Welcome to Electrified, it's your host Dylan Loomis, quick shout out to my newest patron David W. Thank you for choosing to support the channel. To everybody that corrected me when it comes to the structure of UK dates, I did want to say thank you and apologies for the error, but it was still old news. As predicted, the new Model Y did officially launch in the North American market last night, and I just want to give some credit where it's due. This account, Tesla, Alpha and Omega on X actually got this one right. I'm sharing that because if you remember, this is the same account that we're sharing some of those Optimus rumors. When it comes to the new Model Y, given that this news has been out for about 24 hours, I'm assuming a lot of you have already learned a lot about this North American release. So rather than repeating a lot of the specs with this new vehicle that you may have already heard, to get you all of them in one place, I think Sawyer did the best job of this with his extensive list.
欢迎来到Electrified,我是你的主持人Dylan Loomis。首先感谢我的新赞助人David W. 感谢您选择支持这个频道。对于那些纠正我关于英国日期格式错误的朋友们,我想说谢谢,并为这个错误道歉,不过那已经是旧闻了。正如预测的那样,新的Model Y昨晚正式在北美市场上市,我想向值得称赞的人表示敬意。在X平台上的Tesla, Alpha and Omega账号这次预测正确。我之所以分享这个,是因为如果你还记得的话,这就是之前分享那些Optimus传闻的账号。关于新的Model Y,鉴于这个消息已经出来大约24小时,我想很多人已经对这次北美发布了解不少了。所以,与其重复这个新车型的很多你可能已经听过的规格,我认为Sawyer的详细列表是汇总这些信息的最佳方式。
I'll put this on the screen now for the next little bit so you can read through it, but if you've already seen it, feel free to skip ahead. Kyle and Alyssa from Out of Speck did my favorite review video of the new vehicle, so I'll have that linked below if you're not one of the roughly 400,000 people that's already watched it. The point I wanted to make here was that Kyle was one of those people that did not like the styling of this new Model Y through pictures, but now that he's seen it in person, he actually has become quite a fan of the styling. So as I mentioned, when the China release came out, one, just give yourself time to adjust to the new look as we've all grown so accustomed to the old Model Y and go try to see it and experience it in person before drawing final conclusions. If you watched yesterday's video, you'll know why I was excited about this clip, it's hard to notice, but you'll see the front seat does adjust itself automatically in order for the second row seats to fold down. Oh, the front seat moved forwards? Oh, let's show everyone that really quick.
No way. So it made forward to move forward to make way for the headrest to clear. That's so smart. And then it comes back. Yeah, nice catch Alyssa. That's awesome. Awesome indeed, Kyle. Before we move on, there is one thing I need to clarify. I've seen so much confusion and disinformation about the pricing of this new vehicle in North America. Listen to this very lazy reporting from car Wow and FYI, I have received copyright strikes from their channel before, so I'm going to leave my face on the screen. It's £52,000. This new one here, they haven't actually explained the full pricing system, but this is a launch edition which gets an extra badge and some slightly different trim on the dash, but other than that, it's the same spec as that car. This is £61,000. So that's an increase of £9,000. If you take away the launch edition, maybe what's that? £2,000 max. It's got more expensive. So what he said was absurd because here's the truth. Well, if you look at the long range all-wheel drive outgoing Model Y, it's £47,990 and the new launch edition £59,990, so a $12,000 premium.
However, here's what's actually included with this launch edition package because no, it's not just some different badging. You can get any paint color, the white interior, the tow hitch, upgraded wheels, the acceleration boost and FSD with all of the badging and other cosmetic upgrades and the entry animation etc. and adding the value of all of those features up, that's between $15,000 and $16,000 depending on the paint color you would actually choose. Another way to put this, if you were to max spec in outgoing Model Y, it would actually be more expensive than the launch edition. So from that point of view, the launch edition would actually be a great deal and no, the vehicle would not be more expensive. But in fairness, the reason this is causing so much confusion is because the question becomes, would you be choosing these upgrades if you were to just go spec your car however you wanted it.
So yes, you have the option to upgrade to all of these features for free, but maybe somebody likes the stealth gray color best, like Sawyer. Maybe you want the black interior, maybe you want the smaller wheels for better efficiency. Maybe you don't want to pay $8,000 upfront for FSD, you get the picture. The launch edition will only be a thing for the next few weeks anyway, so what's going to be more important is where Tesla sets the pricing for each variant when the launch series is done. And sure, we can speculate about what that pricing might be, but the truth is, Tesla might not even yet know for sure what that pricing will be, because as always, they try to match it with demand at the time.
But for what it's worth, given the info we have, it does seem like the pricing in the US will not be that different from the outgoing Model Y pricing right now. I think the biggest storyline here is that Tesla is ramping production of the new Model Y across four factories at the same time, which means they're pretty confident in their ability to change over, and ensure it's a smooth process. Doing it this way does carry higher risk, because there's more that can go wrong at the same time, but of course it avoids the Osborne effect as much as possible as well.
And remember, if this production feat isn't hard enough, they're also supposed to launch more affordable vehicles, plural, on these very same production lines in the next six months or so. In case you're wondering what's underneath the 19 inch wheel covers, here you go. It's certainly not the best angle, but it doesn't look too appealing from here. And I know having some caps on here would improve the situation, but there you have it. It might just be me, that's not really a fan of this look, because reading through the comments online, there were actually quite a few that were very positive.
As Sawyer shared, the first Model Y off the line at Gigabrelin was signed by the production employees, and it's likely to be displayed at Gigabrelin, so I thought that was pretty cool. To everyone that's disappointed with the lack of new battery pack, longer range, faster charging times, I would just say one, the Model Y is already the best selling car in the world, so if it's not broke, you don't really need to fix it too much type of scenarios. And second, in the battery world, you have to remember, it's always a trade off between three things, performance, cost, and longevity.
When you optimize for improving one of those, then usually the other two may suffer. So yes, companies like X-Pang have some vehicles holding 250 kilowatts up until about 80% state of charge, which is very impressive. But let's see one, how long those battery packs last, and two, how reliable they actually are. And X-Pang's stated company goal is to just be break even by the end of 2025, so they're still not turning a profit, making their vehicles. So look, would it be awesome if Tesla had a 500 mile range Model Y with 300 kilowatt charging speeds throughout the whole charging curve? Of course, I would love to see it.
And I'm quite confident they could do that, it's just it would cost more and maybe the longevity of the battery packs would take a hit. But I'm going to stop rambling, I just wanted to make it clear, there are always reasons Tesla is making the choices they are, it's not like their technology advancements have totally stalled. It's simply the triangle trade off game. So not only did Matt from CarWow put out what I believe to be bad and misleading information, but if you watch the review, really the way I felt is that he was very blase about the whole reveal, almost like he wasn't interested. Instead of poo pooing some of Tesla's new features and not really talking about the things that he didn't get to try which you only experienced driving the vehicle.
In my book that's egregious reporting for a channel of this size, but let's move on. James Wang who used to work at Nvidia and ARK Invest said Tesla FSD is not remotely close to Weimel right now, it's behind by at least 100x. Yes, it's getting better but scaling laws can't do its magic with fixed amount of compute, this is based on using both regularly. He said this is my experience in the San Francisco Bay Area, I have to make daily interventions on the Model 3 mostly from wrong lane selection, Weimel you can basically go to sleep. It's true, Tesla's way ahead in geographical coverage, but 99% FSD on 100% of roads is of limited value.
I'd be shocked and delighted if it managed to get to Weimel level safety without hardware changes, I'm long Tesla. I'm sharing all of that because Phil Duwan and AI engineer at Tesla replied saying prepare to be shocked. Translation, Tesla's internal FSD team is feeling quite confident about at least getting two Weimel level safety without any hardware changes and potentially soon. As always though this whole conversation is frustrating because we don't have any actual data to compare, the whole thing is very subjective. The number that floats around for Weimel is one critical disengagement for every 17,000 miles, but that's with a safety driver from their testing in 2023. And that sample size was only on about 3.5 million miles of testing data. Obviously without a supervisor in the vehicle, then the question becomes well, what is a critical disengagement? Is it any time somebody from the remote operating center actually intervenes? And on Tesla side, we don't have any official data for miles between interventions or how they're classifying their interventions. And yes, I know the community tracker exists, but again, it's quite a small sample size. You know what they say though, it takes two sides to make a market and hopefully over the next 12 months, Tesla's AI engineers can indeed provide shocking results. No shocker here, but BYD, Glee and SAIC along with some Chinese automotive industry bodies are suing the European Commission over those new tariffs on EV imports. These were the tariffs that were imposed after a year long review of these Chinese auto companies and the EU came to the conclusion that China is using unfair subsidies and they're dumping their cheap EVs into the European market, which is distorting and harming the European industry.
The three arguments against these tariffs in the lawsuit are one, challenging the assertion that certain funds actually constitute subsidies. Two, the way those subsidies are calculated and then three, that they actually caused harm to the EU, but it's not just those three companies and the industry bodies. We also have Tesla and BMW who have also filed cases against the duties. Tesla cut a side deal on this one and they got that special tariff rate of only 8%, whereas other companies like VW, where they weren't as cooperative, are up as high as 35%. When I say VW, it's through their joint venture with SAIC. The goal of the lawsuits are to get rid of the law that imposes these tariffs and if the courts were to side with these exporting companies, then they might be able to claim back some of those losses.
This may not seem like much on the surface, but here's some napkin math to prove that this is quite a big deal. So right now, Tesla exports roughly 300,000 cars from Shanghai to the EU every year. If you assume an average selling price of $50,000, that's $15 billion in revenue. If you slap an 8% tariff on that, that's an extra $1.2 billion in cost for Tesla. As always with napkin math, it's not analysis, it's just trying to get us in the right ballpark. I saw Luca Greco with some new reporting that Optimus was going to be using magnesium for production and this was coming from some Chinese sources, so I tracked those down. But I wanted to give credit where it's due as Luca was the first one that put this out. Here's one of the Chinese sources talking about this, just know there were multiple. Tesla using a magnesium alloy for actuators and motor housings. Since it's not official, I'll just hit you with the high level takeaways. One benefit would be lighter weight, so if Optimus weighs between 120 and 140 pounds, this could knock off about 10% of the weight. Lighter weight makes Optimus more agile, less stress on the actuators and all of the joints over time. Second benefit, heat dissipation. Magnesium alloy is 50% better than aluminum, which can reduce the temperature of actuators and motors during operation. The price might be lower, but this is going to fluctuate over time and it also might cost more to actually process, so you have to factor that in as well. And they said magnesium could have better shock absorption than an aluminum alloy, it can reduce the noise, and it can help to reduce vibrations. They talked about supply chain impacts for these Chinese companies, but I think that's too far in the weeds for most people, so pause the screen and read if you'd like, and I'll have the full article below. Some of the challenges with magnesium though, the processing of these alloys is relatively difficult. Creed Bratton's job, quabity, ashuents, I mean quality control may be a bit more difficult. And again the cost, because while raw material pricing may be lower, the cost to process it may be higher. I'll leave it there for now, given that this is unconfirmed, but definitely a thread to watch.
I read your comments, I know enough of you are interested in AI news as part of the channel, maybe toward the end of episodes, but when it comes to this Stargate project, right now it'll be best to wait until all of the dust settles, rather than trying to read all of the moving details that are taking place right now. The cliff notes, open AI came out and said this project was going to help the whole world, and it'll be up to a $500 billion project. Fast forward about 24 hours, and now the word is they don't really have the money lined up, the project is very early in its planning stages, and it's actually only going to benefit open AI. From sources that the Financial Times talked to, Stargate has not yet secured the funding, it'll receive no government financing, and it will only serve open AI when it's done. They said the project is far from a fully developed plan, they have not figured out the structure, they have not figured out the financing, they don't have the money committed. The company's hope to raise a combination of equity from their existing backers and debt.
That clip of Satya Nadella talking about he's good for his $80 billion, well that's going to be separate from the Stargate project. Microsoft is still entitled to about half of the profits from open AI's for-profit subsidiary, but for Stargate, Microsoft is only providing tech support, not capital. There are plans however to appoint an independent CEO and a board. The company would be split into an operational unit tasked with building and running the data centers and headed by open AI, and a unit responsible for raising capital run by Softbank. Work is underway on the first facility for Stargate in Abilene, Texas, and at this site Oracle is planning to buy $7 billion of chips to power the site and they'll provide that power to Microsoft, which will then use it to power open AI.
In short from everything I'm reading, there's definitely real intent for this team to see this project through, but it's certainly in the earlier stages than I think they led people to believe. Why would they rush an announcement like this? Well, it's pretty obvious everybody wants to do some splashy things in the first week of a new administration. And I don't know if Elon has any inside information on this news or not, but responding to that reporting from the Financial Times, Elon said, true. A pre-existing supercharger location in Sweden has been upgraded to not only the four posts, but it's going to be fully covered by solar panels as well for the first time. And despite the strike situation, Tesla does not expect any delays here because it was an already existing and connected location. Joe Tett Myers on the ground at Gigataxis and he said the first of several dozen test units of the new Model Y are happening now on the same production line as the older generation. The ramping of the new car will happen over the next few weeks and takes advantage of line upgrades and changes over the past few months. Joe also shared some video footage of the Cyber Cab driving around Gigah Austin today, but it's notable because this was without the chase cars.
总的来说,从我读到的一切来看,这个团队确实有意识要完成这个项目,但显然它的发展阶段比他们让人们相信的要早。那么他们为什么要急于发布这样的公告呢?这很明显,因为在新政府的第一个星期,每个人都想做一些引人注目的事情。我不知道埃隆是否对这些消息有内部信息,但在回应《金融时报》的报道时,埃隆确认消息属实。瑞典的一个现有超级充电站不仅升级了四个充电桩,还首次全面覆盖了太阳能板。尽管存在罢工情况,特斯拉并不预期这里会有任何延误,因为这是一个已经存在并连接好的地点。Joe Tett Myers 在 Gigataxis 现场,他表示,新款 Model Y 的几打测试单元现在正在与旧款在同一生产线上生产。新车型将在接下来的几周内加速生产,并利用过去几个月对生产线的升级和改变。Joe 还分享了今天 Cyber Cab 在 Gigah Austin 周围行驶的一些视频片段,值得注意的是这次没有追踪车辆。
I haven't seen many talking about this, but it could develop into pretty material news. We now have the European Union working on a proposal for block wide purchase incentives for EVs. The Commission has now taken up a proposal for harmonized, Europe wide purchase premiums or incentives for e-cars. We also have Germany proposing a temporary tax deduction to promote the purchase of EVs produced in Germany, which yes in theory would be beneficial for Gigabrelin unless they find a way to somehow exclude Tesla from these incentives. I could not find anything out there about specifics of what type of incentives they're considering, but hopefully we get more in the weeks ahead. Given the hit that Tesla sales took in 2024, largely thanks to the removal of some of these purchase incentives, adding them back across the EU would be an awesome thing. At least when it comes to Tesla sales.
The Wall Street Journal put out a report sharing an email reportedly from Elon to his ex-staff. In that email, Elon said, we've witnessed the power of ex in shaping national conversations and outcomes, but our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we're barely breaking even. Not the most optimistic email if it's true, but the further out of the red and into the black ex can become, the lower the chances become that Elon would need to sell more Tesla to finance ex. The Cybertruck program manager said that the off-road armor and rocker accessory launch running with delays but will likely be here by the end of March. They're finishing delivering the wheel covers to customers, they've secured supply, but distribution is the bottleneck now they're 32% complete, and they're working on air suspension controls and feature improvements.
Very quietly, there seems to be a shift happening around Rivian from just a company that makes EVs to maybe becoming more of a technology licensing play. It's early, but Rivian is now saying they're in talks with other automakers beyond VW about supplying their software and electrical architecture, this from a senior exec. I'd say many other OEMs are knocking on our door. Now he declined to say what companies and how far along the talks actually are, but he said there is demand, obviously other OEMs are talking to us and we're trying to figure out how to support that in the future. Any other OEM who wants to make a leap from a technology standpoint, the joint venture today becomes one of the key partners with whom they can make that collaboration. Further, an analyst from Canicor Genuity has said that this venture between VW and Rivian is likely to become the platform of choice in the western world apart from Tesla. Honestly, a great thing from Rivian, it could lead to future cash infusions and it really gives them another wildcard in their hand.
RJ Scorange also said that over the next few years in the EV world, there will be a high degree of uncertainty, but the removal of the tax credit is less impactful than people believe. But the reason he said that, I don't think removing a $7,500 credit is going to change the end state. The end state is still clear, it's going to be electric. The problem with that statement is it doesn't really account for the next few years. RJ also just said, I say this all the time to friends of mine who run big car companies don't stop investing. You're going to find yourself in the 2030s upside down. Rivian, Tesla, the Chinese, we have a full throttle focus on EV. And if you're doing that as your 10% job as an automaker, you're going to be in rough shape in 10 years. He said if you're optimizing purely for profitability in the next two years and you're a traditional legacy manufacturer, you could very easily make the spreadsheet case to say let's double down on combustion or let's double down on hybrid. Which I think is a big miscalculation for the long term. So I guess RJ is.
We accept that. Here's some unfortunate commentary from Trump that hopefully Elon can push back on in time. When the wind blows and then it doesn't blow and the things goes to fortune that made in China, they killed the birds and they're horrible. We don't want windmills in this country. I'm going to put it. We're putting an order on it. I've already sort of done it. We don't want windmills. If you have a house and you're in vision of a windmill, your house is worth half. It's a disaster. And nobody wants them and they're the most expensive energy of any kind of energy. You know what else? People don't like those massive solar fields built over land that cover 10 miles by 10 miles. I mean, they're ridiculous the whole thing. And by the way, you know where the panels come from, 100% of the panels made in China.
Just on the data I read, that's just not true. So this report goes over data from 2023. The global weighted average LCOE or levelized cost of energy of new onshore wind projects was 67% lower than the weighted average fossil fuel fired alternative. And we know how much Elon believes in the power of harnessing the sun and the power of solar, even if yes, we need to decouple that supply chain from China. In my eyes, long term, that's definitely not a good enough reason to just throw away this technology altogether. For what it's worth, Troy Teslike has his realistic delivery expectations for Tesla for 2025 at 1.8 million. So yes, it's been added to the prediction tracker. I thought this one was funny and something to watch.
The interest rates will come down. Do you say the only demand that the interest rates come down? I would put in a strong statement. Did you expect the Fed to listen to you? Yeah. Tesla stock closed the week at $406.58 down 1.41% on the day while the NASDAQ was down 0.5%. It was another very low volume day for Tesla trading about 35% below the average. Hope you guys have a safe and wonderful 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. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.