Welcome to Electrified, it's your host, Dylan Ummis. Quick shout out to Eric S. Thank you for using my Tesla referral link and congratulations on your new Tesla. As it turns out, Tesla is going to get some money from the CFI, the Charging and Fuelling Infrastructure program, but this time it's for a totally separate application in Illinois. Tesla, along with three other companies, will split $100 million to build EV charging stations The Illinois EPA chose Tesla, Prologious, Gauge Zero, and Truck Stop Giant, Pilot, and combined them all into one application. They said there was no pot of money for heavy or medium duty electrification. The initial request amount across all four companies was $126 million of that Tesla requested $40 million, but since these companies got less than what they applied for, it's still being sorted out which company will get what. The money will help the state add 345 charging ports and vehicle stalls across 14 sites, and the chargers will range from 150 kilowatts up to 1 megawatt.
Tesla's planning to suspend part of the lines making the new Model Y in Shanghai for about three weeks over the Chinese New Year so it can better optimize equipment. The people said it'll allow Tesla to prep the lines more effectively to ramp up production of the new model. The portion of the impacted Model Y lines will be shut down from January 22 through February 14. Additionally, the Model 3 lines will be closed from January 26 to February 3. Don't let anybody fool you with this one, and most automakers will have their production lines shut down for the Chinese New Year holiday which officially is from January 28 to February 4. But from what I've read, celebrations for this event can last over two weeks.
Which means those celebrations can go from January 28 to February 12. So this is totally normal and a perfect time for Tesla to switch over all Model Y lines to the new version. And the Model 3 lines are basically just closed for the holiday. Of course, the glamour shots of the new Model Y look great, but I wanted to pass along some actual real world photos of the new Model Y to give an early idea of what it looks like in different lighting as we await the North American release. Sean Duffy Trump's pick for Secretary of Transportation had his confirmation hearing today and he touched briefly on Tesla. For now, Sean said he would allow an ongoing government probe into Tesla's A-DAS features.
Specifically, the investigation looking into about 2.4 million Tesla vehicles of FSD reportedly being in 4 collisions. Referring to that case, Sean said I'll let NHTSA do their investigation. As far as I can tell, Sean did not comment on the separate preliminary evaluation into actually SmartSummon. I wanted to point out, I don't like how they said this. They said Tesla in December 2023 recalled more than 2 million US vehicles to install new safeguards in its autopilot system. If you just see that with no context, I think most people would think it was a physical recall. However, going to the source document, this was fixed with an OTA update.
Sean did say he would review the FAA's proposed $633,000 fine on SpaceX for violating launch license requirements. I have a feeling this is all about to get quite interesting in the months ahead as now we have safety advocates arguing that Tesla's going to face less accountability under Trump. There's one Tesla accident that happened last year that gets brought up all the time, but the context wasn't shared. The document showed two minutes before the crash Mr. Hunter, the driver of the Model S, put his car into FSD. But the car did not detect Hunter's hands on the steering wheel for more than one minute before the crash. And here's more context that gets left out of this narrative. Moments before impact, the report says Hunter pressed his foot down on the accelerator, overriding the car's automatic braking system, and kept it there for 10 seconds after the collision with the motorcyclist.
Not only that, but moments before the low speed crash, Hunter said that he was distracted by his phone. So, in that scenario with all of the facts, is Tesla really at fault? To me, it's a glaring no. Here's the change that might happen under Trump. As it stands right now, there's a requirement called the Standing General Order on crash reporting, which means that any accident that happens with driver assistance features has to be reported to NHTSA. For context, Tesla has been opposed to this requirement for years. Rohan Patel, who used to work at Tesla, said the public is being confused by erroneous data that lacks context and lacks analysis. In short, Tesla has far more vehicles on the road with these A-DAS features.
As a result, Tesla has reported more crashes than any other automaker, totaling 1,600, meaning more than 4 out of every 5 crashes that involved A-DAS features was a Tesla. But Rohan Patel said the truth is the rate of those incidents is quite low. And for now, the word is that the Trump transition team recommends getting rid of that crash reporting requirement. On the topic at the shareholder meeting, Elon said inevitably, when there are a lot of cars and you've got billions of miles, you do have the law of large numbers where, okay, there's a small chance of something bad happening. But as we know, human drivers are far from perfect, 40,000 people are killed every year on US roads.
Elon continued, what matters is like, are we making that number smaller? And as long as we're making that number smaller, we're doing the right thing. With cybercabs hopefully hitting the streets later this year, I think this is going to be one to watch in the months ahead. Long term, this will all work out, but short term, I think the public perception of roblot axes and cybercabs in general will be shaped based on how some of these things actually play out. I'm calling it now, there will be plenty of headlines bashing Tesla if this accident reporting requirement is removed under Trump.
Some people were confused about the SEC lawsuit against Elon, so I just wanted to try to clarify. The SEC said Elon violated federal securities law by waiting 11 days too long to disclose his initial purchase of 5% of Twitter. There is an SEC rule that requires investors to disclose within 10 calendar days if they take ownership of more than 5% of a company. The argument is that during those 11 days when it should have been disclosed, Elon actually bought an additional $500 million of Twitter at artificially low prices. And artificially low, because once it did finally become public what Elon was doing, the share price of Twitter jumped up 27%.
So yes, I think most financial analysts would agree that Elon overpaid overall for Twitter. But this lawsuit has to do with a specific block of shares that maybe should have been at a higher price than where Elon was able to buy them because of avoiding these disclosure requirements. Again though, allegedly. Talking about EVs generally, Shonduffi also said they should pay for use of our roads. How to do that I think is a little more challenging. Right now, most revenue for federally funded road repairs is collected through taxes on diesel and gas. Which of course EVs do not pay. And as we've covered over the years, some states are already charging EV owners a flat annual fee for these road repairs. Unfortunately, some of those state fees have been disproportionately high compared to what gas vehicle owners are paying in gas tax.
And part of the problem with these flat annual EV fees is they don't account for the actual road usage. Just know right now this is an ongoing debate. There have been talks about taxing electricity for EV use. There have been talks about specific fees based on your mileage and how heavy your EV is. Of course ideally you would want to incentivize the new technology by not having those taxes on EVs and just continually taxing the outdated or older tech. You know, the one that's polluting the air that all of us breathe.
With that said though, I am also a fan of the free markets and ultimately letting the technology decide from a level playing field. Point being state by state in the coming years were likely to see some creative attempts to make sure that EV owners are paying their fair share for these road repair funds. Both Honda and Acura EV owners will have access to the Supercharger Network sometime later this spring. For now, that's only two models, the Honda Pro Log and the Acura ZDX. However, we did get more information today about the upcoming 2026 Acura RSX, which is an EV.
Fun fact about me back in my high school days, one of my teammates on the soccer team had an Acura RSX and for about two years I wanted one in the worst way. At least for now, Honda and Acura are not yet on Tesla's official blog page for the next. We don't yet have the specs for this upcoming Acura RSX, but here are some images of the prototype. Pretty aggressive looking stance and for a time, they were calling it a coupe. But today we got a picture of the production version that does have four doors.
有趣的回忆:在我高中时,我的足球队有个队友开了一辆Acura RSX,那时我整整两年特别想要一辆。至少目前为止,Honda 和 Acura 还没有出现在 Tesla 的官方博客页面上。我们暂时还不知道即将推出的 Acura RSX 的详细规格,不过这里有一些原型车的图片。它看起来姿态相当霸气,当时还有人称它为轿跑车。不过今天我们看到了一张量产版的照片,发现它实际上有四个门。
This of course is camouflaged as they're beginning real world testing today, and by the look of things, this should be a Model Y competitor. This will be the first model engineered on the new Honda developed EV platform using their proprietary Asamo OS. And this vehicle is scheduled for production later this year in Ohio. Tesla is now set to launch in Saudi Arabia this quarter. Tesla will open sales through pop-up stores and establish a showroom and service center. Naturally, it's also planning to roll out the supercharger network. In Saudi Arabia, the appetite for luxury vehicles is among the highest globally on a per capita basis. However, EV penetration is still low at just over 1% of overall car sales. The good news is Price Waterhouse Cooper's noted that more than 40% of Saudi consumers are considering buying an EV in the next three years. For the past two years, total vehicle sales in Saudi Arabia have been around 600,000 units per year. Thus, if over time Tesla could reach a 20% market share, that would be an additional 120,000 units per year. But there's plenty of work to do because as of last year, there were only about 23,000 EVs on Saudi Arabian roads. The good news is the Saudi government is pushing hard for EV adoption through things like tax exemptions, subsidies, and infrastructure development, as their goal is to install over 10,000 EV chargers by 2029. And finally, SUVs are quite popular in Saudi with over about 250,000 SUV sales for last year, which of course bodes quite well for the Model Y.
It's time to pose the question to the audience. So, all of last year, the Model X did 19,800 sales, and the Model S was down to 12,400, so the S was down 31%, and X sales were down almost 20% year over year. So, here's my question. The year is 2028. Is Tesla still selling the Model S and X? And further, should they? Why or why not? I will share my thoughts later this week. If you go to Tesla's inventory page and search for Cybertruck, you'll find some now have discounts of $1,640. Then, if you can find a demo vehicle, some of those are discounted over $2,600. And yes, whether you like it or not, having inventory discounts on non-Foundation Series Cybertrucks is probably not the best sign for demand right now. Again, over the past few weeks, we've been highlighting all of these different breadcrumbs that may be, for this period, Cybertruck demand is a bit lower than Tesla was expecting. But, there's a huge caveat here, because the Cybertruck is listed on the official website as qualifying for the $7,500 tax credit. But, for whatever reason, on Tesla's website, it looks like it does not yet officially qualify. If it did, it would be showing up as an incentive right here. And no, I'm not trying to argue that's the only problem that the Cybertruck has, I'm just saying I do think it's a material one. As for what the holdup is, I have not yet heard anything official. If I do, of course, I'll pass it along.
是时候向观众提问了。去年,Model X 的销量是 19,800 辆,而 Model S 降至 12,400 辆,S 的销量下降了 31%,X 的销量则同比下降了近 20%。那么,我的问题是:到了2028年,特斯拉还会继续销售 Model S 和 Model X 吗?另外,他们是否应该继续卖下去?为什么或者为什么不应该?我会在本周晚些时候分享我的看法。
如果你访问特斯拉的库存页面并搜索 Cybertruck,你会发现其中一些现在有 $1,640 的折扣。如果能找到一辆试驾车,有些折扣甚至超过 $2,600。无论你是否喜欢,目前非基础系列的 Cybertruck 库存折扣可能不是需求状况的最佳信号。过去几周,我们一直在关注这些迹象,表明这个时期的 Cybertruck 需求可能低于特斯拉的预期。
不过,这有个很大的警告,因为 Cybertruck 在官网上列为符合 $7,500 的税收抵免。然而,无论出于何种原因,特斯拉的网站上似乎还没有正式显示其符合资格。如果符合资格,应该会在这里显示作为一种激励措施。我不是说这是 Cybertruck 唯一的问题,我只是认为这是一个重要的问题。至于具体原因,我还没有听到任何官方消息。如果有,我当然会及时分享。
Tesla stock had a great day, closing at $428.22 up 8.04%, while the NASDAQ also had a great day up 2.45%. The volume was 6% below the average. 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.