Welcome to Electrified, it's your host, Dylan Loomis, quick shout out to my newest patron, Snird, and Juan R. Thank you for choosing to support the channel. I did want to get some content out late last week, but we had some family in town for the holiday and then we had a wedding out of town, so still a lot going on, but we're back. Tesla's FSD12.4.3 has now rolled out to some customers outside of just the early access group, but if you're feeling like you're the only one that doesn't have it, that's not the case because the majority are still on 12.3.6. Including myself, but here's some early feedback on 12.4.3. Greg said it's a huge improvement as an overall driving experience, much better spacing and natural feel on highways, and takes exits at better speeds. Kion said, I've been testing FSD since before version 9, I felt almost no improvement until version 12, it was a paradigm shift. I just felt another one with 12.4.3, and all I can say is wow.
TechGeek shared a screenshot that said, changing lanes to avoid a neighboring vehicle, muse turn signal to cancel, as if this may be new on .3, but it's actually not. That's because over a year ago, Anthony Spina on X shared an update that he saw that exact same message on version 11. And I think it's worth clarifying that even 12.4.3, as far as we know, is still on a separate highway stack that should still be using some of the 11 architecture, so the highway stack may not actually switch over until 12.5. Mark said just a short 6-mile drive in the morning, and three merging issues were solved. Kevin O'Connor from The Ringer said, another flawless FSD experience, impressive start of this drive in a congested area of Beverly Hills keeps getting smoother.
FSD also passes the mom test. She loves it. At 67 years old, she feels increasingly confident in how it can change her ability to drive anywhere in the years to come. AI driver said, after more testing, .3 seems to have some real issues compared to .2. I'm confident they'll get it figured out, but .2 was the one that should have gone wide in his opinion, never seen anything like this. And he shared a video of an odd intersection where it ended in the car, ending up on the wrong side of a double yellow line. Now it did later correct itself and had there been a car in that lane, maybe that problem never would have happened, but something to note.
Davily said amazing first two hours with .3, impressive. Then he expanded on that saying .3 felt overall like a better build compared to 12.3.6. Some of the quirks of .3.6 have been fixed. It seemed to be able to choose the right lane better than .3.6. He did say the new NAG system is a bit too aggressive for his taste, but overall there's something about .3 that just made the two hours of driving much better than .3.6. Brian Stone said .3 is incredible, just had two totally intervention free hands free drives. So smooth, hesitation is non-existent. And AI driver shared a video of FSD ignoring the navigation route and finding a shortcut of sorts to get to the destination. It may not seem like much now, but the ability for Tesla's FSD to override some of this map data and think on its own should be a nice differentiator for Tesla in the long term.
I did see some other regressions out there like for some people it was not slowing for speed bumps, but I would imagine those things can be worked out with future .3 releases. Overall though, the majority of what I'm seeing was very positive on .3, so hopefully this is the one that goes to a true wide release. On that front, X-Peng's new model, which is set to be released later this year, they're saying it will not use any LiDAR and it's going to move to a pure vision solution like Tesla's FSD. There are some other Chinese EV makers that are working on future models that are going vision only, but right now they said in China all local EV makers, except Baidu backed GU, use LiDAR capabilities in their most recent versions of smart driving software.
Let's not forget this news is coming just a few weeks after the CEO of X-Peng had a chance to use Tesla's FSD here in the States. This image was shared on Reddit over the weekend, the original poster said that this was outside of the Rose Bowl and it's a Model Y with a cover on the front and the back suggesting this might be one of the first sightings of Project Uniper, the Model Y Refresh. Don't forget though, last month Elon said no Model Y Refresh is coming out this year. For what it's worth from some of the first Model 3 highland sightings out in the wild to early production, we're looking at a time frame of about 6-9 months. It seems like many folks are expecting the new Model Y to be ready by Quarter 1 of 2025, but the way I see it that would be a best case scenario, personally I'm not expecting it until closer to the second half of 2025.
My guess would be we see the new Model Y Quarter 1 2025 in China and in some areas of the EU and then in North America sometime by Quarter 2 or Quarter 3 of next year. I'd also add this refresh does not have to be exactly the same as the Model 3, I definitely think we'll see many of those crossover. However, Tesla may want to add a few extra things to differentiate the Model Y a bit further. He had heard that Tesla may be getting a special tariff rate when it comes to Shanghai exports to the EU and it sounds like that'll be confirmed. That's because EU inspectors visited Giga Shanghai between June 26th and the 28th to determine individual duty rates. It may still be another few weeks before we learn what these individual rates are, but at least it should be confirmed that Tesla will be getting special treatment and likely lower rates. Our dealership guy said the rumor is that Elon hired Uber's founder Travis Kalanik to advise or run Tesla's upcoming Robotaxi division. Elon finally responded to all of this speculation and to that he said false. However, if you followed electrified for any amount of time you will likely have seen Elon playing the semantics game in situations like this before. Example, maybe Elon is planning to hire Travis, he just hasn't done it yet in that situation. This answer would technically not be lying. But for now, if we take Elon at his word, all of these rumors should cease. And replying to Peggi about that exact rumor, Elon said all that matters is improving Tesla's self-driving AI such that miles between interventions is much better than a human. In case for some reason you're disappointed by this news, just remember whoever ultimately runs Tesla's Robotaxi division is going to be very trivial. When compared to the actual progress and performance of FSD. If you haven't already followed Heinrich Zane on YouTube and X, now may be the time as you can see from his most recent video, we now have a new steel delivery for Tesla's new semi-factory in Nevada. After weeks of nothing but grading and underground work, along with a new access road, it seems like construction may actually be right around the corner. Heinrich's did say from this perspective it's tough to tell how big this new plot of land really is for the semi-factory, which by the way, may also house that new battery factory where Tesla will be using some equipment from CATL. I will have Heinrich's channel linked below as I believe he has to travel to actually do these drone flights so if you want to support him, I would encourage you to do so.
The time has come for Amy and some other Tesla investors to officially show up in court and plead their case. But I'm not arguing that the billions of dollars that the plaintiff's attorneys are requesting in terms of fees are outlandish. More than 8,000 Tesla stockholders have flooded the Delaware Court with some 1,500 letters and objections over the fee. And how about this? The lawyers for the plaintiff have said they would have been justified asking for up to 33% of the value of Elon's pay package. If we assume a $56 billion value, 33% of that is roughly $18 billion. The current record fee in shareholder litigation is $688 million in an Enron class action. The word is it may take Judge McCormick weeks if not months to actually rule on the attorney's fee. Don't forget though, over the past few weeks we learned that the plaintiff's attorneys could also adjust their fee to $74,000 per hour...
which would be a cash award of about $1.4 billion. What this means is the plaintiff's attorneys are effectively saying, you know what, we'll take anywhere between $1.4 and $18 billion for our fee. Hopefully by the end of quarter three we have some more clarity on this case. Tesla is hiring a new manufacturing role for a senior battery process engineer in Huayi Yang in South Korea. This position is mainly responsible for the rework and remanufacturing process of modules and battery packs in a remanufacturing workshop. This to help identify the fault modes of new battery packs and modules and implement corrective and preventative measures. Now these two could be unrelated, but LG is planning to begin production of 4680 batteries in South Korea and their factory in Ochang is only about one hour away from where Tesla is hiring this new role. And we know this LG battery factory has its main customer as Tesla. Thus, in preparation for a new stream of 4680 supply for Tesla in the back half of this year, Tesla may be looking to set up a team in Korea.
Electrify America is launching a new congestion reduction pilot program. This will enforce a state of charge limit at select locations and so far all of these locations are in California. Once a vehicle reaches 85% SOC, the charging session will automatically end and drivers will have 10 minutes to move their vehicle before idle fees are incurred. Go ahead and pause now if you'd like to read the list of locations. This pilot will begin early July 2024. This is of course a move to reduce the wait times at EA stations, but unfortunately with this press release, they did not explain how much the idle fees will be. This is a company whose deliveries were down 5% this quarter. They were down 9% last quarter, is trading at 125 times earnings. There's anticipation that things may get a little better, but they're still not good and there's anticipation about a robo-taxi event in early August. We could continue to see some momentum in stock, but this is meme-like quite frankly.
Electrify America 正在启动一个新的缓解拥堵试点项目。该项目将在选定的地点限制充电状态,目前这些地点都在加利福尼亚州。一旦车辆的充电状态达到85%,充电会话将自动结束,司机将有10分钟的时间将车辆移走,否则将产生空闲费用。如果你想查看这些地点的列表,请暂停一下。这个试点项目将于2024年7月初开始。显然,这是为了减少Electrify America充电站等待时间的措施,但遗憾的是,他们在新闻稿中没有说明空闲费用的具体金额。
这是一家公司,其本季度的交付量下降了5%,上季度下降了9%,目前市盈率为125倍。人们预计情况可能会有所改善,但依然不乐观,并且预计在8月初会有一个自动驾驶出租车的发布活动。我们可能会继续看到一些股票的动能,但坦率地说,这有点像网络热炒。
The valuation is disconnected from the fundamentals. The company was supposed to earn $7 in earnings this year. Consensus estimates are now $2 and the stock price is really not that different. But at the end of the day, stocks get measured on cash flows and future cash flows and we just see a disconnect between what that earnings and cash flow power is and the company's current share price. Do you keep your $120 price target? Well, look, I mean of course any investor has to be open-minded about what a company may or may not do. If we did see a path where Tesla could be a leader in autonomous vehicles or Tesla could build a very sizable business of building humanoid robots, of course we would have to adjust our outlook and our future estimates and accordingly our price target. But at this point, we don't see that. We believe that autonomy is a ways out and we don't believe that Tesla will uniquely solve that problem. Wemo has been working at this. They've been doing trials since 2012 on self-driving. Tesla has not done any public trials. This is the same Tony Sakanagi who Gary Black said is highly respected among institutions. Gary has many times in the past called Tony out for being a known Tesla bear. But this highly respected individual effectively just said they don't see a path to Tesla becoming a leader in autonomous driving or even building a sizable business in the humanoid space. And not only that, but he called Tesla stock movement meme-like. Plus, he said Tesla has not done any public trials of self-driving. Now, I'm assuming he means actual robot taxis without a driver. But as we know, Tesla has billions of miles of public trials with FSD. I'm sharing this as a reminder that a significant portion of Wall Street is still not buying in at all to the autonomy or humanoid story. Which just means there is still plenty of alpha to be realized when it comes to Tesla stock.
On that note, Tesla has reclaimed its title as Korean's favorite foreign stock earlier this month. It temporarily lost that crown to Nvidia, a position it held for over 4 years. And investors now own about $14.6 billion of Tesla stock and of course part of this reclamation of the crown is thanks to the Tesla stock move. Replying to that news, Elon said smart people. Elon has been warning Tesla short sellers for years, despite that about 18% of the 500 plus hedge funds tracked by Hazeltree had an overall short position on Tesla at the end of June, the highest percentage in more than a year. And how about this, the chief investment officer at one of these funds, this will be a great example of more alpha available said, basically it's not clear whether investors are dealing with a top company with a great management team or whether it's a challenged franchise with deficient corporate governance. If that's not clear to you, then what in the world are you doing managing nearly a quarter of a billion dollars? And if it wasn't clear, those short sellers are now sitting on about $5.7 billion in unrealized losses after the Tesla move last week.
We got the domestic number for Tesla China in June, now this was of course already included in the Q2 data, but we can now look at year to date for January through June for this domestic number and we're now down 5.7% year over year. This number was effectively flat for the January to May reading. On the battery front, the financial impacts of legacy auto pulling way back on EVs is now starting to hit some of these battery suppliers. LG's second quarter profit dropped 58% year over year to $141 million. Their revenue also dropped by 30%. LG's CTO is trying to write the ship by saying that they're going to commercialize dry coating technology by 2028, another sign it's not an easy task. And we have SK on declaring itself in crisis mode as customers struggle with disappointing EV sales in Europe and the US. After being spun off from its parent company, the company has recorded losses for 10 consecutive quarters. SK has announced extended layoffs for workers in Georgia and they have delayed a second plant in Kentucky that was going to be a joint venture with Ford. A battery analyst said SK had been badly let down by US car manufacturers. As they failed to produce EVs sufficiently attractive to mass market consumers. You may recall late last year GM was still planning to reach an annual EV capacity of 1 million units in North America by the end of 2025. In reality, they sold 22,000 in the second quarter this year. A viewer of electrified Mike Amore said so far so good in the middle of a hurricane and lost power, house is running on the cyber trucks power so all as well. Here's an early real world example of power share coming in handy. A quick lightning round, India now does not expect Tesla to move forward with an investment in the country anytime soon. After Tesla executives basically stopped talking to country officials. People state owned Chinese firms in the financial hub of Shanghai have recently bought Tesla's Model Y as service vehicles. The purchase is an active response to the call for equal treatment of Chinese and foreign firms in government purchases. And Tesla vehicles are now eligible for the Chinese local government purchase list. Not only that, but Tesla may play a significant role in China's plan to boost its computing power. The China Center service provider in Shanghai has partnered with Tesla to apply their megapack storage tech at their intelligent computing center. We've been saying for a long time now, more data centers, more energy use, more megapack demand.
German authorities have approved part of Tesla's expansion at Gigabrelin. This one initially allows Tesla to set up an asphalt logistics area for new cars, as well as stairwells on its pressing plant and an access guard. Porsche is reorganizing production of its all-electric Taycan as it'll be moving down to a single shift operation. They're saying permanent jobs should not be cut by this downshift in production.
Porsche sold about 41,000 Taycans last year, but now they're saying new customer groups that are needed to continue the sales success are taking a wait and see approach to EVs. In quarter one of this year, Porsche only sold just north of 4,000 Taycans, which annualized would only be about 17,000, but they were in the middle of the change over to the newer model. But Porsche still cutting Taycan production.
The head of software at Stellantis has just left the company and she becomes at least the fifth senior executive to leave in recent months. Tesla charging shared they now have 2,000 stalls in Norway and they commemorated it with a custom dispenser. Lucid announced its Q2 production and delivery figures, and deliveries came in with a new record for the quarter at 2,394. Production was 2,110. So quarter over quarter, deliveries were up about 22%.
Tesla stock closed the day at $252.94 up 0.56% while the Nasdaq was up 0.28%. It was another higher volume day for Tesla trading 69 million shares above the average volume the past 30 days. Hope you guys have a wonderful day. 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.