We've been talking about it all year, and now BYD has made it official. They were celebrating a production milestone, and also the emergence of China as a global auto manufacturing powerhouse. They made a call to ban the Chinese industry together to demolish the old legends, and the BYD founder said I believe the time has come for Chinese brands. It's an emotional need for the 1.4 billion Chinese people to see a Chinese brand becoming global. They released a video that went viral, and at the end they touched on achieving new world-class brands under the slogan Chinese autos. In response, Neo CEO said I feel proud for China's auto industry we should learn from BYD's success. And the CEO of Li Auto said salute to BYD. Let's give a thumbs up to every participant in the new energy era.
If you've been around the channel back in 2021, Sandy Monroe predicted this exact thing. We're already seeing the invasion in Europe, and next up might be North America.
The Indonesian cabinet has agreed to offer 0% export duty and value added tax exemptions to EV makers that would set up locally. But it's unclear how long these incentives would be offered and whether there would be other conditions attached. Potential investors can import cars to sell locally, but they must complete a factory within two years or face penalties that are still being formulated by the government. But this policy could still change. So initially, we would think there's some hope that Tesla could now test the waters by importing some cars to see what the demand is like. But in a separate report today, we learned something new. Indonesia said today Tesla plans to invest in the manufacturing of battery materials in the country and will make an announcement in the next few months. Luhut Panjaiten said Elon wants to invest in the manufacturing of materials for lithium batteries, but Tesla was not looking to build a car factory in Indonesia. The investment will be quite big, but let's wait for Elon to come here around the end of September or October this year. Nothing is a done deal, but this is the first we've heard that Tesla is not looking at manufacturing vehicles in Indonesia at least to start. So if Tesla doesn't make cars locally in Indonesia, then they would be forced to import and would a battery factory qualify as an option to avoid these penalties. It's all still under discussion and developing clearly Indonesia would love to have Tesla manufacturing vehicles locally, both for the local market and exports with this incentive, but it sounds like Tesla's not interested in that per the usual Tesla has cut prices on the higher end trims of the monowy in China and everybody seems to be panicking. The long range in performance variants have been dropped by about $1,900 or 4%.
But as Troy said, 80% of Model Y sales from Tesla China are the standard range variant which has seen no price change. It's only about 20% of Model Y sales out of China that are experiencing this price cut. I'm a long-term investor and let's just not forget that for Tesla to sell 20 million vehicles a year, they're not going to be able to do it at an average selling price of over $55,000 so we need the price cuts we need prices to come down margins be what they may in the short term. I think the bigger story is what's going on with the Chinese economy, the short story it's not great and remember the macro drives everything. At the same time Tesla is offering an $1,100 subsidy for Model 3's in inventory. This is for the entry level rear wheel drive Model 3 between now and September 30th if the customer buys insurance from an insurer that works with Tesla which of course is another anecdote for upcoming highland production from China and Jason Yang said the assembly line at the factory will be upgraded later this month and is highly likely we see the new Model 3 being loaded onto trucks next week. You would think the order of these two would be reversed but that's what he said. And a fun fact now as of July Tesla is the brand with the highest export volume among domestically made vehicles in China.
Speaking of Project Highland if you see any rumors out there about the specs for the highland and they matched this list this is not true Warren just made these up as community notes has told us.
In case you're in Australia or the UK and a few other European countries the powerball may be a bit cheaper with some rebates available so check your email and check the websites if you're in those regions.
Over the weekend Joe Tettmeyer shared some images of nine cyber trucks with covers in the parking lot at Gigatexis. So here you have it but there's actually some more as there was a piece of paper sticking out from one of these trucks. As you can see in this image if you zoom in you will see three little letters VIN. However Nitza's website may be telling us that any vehicle that's destined to be on the road actually requires a VIN even if it's not going to an end customer. I'm not 100% but I believe that even pre-production cars do have VINs.
Either way very exciting to see Gigatex is pumping out some cyber trucks. And we're about to highlight the critical importance of data through Tesla and on that note. If you're not using a VPN in 2023 I'd loosely compare it to running through a public park with no clothes on. You're really exposing yourself and it's completely unnecessary. Thanks to Matt Farrell from Undecided for highlighting the benefits of Surfshark the sponsor of this video because I've been on board ever since. I know most of us use credit cards online, bank online, shop online, talk to friends and family online. So if you want to encrypt all of your internet activity from hackers, spyware and malware Surfshark VPN is a trusted affordable source to do so. But it's far more than just privacy on all of your family devices with one Surfshark account though. It can get you better deals on flights and hotels as well as masking the location of your IP address to unlock new libraries of content. The UI is incredibly easy to use and anyone can get up and running in seconds. And yes, Surfshark has you covered whether you're at home, at the airport or in a hotel around the world. I prefer to take easy affordable steps of precaution rather than leaving myself exposed and I think most people should. To support the channel and to protect yourself, you can head to surfshark.deals. slash electrified at linked below and use my promo code electrified to get an extra three months free. And thanks to Surfshark for sponsoring this video.
There's been plenty of chatter about Tesla data centers today, but just remember back October 2021, Tesla announced the Gigafactory Data Center at Shanghai has officially landed. Tesla just posted on Weibo responding to some concerns about Century mode and they said unlike some brands that can remotely view the surrounding environment of the vehicle through Century mode, currently the data of Tesla vehicles is only stored offline in the USB device in the car. And neither the owner nor Tesla can view it remotely online. And confirming what we've known now for a long time, Tesla has established data center in China to localize data storage. All data generated by the sale of vehicles in the mainland Chinese market will be stored in China and Tesla has told us they also have plans to add more data facilities in China in the future. But it's unclear what level of data access Chinese authorities have to Tesla's Chinese customers. What type of data is the Chinese government concerned about? Well, things like traffic conditions and military and government compounds, surveying and mapping data beyond what the government discloses, the status of charging grids, face voice and car plate information, and any data deemed as affecting national security or public interest. But this situation is still causing problems even with Tesla having that data center set up. Just recently, some Tesla customers were unable to go to a local airport in China due to some of these security concerns.
The main reason people are talking about this today because last week Tesla posted this job in Austin, Texas for a senior engineering program manager for data centers. This role will lead the end to end design and engineering of Tesla's first of its kind data centers.
But Tesla actually has data center plans globally, not just in China. They're also hiring in Palo Alto for a staff data center engineer. In this role, they take designs and design prototypes into functional production data centers. Of course, many people are jumping to something like Amazon web surfaces and perhaps in the future maybe, but right now it seems like these data centers are going to be for Tesla use only. You may recall Giga Nevada has a data center and X had a data center in Sacramento and then Elon said it was basically the worst place to have a data center in part due to the heat, but fast forward a few months later and Tesla actually bought that same facility.
The only report I could find on what Tesla was going to use that Sacramento data center for would be machine learning workloads including self driving car simulations. And earlier this year, Mexico now was reporting on the impact Tesla would have on data center demand in the location for Tesla to achieve autonomy. They need very high connectivity. And in the end, all that info communication goes to a data center that becomes the heart of the back and forth of the info of companies like Tesla.
And these data centers are a bigger deal than you might think data takes time to travel round trip distances are usually double the geographic distance because both the request and the response have to actually travel that distance. And data almost never travels in a straight line between the sender and the recipient. Instead, it meanders through different networks, routers and switches, each of which can add latency. The closer the data center is to its customers and the operations, the lower the latency. So it's true that one of the most important factors for data centers is actually location.
Just like factories, Tesla wants to localize its production and it's going to do the same thing with data centers. And we talk about the importance of real world data for full self driving all the time. But don't forget about the energy side and things like auto bitter and power hub, where Tesla is still using all of that data and analytics to make its software even more efficient motor trend who has not always been the biggest Tesla fan can't deny how good the model Y is.
Their whole review will be below, but they said it's hard to find fault with the electric SUV and easy to see why it's a strong seller. And their conclusion, there's no denying the Model Y is very, very good. And that, as our testing shows, it has been this good for the three years it's taken the competition to catch up. And while some competitors are as good as the Tesla, none is clearly better and the Model Y is still running at the front of the pack.
Just so you know, Elon's putting his money where his mouth is, his fund donated $10 million back in 2021 to support research programs. The money has been linked to the population well-being initiative and interdisciplinary research group at UT Austin devoted to the study of population. Ford has hired a former Apple exec Peter Stern to lead a newly created group focused on developing software based services across Ford's gas and EV business units. He'll be tasked with building out a business tied to Ford's Blue Crew's hands-free driver assist system, as well as safety and security services for the company's Ford Pro.
Ford has decided to make its Blue Crew's hardware standard and then offer a subscription service just like Tesla does. Ford customers can activate Blue Crews at the time of purchase for three years for $2,100 or after a 90-day trial for $800 annually or $75 a month. Ford believes investing to include the hardware standard from the factory and then giving customers the flexibility to choose when and how they activate it is the right approach. Another page from the Tesla book.
You know all of those videos that went viral about the EV graveyards in China? Well, we have a new report. Take it for what you will, but inside China, Otto said most of these cars are five to six years old have seen significant use, have aftermarket accessories, trash in the cars and other signs of wear. That's because you're looking at a fleet of retired ride share cars that were once operated in large cities in China.
These X ride share cars also share their space with retired taxis, wrecked cars and some new unregistered EVs from foreign brands, which are indeed struggling to sell. I'm not sure we'll ever know the truth, but I think it's important to at least hear both sides of the argument.
Here we have the latest madness on this Elon and Zuck situation. I don't have any idea what's going on. On Friday, Elon said he spoke to the Prime Minister of Italy and Minister of Culture. They've agreed on an epic location for the fight, but then Elon gave an update on his MRI saying there's a problem with his right shoulder blade rubbing against his ribs, which requires minor surgery. Recovery will only take a few months.
And then Walter Isaacson shared a screenshot of some texts between Elon and Zuck. Elon said want to do a practice bout at your house next week. Zuck said if you still want to do a real MMA fight, you should train on your own and let me know when you're ready. Then Elon said I'll be in Palo Alto on Monday. Let's fight in your octagon. I've not been practicing much apart from a brief bout with Lex Friedman today. Pause it if you want to read it, but Zuck basically said that Elon wasn't serious and that he was going to move on and there was not going to be a fight.
Then this afternoon, Elon said for the Tesla FSD drive in Palo Alto tonight, he's going to ask the car to drive to Zuckerberg's house. He'll also test the latest X live stream video so you can monitor the adventure in real time. If we get lucky and Zuck actually answers the door, the fight is on. And just before that, Elon said the challenge has been accepted and that Zuck should open the door. So we've gone from an official fight in a Colosseum setting to no fight to now potentially a fight in Zuck's backyard. And I guess we'll see what if anything happens tonight.
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