进一步升级的更多证据。

Next up we've got a couple more details from Nada Tesla app on the 2023.26 software update for Tesla. This is not a part of the FSD beta branch yet, but we had previously talked about some of the improvements in this version with things like Spotify, some games, etc. Now a couple more features to add to that list. The first is that when you are on a call now, Tesla will automatically reduce the fan speed for climate control to help reduce ambient noise and make the call a little bit clearer. I would assume that there is some logic in there that if that causes the temperature control to drop too significantly or increase too significantly, that it would probably respond accordingly and then kick that back up a little bit, but it's not clear on that. And then the other possible update here is from some language that appears in the owner's manual but doesn't actually appear in the software yet. And that is potentially the capability to move the rear facing camera, the position of it on the touchscreen. Obviously that's a capability right now for the blinker cameras and it seems like Tesla may intend to add that functionality for the rear camera which could potentially allow you to have it up all the time in a way that wouldn't necessarily cover up other things that you may want or need to use on the screen. So again, not active yet, maybe just something that Tesla is working on that got included in the owner's manual a little bit too early, but we'll see on that.

接下来我们从Nada Tesla应用程序中了解到关于特斯拉2023.26软件更新的几个细节。尽管这还不是FSD测试版分支的一部分，但我们之前已经谈到了此版本的一些改进，比如Spotify音乐服务、一些游戏等等。现在我们再来增加几个功能到列表中。第一个是当您正在通话时，特斯拉将自动降低气候控制的风扇转速，以减少周围噪音，从而使通话更加清晰。我猜想其中可能有一些逻辑，如果这导致温度控制显著下降或增加，它可能会做出相应的调整，稍微提高风扇转速，但目前还不清楚。另一个可能的更新来自车主手册中出现的某些语言，但实际上尚未在软件中出现。这可能是关于能够移动后置摄像头，在触摸屏幕上调整摄像头位置的能力。显然，现在已经具备了遥感摄像头的这种功能，而特斯拉可能打算在后置摄像头上添加这种功能，这可能使您随时可以在屏幕上使用它，而不需要覆盖其他您可能想要或需要使用的内容。因此，尚未激活，可能只是特斯拉正在开发的功能，不过这可能是提前出现在车主手册中的，还需要进一步观察。

Last item for today is an update from Ford. They have announced that they've restarted F-150 Lightning production after some upgrades that will allow them to increase their production to a target of 150,000 annual run rate, which they say will happen by this fault. This increase in production was given as a reason for the price cuts on the F-150 Lightning that we saw a couple weeks ago. And Ford in this announcement notes that those lower prices help drive a threefold increase in web traffic and a sixfold increase in orders, although I don't think they specified exactly the time period on that. So it'll be interesting to see how the ramp goes from here. They say they're scheduled to build more than 70,000 F-150 Lightning this year, and they also gave a graphic of their expected and historical sales and production for the F-150 Lightning, which does show their expectations for production outpacing sales as they seem to intend to build inventory as this ramp increases.

今天的最后一条消息是来自福特的更新。他们宣布在进行了一些升级之后，已经重新启动了F-150 Lightning的生产，并计划将产量提高到每年150,000辆的目标，他们表示这将在今年实现。这一增加产量的举措也是之前我们看到的F-150 Lightning降价的原因。福特在这份公告中指出，较低的价格帮助提高了网站流量的三倍和订单的六倍，虽然他们似乎没有具体指定时间范围。所以从现在开始，生产加速的情况将会很有趣。他们表示今年计划建造超过70,000辆F-150 Lightning，同时还提供了他们对F-150 Lightning预期销售和产量的图表，显示他们希望通过提高产量来建立库存。

Alright, that is where we'll wrap it up for today then. As always, thank you for listening. Make sure you subscribe and sign up for notifications.

好的，今天就到这里吧。一如既往，非常感谢你的收听。确保你订阅并开启通知。

You can also find me on Twitter slash X at Tesla podcast. And we'll see you tomorrow for the Wednesday August 2nd episode of Tesla Daily. Thank you.

你也可以在Twitter上找到我，我的名字是Tesla podcast。我们明天会在8月2日星期三的Tesla Daily节目中见到你。谢谢。