Welcome to Electrified, it's your host Dylan Loomis. A heads up, over the next two or so weeks we're having some construction done in our home and my office is the central hub, so Ashley and I will be at a new location for a bit. And as a result, I will not be on camera for these episodes. I know it's not as engaging, but I appreciate your understanding on this one and I'll be back on camera and in my regular routine as soon as we're able. I'm sure many of you have seen this by now, but just in case you haven't listened to what Jim Farley just said. I think we're in good shape with our internal capabilities, but look, we're not so Polly Anish about our own capability that we're not going to look at other people's system or not believe that level four personal autonomy is going to be interesting at some point. They're making a lot of progress over there in level four and it is time for us, not just me who asked but globally, they're looking at and that's why we made some of the announcements we did today because we need a strong strategy team to decide do we partner, do we continue to ride our own team into this level four personal autonomy. And I think you're going to find just like our move on our go will be thoughtful and practical. We won't get in love with the size of the market. We'll make a practical decision and I think we'll be well positioned. I'm very confident in Sammy and Doug and their technical prowess. They know the FSD system, they know what's out there, they know the way most system as they get democratized for level four individual level four. And so I think we'll make a good decision, but I think Adam, we're a lot closer to that partnering decision at Ford. A few things.
Number one, the term Polly Anish just basically means overly optimistic. Second, it's important to know who Sammy and Doug are. Sammy is Sammy Omari Ford's executive director of ADAS. So he leads Ford's blue crews and then it's Doug Field who yes used to be an executive at Tesla and naturally, plenty of people are excited thinking that this was Jim Farley saying that Ford is close to partnering with Tesla to license FSD and that certainly might be the case. I just want to highlight one thing. Waymo is actually already in the midst of licensing its technology to Hyundai as they announced late last year. It's going to be critical for Ford to find every single edge possible to catch up when it comes to the EV race because it knows that it's well behind.
So from Ford's perspective, they can choose to license FSD who is a direct competitor because Tesla makes EVs or they can choose to give that partnering money and licensing fees to Waymo who's not a direct competitor. Obviously, Waymo doesn't have any EVs that compete with the F-150 Lightning or the Mach-E. And later this year, we're supposed to see these Waymo systems integrated into Hyundai Ionic 5 vehicles. That's when the testing will begin and then these Ionic 5s are set to be added to the Waymo network in the years to follow for passenger rides. And listen, most of us here would probably agree and believe that Tesla will have unsupervised FSD paid rides here sometime this year, but from Ford's perspective, they may not have that confidence. They may be looking at Waymo right now, expanding fairly quickly to different cities with paid driverless rides and thinking maybe we can just get started with Waymo system now and not give that money to Tesla. I am not trying to argue that I think Ford's going to choose Waymo. I'm really just playing devil's advocate here and trying to say that I don't think it's a done deal that Ford is definitely going to choose FSD. But either way, it does sound like we're going to find out sometime later this year.
Farley also said, for larger retail electric vehicles, the economics are unresolvable. These customers have very demanding use cases for an EV. They tow, they go off road, they take long trips. These vehicles have worse aerodynamics and they're very heavy, which means large and expensive batteries. Farley was talking about bigger SUVs like the Ford Expedition for Retail Customers. He said retail customers have shown they will not pay any premium for these large EVs, making them a very tough business case. Thus, on the retail side, it sounds like bigger electric vehicles are not in the plans at all for Ford. Those vehicles will likely be the extended range EVs, if they have any electrified offering in that segment at all. Farley said small and medium-sized trucks and SUVs are the sweet spot for pure EVs.
Had to pass this video along as Brian from Futureaza said, who said Waymo rides can't be exciting. Of course, you'll see headlines like this today, the Trump administration halts $5 billion EV charging program that benefited Tesla, painting it as some terrible thing for Tesla's business. This is dealing with a Neve program, the National EV Infrastructure program, and the agency said it's immediately suspending the approval of plans to deploy new EV chargers for all fiscal years and will no longer approve new funding requests until a new plan is implemented, which is supposed to be ready by the spring. This really is no surprise at all, this is the very program that after about two years of being launched had a handful of sites actually deployed. However, the word is the legality of pausing this program is still an open question considering the money for it was approved by Congress as part of the IRA.
I've seen some folks say that Tesla got none of this money, that's not accurate, Tesla has received $31 million from Neve funding for 539 fast charging ports, which works out to 6% of all of the funds from this program distributed so far. But of course, $31 million really is a drop in the bucket for Tesla at this stage. Have a listen to what Elon said about it back in 2021. What about the support though for the charging? There are parts of this bill. No? No. I mean, do we need support for gas stations? We don't. So there's no need for this support for a charging network. I would delete it. Delete. Okay. All right. I'm literally saying get rid of all subsidies. And also for oil and gas. So Elon's stance on this has not wavered over the past few years and the reality is that 94% of these Neve funds were basically going to Tesla's competitors. And sure, some of those competitors would have sites that had NACS ports that Tesla customers could use.
But remember, this was the funding that required CCS ports at these locations to get the funding. This will slow down the public charging rollout, especially in those underserved areas that this neve funding was meant to target. But Tesla doesn't need the money and the requirements around CCS were outdated anyway. And again, the word is states are under no obligation to stop these projects based solely on this announcement. They're saying there's no legal basis for stopping plans that have already been approved and funded. Plus, there will still be private companies like IANA that continue to push forward with their EV charging plans. Speaking of IANA, they now have six locations open and they plan to open more than 100 sites with more than 1,000 charging bays this year. In case you want to check one of these locations out, their Apex North Carolina, Willoughby, Ohio, Springfield, Ohio, Scranton, PA, Houston, Texas, and Abilene, Kansas.
In a somewhat confounding move by Tesla, they have increased the price of the Model X by $5,000 for each variant, which means the all-wheel drive version no longer qualifies for the tax credit. Which means for those that did qualify, this vehicle just became $12,500 more expensive overnight. And back to the conversation about what Tesla's plans are for the Model S and X I know I never followed up on that. I would love to see these vehicles stick around as flagship products for Tesla even though their low volume. And I think it'd be tough to make the argument that would be a good business decision for Tesla given how low the volumes are for these vehicles, but from a consumer perspective, I've always aspirationally wanted to eventually move up to a Model S.
And I thought it would be cool for these vehicles to serve as a testbed for new technology for Tesla, but the way things are trending, it doesn't look like that's where we're going. So unless there was something wild that happened throughout the supply chain that made cost of good sold go way up for this model, maybe this is their way of beginning to phase this vehicle out. Again though, that's pure speculation on my part. It could just be a simple price hike because customers in this price range are not that price sensitive to begin with. Maybe it has something to do with retaliatory tariffs because these vehicles do have parts that come from all over the world. But only time will tell. At the same time, Tesla is now saying that the Model S and X come with free supercharging for orders in the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, Europe and the Middle East. For some, I think this might be a good trade off, but I think for most when you factor in the time value of money, this is definitely not a $5,000 offer.
我原以为这些汽车可以作为特斯拉新技术的试验平台,这样会很酷,但从目前的趋势来看,似乎不是往这个方向发展。因此,除非供应链中发生了什么特别的事情导致这个型号的产品成本大幅上升,不然这也许是他们开始淘汰这款车的方式。不过,这只是我个人的猜测。也可能只是简单的涨价,因为这个价格区间的消费者对价格不那么敏感。可能这与反制性关税有关,因为这些汽车确实有来自全球各地的零部件。但事情的真相只有时间会给出答案。与此同时,特斯拉现在表示,Model S 和 Model X 在美国、加拿大、波多黎各、欧洲和中东的订单将免费提供超级充电。对一些人来说,我觉得这可能是一个不错的补偿,但对大多数人来说,考虑到资金的时间价值,这肯定不是一个价值5000美元的优惠。
We got the weekly Tesla China data. The reading was $13,400, but it was for two weeks combined, given the holiday. That's just how they reported it this time around. So I just split it up 5050 to keep it consistent. So through the first five weeks, quarter over quarter, Tesla China is down 26.2% and a year over year, they're down 19.7%. However, as I've said in the past, all of Tesla's sales data for quarter one and probably into quarter two is going to be skewed to the downside given the change over to the new Model Y. It's a similar story when it comes to the wholesale number for January. It was 63,238, which was down 13% compared to January of last year. This one is definitely just a rumor.
However, this account has gotten some things right over the past few weeks, which is why I'm sharing. They said based on counting VIN numbers, Tesla China has received 170,000 orders so far and there's still two months left in quarter one. For a bit of context, 170,000 orders is basically one quarter worth for domestic deliveries in China that Tesla is rumored to have received in basically one month. I did want to touch on the debt sale of X that we covered recently. That EBITDA figure of $1.25 billion that was seemingly a nice improvement did actually include the $1 billion payment from XAI to X. And one could certainly make the argument this was a non-arms length transaction.
So without that payment from XAI, the EBITDA figure drops to about $250 million, which would actually be lower than where it was back in 2021. And to be clear, I'm not trying to argue that $1 billion transaction is actually worth zero because X is getting access to the data from XAI. I just wanted to make it clear this $1.25 billion number did include that payment from XAI. The town of Kauli in Western Australia is set to host a Tesla battery remanufacturing facility as part of a new deal between Tesla and the state labor government. This facility will be used to service, repair and renew Tesla's battery products, which will be co-located with ne
o-ins Kauli battery project. You know, the one where stage one is 877 megawatt hours and stage two is over 1.3 gigawatt hours, both stages being built with Tesla megapacks. The site will service Tesla's megapacks and other Tesla products installed in Western Australia, and it could also service residential power wall batteries as well. And they throw in the potential for EV charging equipment servicing as well. A partnership like this means faster servicing of equipment, less downtime and then less logistical costs for Tesla. Just like it's important to localize production and localize the supply chain, it's also important to localize the service for this global megapack business as well.
In the most shocking news all year, Nikola Motors is nearing a bankruptcy filing. After Q3, they had produced more than 80 trucks at a net loss of about $200 million. Quite frankly, this company has been an absolute clown show from very early on, and I'm really surprised that it took this long to get here. Colton from Out of Speck highlighted that Tesla is continually making changes to the cyber truck this time on the fly. The new major, but the plastic housing or the coating on the cyber truck mirrors, is now a bit more textured and granular. Colton said the smooth grain plastic would stain easily and this new version should hold up better. For my Canadian friends, Tesla is now offering 0.99% APR for orders placed by March 7th for the Model 3. In the event, your FSD is stuck on version 13.2.2. Just know you're not alone and there is a reason. Kalina from Tesla AI said please be patient, found an issue specific to that update path, but a fix is coming soon.
在今年最令人震惊的新闻中,尼古拉汽车公司即将申请破产。第三季度后,他们生产了超过80辆卡车,净亏损约2亿美元。坦白说,这家公司从很早开始就是个笑话,我真的很惊讶他们居然拖到现在才走到这一步。Out of Speck的Colton指出,特斯拉这次正在对Cybertruck进行快速调整。最大的变化是Cybertruck的后视镜的塑料外壳或涂层现在变得更加有质感和颗粒感。Colton表示,光滑的塑料容易沾染污渍,而这个新版本应该会更加耐用。对于我的加拿大朋友们,特斯拉现在提供0.99%的年利率优惠,适用于3月7日前下订单的Model 3。如果你的全自动驾驶(FSD)停留在版本13.2.2,请知道你并不孤单,这是有原因的。特斯拉AI的Kalina表示,请耐心等待,已经发现了一个与该更新路径相关的问题,但很快就会有修复方案。
There are many folks on older builds also waiting and we're working hard to get everyone covered. I'm going to apologize in advance for clicking on this electric article and I am somewhat ashamed of myself for doing so, but I just had to pass along how unhinged Fred has become. We have Kimball, Vibov, and Robin Denholm exercising some options and selling some Tesla stock, really nothing crazy. Yet Fred goes on to say it's wild to see these board members getting absurdly rich while the company has erased its growth and is heading into one of its worst quarters and years. All while they sit on their hands and do nothing while they're the only ones who could do something about the CEO who seemingly engages in fireable offenses every day. Tesla has one of the worst corporate governance of any major companies I've ever witnessed. I mean my goodness, I can literally taste this man's salt from here. If you just got a bit of adrenaline, maybe put that to good use and go do some pushups. Originally, Iowa Tesla on X was saying how brutal FSD12.6 was for him, but then he said to calibrate your cameras and that it made a huge difference from him, so just a friendly PSA. Some people were mistakenly, in my opinion, sharing this clip of Chris Wright, the new energy secretary. They were saying this guy is super bullish on energy storage, but I'm not so sure. Anyway, have a listen. And the solution to climate change is to evolve our energy system.
I've worked on that most all of my career, again in nuclear and solar and geothermal and new battery storage technology now. And do I wish we could make faster progress? Absolutely. Are there things we can do investments together through the Department of Energy to accelerate development of new energy technologies that are really the only pathway to address climate change? Absolutely. Notice how he said new battery storage technology now. We just got a new article talking about Chris Wright and his plan to unleash the golden era of American energy dominance. However, nowhere in this article, which is somewhat lengthy, didn't say anything about lithium ion battery storage. Portability for home appliances, refilling the petroleum reserve, modernizing the nuclear stockpile, more nuclear, and then strengthening grid reliability, which maybe you'd expect to hear about battery storage here, but nothing of the sort. When it comes to this new tech, Chris said I'm quite passionate about alternative energies and have been my whole life, specifically sodium ion battery technology. He's also publicly supported more fossil fuel production as a means to address poverty. So my point here is that when you consider all of the context, I would not get that excited about Chris Wright being gung ho about battery storage specifically lithium ion. He's really looking to take a multi pronged approach to unleash this new energy era and lithium ion battery storage is definitely not a centerpiece of that plan. Now is that really going to matter for Tesla's business the next few years? I would make the argument. No, I think the demand is going to be there. There's enough momentum already. There's enough projects that are proven, but we'll certainly keep an eye on it. Tesla stock closed the day at $361.62 down 3.39% while the NASDAQ was down 1.36%. It was an average volume day for Tesla. Hope you guys have a wonderful and a safe 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.