Welcome to Electrified, it's your host Dylan Loomis, quick shout out to my newest patrons, Scooter63. Thank you for choosing to support the channel. I just missed this one yesterday, Elon did say that actually SmartSummon will go to a wide release next week. And AI drivers ears must have been burning yesterday as he also posted a video in a Costco parking lot that was fairly busy. It did slowly and cautiously, as I suppose you would expect, navigate situations like this, but as you're about to see, it's certainly still not perfect. Let's hop in the backseat with Dirty Tesla as he was using the go-to-target feature just sitting in the driver's seat. There you have it right into the backseat. The curb now Chris said he didn't have any damage on his Tesla, luckily, but just be aware.
On X, Phil Bizal shared a great article talking about FSD and the perception and planning and the control and how Tesla has evolved from all of the code to moving to the end-to-end neural network. Looking at Phil's LinkedIn, he worked at Apple for over three years and then he worked at Rivian for over seven years. It was a longer post, so I'm not going to read the whole thing. However, I really wanted to share it. I'll have it linked below. I think this would be an excellent resource to share with family or friends, anybody that's actually interested in how Tesla is approaching autonomy and how their approach is different from most of the competition. I like his simple explanation of Tesla's neural net for FSD. Machine learning involves an asymmetric architecture with two distinct processes, training and inference. Training, which occurs in a data center, the cloud, once per version is the most compute-intensive part of the process. During training, data is used to build a model. Once the model is created, it's transferred to the vehicle, part of the FSD software release. The second process, inference, is then executed by running data through the model in the vehicle repeatedly to drive the car. There wasn't anything specific I wanted to highlight. I just wanted everybody to have the resource if you want it, as I think Phil did a great job of explaining things in a bit more detail and tying it all together.
You guys know, I love highlighting creators that are doing good work and CERN Bashir had a great post talking about Tesla stock. He shared this chart of Tesla's daily stock returns since Tesla's IPO. If you add up all of the trading days where Tesla stock traded between up 4% and down 4%, that adds up to 2,893 days out of 3,568 total trading days, meaning 81% of the time Tesla stock would move between down 4% and up 4%. Which highlights one of the most important points in Tesla stock, at least historically so far, and that's most of the big gains even for long-term investors, can come over a short period of time. As we're stuck in this multi-year sideways consolidation period, I think this message is crucially important. I've shared charts very similar to this on X in the past, but historically again, Tesla stock has largely moved sideways and then shot up quickly at once, then a big sideways move and a huge parabolic move up, and we're currently in one of those sideways moves. CERN has decades of experience as an investment advisor, I'm a fellow financial advisor for a shorter period of time, but the point is don't lose sight of the bigger picture when it comes to Tesla stock in periods like this.
Tesla is now offering 0% interest rates for the Model Y this time around in Sweden. The Model 3 doesn't get the 0% interest, but they're offering 1.99% for the Model 3. This offer is good through the end of September. Note worthy because prior to this incentive, the Model Y was already the most registered vehicle in the first half of the year in Sweden. Germany's government has agreed to a proposal for tax reductions to promote the use of EVs. Effectively, they've come to the realization that abruptly ending some of those EVs subsidies last year may have been a mistake. New EV registrations fell by over 36% in July year over year. This is still a draft, but they're proposing that companies would be able to deduct up to 40% of the value of newly purchased EVs from their tax bill in the year of their purchase. Additionally, electric company cars that are worth 95,000 euros or about 105,000 dollars or less will now qualify for a preferential tax treatment up from 75,000 euros or less previously. The VDA in Auto Industry Association said this is an important and correct signal that's urgently needed, citing that abrupt end of subsidies last year and the weaker demand for EVs. In case you missed the episode where we talked about it, corporate registrations in Germany constitute the majority of new car sales at around 63%.
Installation of the first of a 444 Tesla Megapack battery system is now underway in Victoria, one of the biggest grid scale batteries in Australia. When this project is done, it'll be a 1.6 gigawatt hour project, which if you remember anything, over 1 gigawatt hour in my opinion would be considered large. We don't know the timing and the pricing for this contract, but it's likely to be in the neighborhood of a $500 million project for Tesla. A quick shout out to Justin, Rafael, and Gary, or better known as the Bearded Tesla Guy, Tesla, and Blue Sky Kites. Those three and Mrs. Tesla have been driving their Cybertrucks from Florida to the Arctic Circle and ultimately to the Arctic Ocean.
在维多利亚州,444个特斯拉Megapack电池系统的第一个装置已进入安装阶段,这是澳大利亚最大的电网级电池项目之一。完成后,该项目将达到1.6吉瓦时的规模,你记住,超过1吉瓦时的项目在我看来都算是大型项目。我们还不知道该合同的具体时间和定价,但估计该项目的成本约为5亿美元。顺便提一下,向Justin、Rafael和Gary致敬,他们更广为人知的名字是Bearded Tesla Guy、Tesla和Blue Sky Kites。这三人和Mrs. Tesla正驾驶他们的Cybertrucks从佛罗里达州出发,行驶到北极圈,最终到达北冰洋。
But it's not just that, along the way they in tandem with some of their sponsors have been installing level 2 chargers at destinations that really needed them. In Justin's video, he said these chargers were installed along Dempster Highway where previously they had none. Now depending on which specific route they took, that's likely over a 4000 mile trip, one way. Of course they have to drive back home. But I think this is awesome and it would be great to have a short documentary on something like this to share that pay. You can actually drive an electric truck across countries, plural, and EVs go a lot farther than most people think.
And the charging infrastructure, at least when it comes to the supercharger network, is also much better than most people think. So shout out to their team, it's a great story, a great accomplishment, one that I think deserves more attention. And if any of you guys happen to see this, save travels on your way home. Previously when charging at a supercharger Tesla would round down to the nearest kilowatt hour, so let's say you used up 22.325 kilowatt hours, it would just round down to 22. Those days of getting a small amount of free charging from Tesla are over as they're now moving to a partial kilowatt hour billing system.
The word is this will be for North America and Europe, and now they're charging down to the fourth decimal place. Of course from a user standpoint, we're only talking a few extra cents here, so nothing monumental. But from Tesla side across millions of customers, it'll start to add up a shock responded to the official cyber truck account, saying we are glad that you finally learned how to park yourself looking forward to you showing this off this weekend. It's a bit confusing, but the way I'm reading it is that the auto park feature for the cyber truck will start shipping this weekend. Hopefully FSD does follow this month as that was the latest promise from Tesla. Time will tell.
On X and Dreena asked Elon how he was doing to which he said just leaving Tesla engineering offices in Palo Alto, mostly good, some bad. The future is going to be wild, there will be so many robots. Naturally, most people are more focused on the latter comment, but personally, I'm more interested in this some bad part. Unfortunately, Elon did not elaborate on either. This Eolus company is a renewable energy firm that has operations in places like Sweden, Norway, and Spain. But they also have North American operations, and their CEO had some comments on this region.
It's not much, but he did say the US market is perhaps the most exciting and has considerable potential. Again though, I looked around to try to find an actual explanation for why he said this, but there was nothing out there. And of course I could speculate, but that's all it would be. Either way though, I find it exciting that global players have this type of outlook on the US market. It should mean good things for the next 5 to 10 years. Good of course, if you're a fan of renewable energy paired with battery storage. Nikkei Asia put out an article saying that Baidu operates around 400 driverless taxis in Wuhan covering an area about 50% bigger than Tokyo.
With government subsidies, their fares are about 21 cents to 28 cents per kilometer, or less than half as much as for a cab with a driver. So if you just take the midpoint of that range and translate it to cost per mile, it would be about 40 cents per mile. And just a little fun fact back from ARK's 2020 forecasting of costs for autonomous robot taxis, they did use 25 cents per mile for the lower bound. Again, 4 years ago they were saying the all-in cost per mile of vehicle services was about $3.50 for the average US taxi. And at the time they were forecasting an autonomous taxi could be down at that mark 25 cents per mile. And listen, I've shared my pushback for ARK Invest in the past, they certainly don't get everything right, but I don't know any human that does.
In this case, and in some others too, they have been fairly accurate. I know many of you have written them off completely and that's absolutely your discretion, but I think there's still value to be gained from listening to their research. Pangent aside, 0.1, many cab drivers are already pushing back against these driverless taxis in China, something that's almost guaranteed to happen eventually here in America. But admittedly, I've been burying the lead here. They said China regards Tesla's FSD system as one benchmark for measuring the country's progress. Chinese observers say FSD has logged over 1.6 billion kilometers of trips, well above Baidu's over 100 million kilometers, aka in order of magnitude less than Tesla. And that the latest version of Tesla's FSD is at least five years ahead of Chinese self-driving tech. Chinese government officials and auto industry players see an opportunity to learn from Tesla in China. They think Tesla needs data from vehicles sold in the country to improve FSD. China is aiming to replicate the win-win relationship they created with Tesla and EVs in the area of self-driving. Personally, I don't think Elon gets enough credit for how he's managed this relationship with China throughout the past 10 years with everything else that's been going on. By and large, the Chinese government and many of Tesla's direct competitors in China have talked very positively about Elon and Tesla.
There's a genuine respect and admiration there and the government is basically openly saying that they need Tesla to further its own advancements with self-driving. People like Gary Black, who I do have a lot of respect for, still think that Tesla doesn't really have a sustainable lead with generalized FSD. But Chinese players and the Chinese government seem to think that Tesla's FSD is at least five years ahead of Chinese tech. Lucid just announced its own tech and manufacturing day on Tuesday, September 10th. The event will showcase the upcoming Lucid Gravity SUV and they'll provide an analysis of the cost-effectiveness of manufacturing these innovations. Invited participants will then tour the factory and experience rides in the Lucid Gravity and the Lucid Air Sapphire. The live presentation is scheduled to begin at 8am Pacific time.
那里有一种真诚的尊重和钦佩,而且政府基本上公开表示他们需要特斯拉来推动其在自动驾驶方面的进步。像 Gary Black 这样的人,我对他很尊重,仍然认为特斯拉在广义自动驾驶方面没有真正的可持续领先地位。但中国的企业和政府似乎认为,特斯拉的自动驾驶技术至少领先中国技术五年。Lucid 刚刚宣布将在星期二,9月10日,举办其自己的技术和制造日活动。该活动将展示即将推出的 Lucid Gravity SUV,并提供关于这些创新制造成本效益的分析。受邀的参与者随后将参观工厂,并体验 Lucid Gravity 和 Lucid Air Sapphire 的试驾。现场演示计划于太平洋时间上午8点开始。
Remember that Ford Mach-E accident where they were using the blue cruise hands-free technology that resulted in two fatalities? Well, that lady behind the wheel just turned herself in. Not to glaze over the loss of life here, RIP. However, I find this pretty interesting if you look at the top four news stories of the Google search results, what do you notice? Not one of them mentions Ford anywhere in the headline. They all mysteriously just say women using hands-free driving feature never naming the brand. You know where I'm going, can you imagine the headlines if this was a Tesla situation? I think most of us here already know the mainstream media is a bunch of narrative pushers and narrative hiders, but there's just one more example of proof.
Rohan Ma, who founded and scaled auto-bitter at Tesla, has decided to leave the company after over seven years. Clearly, Tesla energy is dead and it has no future. Tesla is on a fast track. The bankruptcy, the growth story is over. Rohan shared his standard departure message, but he did say he has no plans for his next chapter. Rohan started at Tesla as a senior manager for energy optimization and he left as the director of energy software and optimization. Auto-bitter is basically a set of algorithms using machine learning to help it carry out tasks like price forecasting, load forecasting for generation demand, energy arbitrage, and it's the software that helps Tesla and the megapack systems actually generate profit through operation, automating a lot of those systems and continually getting better over time as it learns with more data. I think it's time for Tesla to host an energy day where they talk about the market and the opportunity and give us updates on things like the megapack and auto-bitter and opti-caster, these things that we rarely hear about.
A majority of the 1000 workers at the Altium Cell Plant in Tennessee have signed cards in favor of joining the union, thus the UAW will represent workers at this factory making it too under the Altium umbrella represented by the UAW. The first one being in Lordstown, Ohio. The agreement that Altium came to at the Lordstown plant was a wage increase from 1650 an hour up to 2691 an hour, which is great for the workers, but terrible for GM and LG's profitability with their new line of Altium EVs.
Let's not forget GM still has a lot to prove and the jury is out on if they can actually sell an Altium based electric vehicle at volume. There's been a lot of chatter this week about VW and its current struggles with EV sales and financials, but I found this from the information that really puts everything into perspective. Over the last 6 years, VW has invested more than 21.5 billion dollars to acquire equity stakes in at least 15 EV battery and software companies in the US, Europe and China.
Yet, in the first half of 2024, VW's global EV sales were flat year over year and in July, sales of the ID4 in Europe fell 40% from the year prior. And I found this chart with all of the companies that VW has invested in the year, the amount they invested, the stake they acquired and a description of what that company does. Now, obviously the electric truck one with Rivian was very recent, that's going to take time to play out and we can't judge them on that one yet.
But Navistar, a truck maker, was back in 2021. And the EV software from Aurora Labs, well, we all know about Cariad and all of the VW's software challenges the past few years. I really think this highlights the difference between a company like Tesla and VW. We know about Tesla and its vertical integration and yes, they have some acquisitions like Maxwell, Wifurian, Hybar, SolarCity and the list does go on. But the glaring difference the way I see it is in Tesla's case, it's always seemed like they've had a very definite plan and they were very strategic acquisitions.
Whereas with VW and other companies like GM, it feels like their acquisitions are more of throwing everything at the wall and hoping that something sticks. As in, they don't really have a clear plan when it comes to navigating the transition to the electric future, so they're really just looking for any solution. Because they don't have the know-how or the talent to do any of these things in-house. Nor do they really have the time to go out and hire and then spin it up from ground zero given how far behind they already are.
Now on VW investing up to, remember this is not a guaranteed deal for $5 billion, that's just how high it could go, it's going to start at $1 billion. Elon did ask, where will they get the money? Remember, as we've been saying, many of these legacy OEMs still have decent liquidity, it's not like they're on the brink of going bankrupt immediately.
At the end of quarter two VW listed its net liquidity at around 38 billion euros. Not only that, but its operating margin was still around 7%. So yeah, the sales are slowing and the cracks are definitely getting bigger, the situation gets more serious by the quarter, but it's not like they don't have any money right now. And yes, I'm aware of the debt figures that people love to throw around for legacy OEMs, but we have to keep in mind, oftentimes a majority of that is from their financing arms.
Personally, I think that type of debt should be separated out from the traditional debt in how most people think of it. Volvo becomes the latest company to bite the dust when it comes to backing off of their full EV plans. The plan was to go full EV by 2030, but their CEO is now backtracking on that saying the transition to EVs may take longer than expected. The reasons some EV subsidies have been retracted, high tariffs on Chinese bill TVs and slowing demand.
He said, I still believe in electrification at the end of the day, tech will win and electrification will be the technology of the future. It's just going to take a little longer than everybody first thought. I'm sure you saw it coming. Volvo did say in a separate statement that plug-in hybrids would be a critical part of its future profit growth. Volvo's new plan has them aiming for plug-in hybrid and full EV to account for at least 90% of its sales in 2030.
The remainder will be mild hybrids that rely mostly on combustion engines. What have we been saying for the past three years now? None of these CEOs at legacy automakers want to be at the helm when their company is hemorrhaging billions of dollars trying to sell EVs that their customers don't want. Then you throw in goofy government incentives that for some reason pay the same amount to a full battery electric car and a hybrid.
Naturally, these OEMs are making the most profit now from these hybrid vehicles, largely in part thanks to the subsidies. It's like if you give a kid a bunch of chocolate and he eats it all and gets sick, is it really ultimately the kid's fault? It really feels like these subsidies for hybrid vehicles are a thinly veiled bailout for all of these OEMs to try to help them make it through this transition. Tesla stock closed the day at $219.41 up 4.18% while the Nasdaq was down 3.3%. Pretty strong market outperformance by Tesla today and it was nearly on the nose and average volume day for Tesla trading only 10,000 shares below 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.