Hey everybody Rob Maurer here and today we are talking about a really nice video comparison that has been made between FSD, Beta and Waymo. We've also got some interesting pricing updates on Ford's driver assist product Blue Cruise and updates from Toyota continuing to do Toyota things as well as a few other stories as well.
Alright looking at the stock Tesla today with a nice day up 1 and 3.4% to close at $176.89 cents. Not a huge performance over performance of the NASDAQ which was up 1 and a half percent, but really turning into a pretty nice week here for Tesla. Sorry if you hear some sirens in the background.
But getting into the first story today there's a new video comparison between FSD Beta and Waymo. This is down in Arizona as we had talked about I think last week or two weeks ago Waymo recently expanded their coverage area in Arizona so they've got a much broader coverage base. So this test was kind of meant to compare how FSD Beta is performing in that new coverage zone versus Waymo.
So really well done video I'll link to this down in description but I think it's really interesting to just watch the comparison as it unfolds. Here we can kind of see just a snippet of Tesla in terms of different route planning and things like that versus the route that Waymo took.
Waymo right now is not going on highways. So any long trips like from Phoenix to I think they went to down to around Chandler area here is going to be significantly long period of time for a Waymo vehicle versus Tesla. Obviously is willing and able to take those highways.
So before we even talk about more of the comparison details it is important to note that obviously was something like this with any autonomous vehicle or semi autonomous vehicle safety is going to be priority one and a head to head test like this in one instance isn't going to give you a great gauge of how safe the systems are if both complete successfully that's great but obviously you need to prove that track record over time.
So while this is very interesting it should go without saying that that is priority one in terms of autonomy and this is not meant to really compare that. So that being said you can see here just kind of a quick little map update of where Waymo was at when Tesla was nearly completing the trip and if we look at towards the end of the trip we can see that the total time for this trip which was about 21 miles was 26 minutes 30 seconds for the Tesla on FSD beta with zero interventions by the way and 54 minutes and 42 seconds for the waymo want. So less than half the time for Tesla to complete this journey again 21 miles because obviously taking the highways.
So it shows some of the operational driving domain limitations that Waymo's got on right now. So albeit it is performing you know without a driver versus having a safety driver so it's a stark contrast there. It shows just some of the different capabilities of the system that that Tesla is working towards right now. So not only is this something that is potentially a lot faster in terms of the route that Tesla is doing something that is more scalable and then obviously cost I mean if you just look at these two vehicles you can tell pretty quickly which one is going to cost significantly less.
So I think it kind of highlights how Tesla strategy is like obviously you've got the safety driver there right now but as Tesla is able to continue to improve performance continue to improve reliability it's going to show you know that this sort of strategy that Waymo was pursuing unless they somehow continue or somehow make more rapid progress on they've been making so far is just not going to be necessarily very competitive with what Tesla is doing where it's cheaper potentially faster and things like that.
So interesting to see that in terms of the cost this did cost $44 $43.45 for Waymo to complete this again 21 mile trip which if you think about an eventual Tesla Robotaxi you probably be looking at costs somewhere in the ballpark of maybe half of that and potentially even lower even with Tesla earning pretty significant healthy margins on something like that.
So again I would recommend watching this video because it's fun to see this comparison I think it was well put together but at the same time for what it's worth you know take it for what it's worth rather because it is just a one isolated test case and obviously if you ran this 100 times over over over and over you probably end up with at least a couple of interventions from Tesla with the current FSD beta but still interesting to see nonetheless.
Elon today also complimented Tesla's AI team Jack Cook posted a video of his some of the problems he's had with FSD beta 11.4.1 slowing down a little bit for oncoming traffic. So Elon I like that tweet obviously something that they're working on getting resolved and saying that Tesla AI software team is truly exceptional and I never give false praise.
So I think caring for what we heard at the shareholder meeting Elon's feeling very confident about where things are at and more importantly probably the rate of progress on FSD beta right now and I think that's you know really starting to show through despite some of the challenges that are still left with the system.
Alright so moving on from Tesla and their autonomous driving moving to Ford here which is pretty interesting they have updated their pricing on their blue crews hands free driver assistance system. So originally they introduced pricing on this option at $600 per year or rather $600 for a three year period.
They were now raising that price to four new orders $2100 over three year period and four vehicles that are past that point of renewal for that three years. The price is going to be increasing to $800 per year or $75 per month a little bit more expensive on a monthly basis if you choose that option.
So on an annual basis Ford is basically for Xing or quadrupling the cost of the system which not that this is probably a major driving decision for people that decided to purchase Mustang Mach ease but I mean that's got to be a little bit disappointing for someone that you know has that vehicle has that option and then all of a sudden that same functionality the next day that you've already gotten your vehicle is four times more expensive.
So customers here obviously not reacting you know it's a price increase they're never going to be happy about that but customers here talking about how that feels misleading say that when they were buying the Machi back in 2021 they were told that this would continue to be sort of like $600 for three years.
Ford never officially said that at the time I don't think I'm followed that as closely. So it's tough to know you know exactly how much how widespread the misleading comments here would have been maybe that's just a dealer saying something like that but obviously it's interesting to see and puts some pressure on customers to you know make such a significant increase in purchasing power or in pricing for a feature like that.
So to be interesting to kind of hear a little bit about take rates as Ford makes this change obviously that's going to drop them pretty significantly and we may see Ford come back and you know change pricing a little bit but I think it also highlights just how impactful autopilot is you know Tesla includes this on base vehicles for no no cost and now if you're looking at you know Ford Mustang Machi is potentially a model Y competitor to get something like blue cruise you're looking at you know $800 per year that adds up that's you know 10 years that's going to be 10 you know $8000 per vehicle and if you're you know looking at Ford's past precedent here there's no guarantee that this isn't going to continue to increase.
I think if we listen to Ford comments on their earnings call and things like that over the past you know few quarters they're really excited about software margin and I think they view this as kind of the way forward I think they're looking at that and saying you know we can then sell cars like like Elon was talking about at cost or even at a loss and then potentially recoup a lot of that through software like this which aside from potentially the misleading aspect of it it's an interesting and potentially strong strategy unless you have competitors out there offering something similar for free with autopilot not that it's you know blue cruise and autopilot functional a bit differently but when when that is another option it's just going to be something that you know Tesla is appearing more favorable at in terms of those comparison so obviously the FSD beta comparison could be there in terms of the you know the $200 per month subscription but I think that's significantly highly more functional and right now Tesla's intent isn't really to sell that versus Ford's intent originally seemed to be to kind of get people locked in and then really start to upsell them so it's almost a reverse strategy of what Tesla is doing for Ford and I think initially it's probably going to be a stronger margin move for Ford but that's kind of what we always talk about like Tesla is not really all that concerned with exactly how margins are coming in today because they're really taking all that with a night to the future and thinking about where margins and things are going to go tomorrow which I don't know that Ford is really fully considering with some of the pricing changes here so something that was interesting and it'll be interesting to you know kind of continue to see customer reaction to those moves and hopefully we hear a little bit more about that on Ford's earnings call I'm sure they're going to present it positively but if they share anything more on that we'll see.
Alright, next year some interesting proposed legislation here. We've got a senator like Ted Cruz and Ed Markey introducing a bill that would require Tesla to include AM radio functionality in their vehicles. This would legally force them to do that, probably one of the dumbest proposed legislation I've seen, and there are a lot of those. So hopefully, this doesn't make it. It is technically I guess bipartisan; we've talked about Ed Markey a number of times on the podcast; he seems to just always be out to cause some sort of problems for Tesla, whether it's autopilot or now AM radio in the vehicles.
I would say hey, why stop there? Why not just force people to have AM radio in their houses, in their bathrooms because really their argument here is that AM radio is critical for democracy to provide an alternative viewpoint and the ability for elected officials to share efforts with constituents. So I think there are plenty of other avenues for that other than AM radio these days, and I think people that are driving Tesla are probably not solely relying on AM radio as their source of news, and I guess if they are, they obviously get that outside of their vehicle. So this would be pretty wasteful to force automakers to include something like this for obviously the low amount of usage that it would get.
Just kind of an example of really dumb, dumb, dumb things all around, I would say. So hopefully that won't happen. Sort of on that similar note, Texas, I think, is, I'm not sure of the exact status. I think this has not been signed into law, but Texas is introducing a $400 first-year registration fee for EVs and a $200 annual fee, which, if you compare it to sort of the equivalent gasoline tax for a vehicle traveling the average number of miles, it's pretty punitive on EVs.
Probably two to three times more expensive than what that gasoline tax might add for road infrastructure purposes on an ice vehicle. So it's disappointing to see on top of a number of disappointing things that we've seen from dealership legislation in Texas, especially when Tesla's got their headquarters there, they're building gig factory Texas there. It would be nice if the state was a little bit more accommodating towards electric vehicles or supporting of electric vehicles just overall disappointing to see.
But aside from that, one of the reasons I wanted to bring this up to you is that Drew actually commented on this, Drew Baglino, and he had a couple of tweets on it. So he's now verified, he's got the Tesla organization check and seems to be a little bit more active on Twitter, which I think is just a nice thing to see. Separately from this topic on Texas, but he feels the same way that it's overly punitive towards EVs. Alright, next up we talked yesterday about Tesla having reportedly proposed a factory in India, a little bit more news on this today.
Probably just Reuters taking a couple of rumors and turning it into two articles rather than one. But they said that plans to locally manufacture EV batteries are also being discussed in addition to a possible vehicle factory, probably not too surprising on that front. And they did include a quote here from some public policy adviser it based in India, saying, "it appears Tesla has come with a different heart and head this time to take advantage of the auto boom in India". Talks about some of the incentives that India may have and then says, "Tesla can negotiate on things like taxes better if it first sets up a plant". So maybe a different story than what we've heard the last few times with India.
We kind of talked about that yesterday, but I guess as a sort of aside on this, I don't know that this negotiation tactic would be what I would recommend necessarily. I think once you actually commit and put the factory there, obviously you give up a lot of leverage because you're then making the investments before you necessarily have the term, so I guess if that's the sort of latter part of the statement, I don't know how much credibility I would apply to the former part of it. But again, outside of that, probably not too much in this article that was new from what we'd heard yesterday on Tesla possibly proposing a factory in India.
Alright, next up, we've got an update on Tesla's brand loyalty which a little bit more interesting during this period of time over the last six to nine months or so, where we've had a little bit more political interaction from Elon, and that has put some pressure on some of the surveys that we've seen in terms of brand and things like that around Tesla. But according to Citigroup, they published a note today, and it talks about brand loyalty, and they say that Tesla is still holding a 67% brand loyalty rate as opposed to 46% for other luxury brands.
So obviously, a huge advantage there for Tesla, and they say that just as impressive Tesla's brand loyalty is actually trended somewhat higher in recent years after briefly dipping in 2021, they say likely unsupply constraints not sure what would cause that, but interesting. to see that despite all the turmoil around Tesla's brand recently brand loyalty still remaining high so I think that's a positive to see and city agreed they say that the resilience that they've seen to date is impressive so wanted to pass that note along as I know that's been a hot topic of course the last few months.
Right next just a couple of quick updates on some potentially new products for Tesla we heard Elon talk about the roads are a bit at the shareholder meeting so hopefully we're not too far out from production but I think take that those comments with the grain of salt anyway Remock has been working with the Navara on setting a number of records I think they sent 20 different records recently with this vehicle but one of those was a zero to 60 time of 1.74 seconds and Tesla economics here asking if the roads for might beat that and Elon just replying with LOL so that would seem to imply yes that the roadster would perform better than that probably would probably would be requiring the space acts package that you'll on seem to reiterate is coming at share at the shareholder meeting but you know kind of a not the fun teaser there for the roadster the cyber quad also vehicle that we don't have it her quite as much about we had the you know Tesla ATV for kids the cyber quad for kids Tesla has refiled the trademark for cyber quad according to electric here so looks like that happened last week they had filed this previously it had lapsed because they hadn't put it into commercial use but it looks like they've you know refiled that trademark so at least at the time being they may intend to still use that they could also just be filing a trademark sort of as a placeholder if they do end up changing you know the name or or not ending up pursuing it still probably good to sort of have since they have obviously talked about it.
接下来,对于特斯拉潜在新产品的一些简短更新。我们听到了Elon在股东会上谈到道路状况,因此希望我们离生产不会太远,但我认为这些评论应该还要保留一些观望态度。Remock一直在与Navara合作创造记录,最近他们用这款车创造了20项不同的记录,其中之一是零到60的时间为1.74秒。特斯拉的经济学家问道,Roadster 是否能够超越这个记录,而Elon的回答是“LOL”,这似乎意味着Roadster的表现将会更好,但可能需要Space X 包,这也是股东会上Elon再次强调的。此外还有一个我们听说不太多的车辆,就是Cyber Quad,像特斯拉儿童电动四轮ATV一样,它是为儿童设计的,特斯拉最近重新申请了Cyber Quad的商标,看起来像是上周刚刚申请。他们之前申请过,但是因为没有商业用途而失效了,现在重新申请了这个商标,可能是因为他们仍然打算使用这个名称。当然,如果他们最终决定更换名称或者不再追求这个项目,重新申请商标也是一个好的占位办法,因为他们显然已经谈论过这个项目了。
All right last few things here we've got an update from Toyota not really an update more of just a continuance of what they have said for a long time now on electric vehicles so you can see the headline here from Bloomberg top Toyota scientists as world blacks the resources to go all EV if we look at the actual quote it's not quite as as bad as that headline implies says eventually resource limitations will end but for many years we will not have enough battery material and renewable recharging resources for a be only solution so if you take this quote in isolation it's kind of like obvious right I don't think anyone feels any differently no one is making the argument that we've got all these resources and capability to suddenly go 100% electric vehicle no one thinks that no one's making this argument so it's kind of a straw man but I think what the problem is is that Toyota kind of keeps pushing this right they want to keep this top of mind keep giving people a reason to support Toyota's lack of progress in electric vehicles and sort of you know continue to pretend that that is okay and and totally good for both the environment and for the business and for some short period of time at least for the business maybe that is the case but I think what Toyota maybe isn't failing to see but at least failing to acknowledge when they talk about things like this is that it's about putting the roots in and moving in the right direction from that again no one is saying that we're ready for 100% BEVs but the businesses that are working towards that working to develop the solutions for these resource limitations those are going to be the leaders and Toyota is just not doing that so I think that's the criticism for Toyota rather than anyone trying to say that you know we're ready today to go fully EV so again Toyota just kind of you know trying to spread that sort of a message that hey hybrids are great and we should just be doing that so more Toyota just Toyota I guess.
All right last last item here Elon the Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson he's been following Elon around for the last couple of years sounds like it's ready so the publishing date has been set for September 12th this year the length of this book is going to be 688 pages so this is obviously been a very interesting period for this biography to be information so I'm looking forward to reading that and excited that we've got a date for that to come out I hope there's a sequel eventually because I don't think the story is fully told once this is published I think there's going to still be a lot going on but I am excited to read that so I wanted to let people know that that is on the horizon.
And then just again sort of continuing forward our conversation from yesterday on you know Elon's comments on offer me money offer me power I don't care whatever however you phrase the quote he did can see the little bit today on some part of that saying in fairness I must concede that there's been a good point made I will endeavor to me more thoughtful in the future talking about comments on George Schoer Sauros again which I'm not sure why this is become such a hot topic but you know the the point being that Elon at least saying he will try to be a little bit more thoughtful in terms of probably how he's communicating things in the future.
It's not that he's really backing down from his comments but a little bit more on just how maybe they were expressed which I think is most often what creates problems what becomes problematic is more how it's expressed and we've talked about that before about you know Elon interviews those problems come up a lot less frequently than they seem to with short posts on Twitter.
All right so that's where we're wrapping up for today as always thank you for listening make sure you're subscribed and signed up for notifications you can also find me on Twitter at Tessel podcast and we'll see you tomorrow for the Friday May 19th episode Tessel Daily thank you.