Hey everybody Rob Maior here today we've got a pretty random assortment of Tesla news including an announcement from Mercedes that actually plays into autonomy. We'll talk about that. We've got interesting updates on casting, not really updates but more of reports that will clarify and a few other items as well.
Alright, starting off with this stock, Tesla today, a little bit rougher of a day down 9 tenths of a percent closing at $242 even, rougher in comparison with the broader markets as we talked about yesterday and overperformance despite the decline, but today the NASDAQ up to 10% of a percent so we're getting a little bit of a rebalancing with an underperformance from Tesla today.
Alright, first thing here, I just want to quickly touch on a note from Adam Jonas, a little bit more relevant to maybe the stock. Jonas did release a note today, obviously Morgan Stanley, talking about the UAW strike and maybe the relevance that that might have to Tesla and just the changes in the environment, kind of touching on what we had talked about yesterday actually, with Tesla being a bigger market share now than it was back in 2019 when negotiations were last held for the UAW. Which we covered at that time as well, but basically just mentioning that the dynamics are a little bit different now, there's a little bit more pressure put on both sides of the both parties here, the UAW and the automakers due to Tesla's growth and the market share that they're taking and the implications that this has for the EV industry in general. So nothing that we haven't really talked about, but just kind of trying to be aware of what information is going out there to institutional investors from notes like this.
Now getting into something that got a lot of attention over the last 18 or 24 hours since yesterday's episode, there was sort of a series of reports from Reuters talking about Tesla casting and the Reuters report was based on a report coming out of I believe out of China from the Shanghai security news that was talking about how Tesla was doing sort of underbody casting is how it was reported by Reuters.
Obviously, a couple of weeks ago we had a report from Reuters talking about how Tesla was working on developing that for the next generation vehicle, but this report was specific to the Model Y and to Gigashang High. So what actually ended up happening with this report is Reuters ended up revising it so we can see the corrected Reuters headline here on Yahoo Finance and they say that rather than the initial report, which said that they were working on this underbody one piece casting, the new report just says that Shanghai plant produces Model Y vehicles with cost cutting methods.
And then if we actually look at the report, they say that those cost cutting manufacturing methods include integrated casting for the Model Y's rear production, which is something that has obviously been happening for a long time. So there's really nothing new here. I think Reuters kind of pigeonholed themselves with the initial report and then kind of corrected it to a report that really isn't, again, anything new.
If we actually go to the initial report that this Reuters report was based on, this is in translation, of course, let me zoom in a bit here. But the initial report says that at the same time, relevant people close to Tesla revealed that Tesla is accelerating innovation, upgrading the integrated die casting technology to version two and die casting almost all complex body, all complex body bottom parts of electric vehicles into a hole.
So the report is, I think, kind of mixing a few different things. It's talking about how Tesla is using castings already, talking about how they're upgrading that to version two. We don't know exactly from this report what version two is if that has to deal with something that they're doing with Model Y, or if that's just alluding to what Reuters had previously reported that Tesla's working on sort of that single piece casting. So it's a little bit vague there.
And if we go down further into the report, it talks about how the reporter saw at the, you know, Tesla Gigafactory that near or sorry, that the rear bottom plate assembly of the Tesla Model Y model produced here has successfully adopted integrated die casting technology to achieve rapid casting. So I think what's caused some of the confusion is the sort of the terminology used here with the rear bottom plate assembly being mentioned. I think that caused the confusion where Reuters took that to mean underbody.
There's probably again some translation errors that are causing some of this confusion. But if we go a little bit further into the report, it mentions specifically that rear, you know, bottom plate assembly as something that Tesla has already been doing and it attributes some of the savings and weight and cost that Tesla's achieved to the exact same terminology that's used there. So that kind of shows us that this is something that's already been implemented that Tesla's been doing, which of course we have all known about now for quite a long time. So that leaves us at the end of the day, just with a reference here to upgrading to die casting technology version two, which again, the report doesn't really give us a whole lot of detail on. So it could be something that Tesla is working on in terms of an upgrade. We obviously had that Reuters report that Tesla's working on sort of the next generation of that. We don't know if that's the same as this. So for right now, I'm really not putting much weight in this report in terms of really any new information coming out of it. But again, it did receive, you know, a fair amount of attention, especially with the corrections that Reuters has had. But for now, we'll just kind of, I guess, ignore that until there's some other news relating to it.
All right, the other, I guess, sort of bigger news today. The relevancy, I think, is questionable. But getting some attention is Mercedes Benz announcement that the first availability for a drive pilot in the US, which is their level three system, which means that drivers can actually take their attention off of the road for a little bit, is going to be available on the US market. We'll talk a little bit more about that availability in a second. But as a part of this announcement, Mercedes Benz has allowed a lot of journalists to experience the system, which right now is available on a limited basis in California and Nevada. That is where Mercedes has received approval for the drive pilot level three system.
So I had to kind of chuckle a little bit at the headline here. So this is from Bloomberg. They say Mercedes Benz beat Tesla to cheap hands for heat driving. And then they say test drive. So in this test drive, what they've done is is taking it out in California. But I had to again, chuckle at the cheap part of the headline because they go on to say that this is only going to be offered as a $2,500 annual subscription and only on the 2024 EQS and 2024 S class models. So I wouldn't necessarily categorize that into the cheap bucket. Obviously those are the top line vehicles or, you know, amongst the top line vehicles from Mercedes into the six figure price range. So pretty expensive. And then if we actually look at the technology as we have talked about with this, you know, before the system here has a lot of restrictions. So in terms of just the geography, there's obviously the limits to California and Nevada. It's only actually available on limited roads and in limited use cases. So some of those are highlighted here. It says the vehicle must be on a highway with a solid center divider at least two lanes of traffic on either side. And the surface must be dry during the daylight. So nothing in rains, no ice or darkness. And then in addition to that, the vehicle won't actually change lanes by itself. So essentially what you're looking at here is in relatively heavy traffic on a highway with, you know, at least a three lane road. You have to stay in the exact same lane, but under those specific circumstances, you can then take your attention away. So you could, you know, go on your phone, watch something on your phone or something like that. Basically just zone out, but still need to be able to take over if your attention is required. However, I think the lane changing thing obviously limits it. And just, you know, obviously the 40 mile per hour, you got to be ready to take over if traffic then alleviates. So pretty heavy restrictions on this.
Another part I had to laugh at here, sort of concluding part of the article was that Bloomberg said that the news will hit Tesla fans particularly hard. Obviously we know Tesla autonomy is a huge focus. I think Tesla could very easily accomplish something like this today if they wanted to, but Tesla's goals are obviously much larger than that. So for them, although there is at least a little bit of value to a feature like this, I do think. And as Mercedes expands this, there will probably continue to be more and more value for it over time, not necessarily up to the price that they're asking for it. But nevertheless, a little bit more than zero. However, because Tesla is focused more on a general purpose solution that doesn't contain all the restrictions that, you know, Mercedes is mentioning here, for them to divert their effort to achieve what they're actually trying to achieve to accomplish something like this that has limited value in the interim is just not something that Tesla is going to, you know, divert resources towards. So yes, Mercedes may be offering something that has a little bit more functionality in very, very niche circumstances. But ultimately, I think Tesla's going to be able to, you know, easily surpass that whenever they feel the time is right. And hopefully in a much more general, broader operating driving domain, sort of scenarios. Nevertheless, I'm sure we'll continue to hear about that. On the availability of this, it is actually going to be even more limited than this sort of initially sounds. So rolling out late this year on the EQS and the S class, but only with a limited fleet. So I don't know exactly what that means, but it sounds like it's only going to be for select vehicles, even within that subset. And then they say that they'll deliver to additional vehicles in 2024. But again, mention the EQS and the S class. So even with the, you know, restrictions in terms of geography, also heavily restricted in terms of the vehicles, this will be available on. All right. Moving on from that. That just sort of a group of small updates here.
So the first we've kind of talked about already, but Joe Tegmeyer noting today that employees officially being welcomed back, we can see there's a Model Y sitting out there with a welcome back against Texas sign. So although we've had the rumors and a brief executive mention of sort of the downtime at at Giga, Texas, obviously something like that would further confirm that. And then kind of interesting to see there is some crash testing that seems to be happening. So Joe said that they've got, you know, about 50 different Model Ys that were spotted today as being produced. And now we've got this one that's being crash tested after a period of downtime. It definitely raises eyebrows about what Tesla would be retesting with the Model Y. So maybe there have been some somewhat significant changes after this period of downtime at Giga, Texas. Obviously we don't know a whole lot about that, but definitely worth keeping an eye on with this downtime and this crash test vehicle here.
All right, the next one, we've just got a quick promotional video for the updated Model 3. This was posted on Tesla's Weibo account in China. I've linked to this post on X, just which has a, you know, capture of the video if you want to check it out. But this is just, you know, Tesla's VP Lars Maravi talking about the updates that went into the Model 3, how Tesla, you know, made these design decisions, how excited they were to get a second chance to, as he put it, sort of redefine the segment that the Model 3 is in. So that'll hold out a new information that we hadn't already learned, but just kind of interesting to hear some of those insights again. And then also he did mention that this was really a development effort that was led by Tesla's engineering team in, in China at Giga Shanghai, which, you know, obviously we're saying it first introduced there, but he also just mentions from a development perspective, this is really kind of their, you know, the way to put the Tesla China engineering team on the map and really their sort of first major project. So also kind of cool to see that and get that information as well.
All right, next we've got a Tesla energy update, a couple of them actually. The first is from renew economy.com.au. This is a Tesla megapack fire that has broken out on a project that is under construction or in the commission commissioning phase in Australia and Queensland. So obviously we never want to hear about Tesla energy and megapack fires, things like that. In this case, fortunately this, this fire was confined to a single module. So there are, I believe 40 megapacks with this project. So only one of them starting on fire, obviously preferred none, but the fire has been described as a minor fire. It's already been contained. The investigation is ongoing. So they don't have any information on the cause right now. But because it only affected a single unit, the CEO of Gen X, who is Tesla's partner on this project was confident that there wouldn't be any major impacts on the project in general. So we'll keep an eye on that, see if there is any eventual reason for this. We've seen a couple other ones that have broken out like this and usually it's figured out within a few days what the impact is. So we'll keep an eye out for that. Also on Tesla energy, sort of, I guess not Tesla energy, but more electricity and power related things. Marco who covers the superchargers really closely on X has noticed or has found the installation guide for supercharger V4. So this is pretty interesting to see just how Tesla's put this together. Looking through it, at least to me, didn't really stick out as anything, any information that at least I noticed as new. But I did link to this in case anyone with a little bit more of an engineering background wants to take a look through it and maybe can notice some interesting details on supercharger V4. So we'll see if anything else comes out of that. And then also on energy, Tesla did send out some emails. This one actually came specifically to me on lower prices in my area for solar. Now unfortunately the email doesn't really give any information on what the lower prices are or what the reduction has been. More of just a generic email on solar from that point. But it looks like there at least are some lower prices and Tesla doing a little bit more promoting of solar directly through email marketing.
All right, quick one here from Drive Tesla Canada. Tesla has extended the three month FSD trial for hardware for owners. I'm really glad that they did this. Not something that we've talked a lot about, but obviously initially when hardware for vehicles were delivered, FSD was not something that could be accessed yet. Now that that has been released to the vehicles, obviously you would want the free trial to start from when the actual functionality exists. So I'm glad to see that that trial has been extended for those hardware for early deliveries that would not have had access to them from the very beginning. So definitely the right move by Tesla, not surprising to see that taken. And then here again, kind of relating to what we had talked about yesterday. This was an article by Reuters that included a sales chart of Tesla vehicles versus the rest of the EV industry specifically in the United States. So we've talked about Tesla's 60ish percent market share in the EV market in the US. This is a good depiction of what that actually looks like when you break it down by brand. You can see no one else even close. Maybe one did comment on this today too saying that the competition is coming in quotes.
All right, next we've got a couple updates on Kia, Hyundai Kia. So the first is on the Kia EV9. We previously talked about this vehicle. Kia has now announced the starting price of this. So for the 2024 EV9, it will start at just under $56,000, just under $55,000 actually, but then with the delivery or destination fee just above that. This will be the roughly 220 mile range version. There is no EPA rating on it yet, but that is Kia's estimate at this time. There are other trims. They have not announced the pricing details for the other trims yet, but those will obviously scale and increase with range and battery pack and things like that.
Not electric vehicles specifically, but interesting update here from Kia and Hyundai. They have issued a recall for 3.3 million vehicles in the US due to fire risk. So this has to do with the anti-lock braking system. Apparently there is some fluid, if I remember correctly, that is potentially leaking internally could cause an electrical short, which could then cause a fire. So Hyundai Kia is saying that for these 3.3 million vehicles, obviously a very significant number, these vehicles should all be parked outside until a recall can be completed for them. So obviously it's a lot of vehicles and although it's not an electric vehicle, just bringing the attention to it because Tesla recalls, obviously, usually get so much attention. Things like this, maybe not quite as much, although this one, since it is a significant number of vehicles a little bit more. But if this were Tesla, it kind of be reported as though it was the end of the world, but we do see these types of things for other vehicles as well, including non-electric vehicles.
All right, and then last couple of things for today. So kind of an interesting update on the Apple car. Obviously, I've made my thoughts known on this for going back many years now, but we haven't really heard too much about it recently. There's a report from an Apple analyst who I think is pretty well respected. I don't follow Apple as closely as I once did, but this Apple analyst is saying that Apple's work on the Apple car has lost all visibility at the current time. So really kind of radio silence on it. And I think that's been, you know, matched with media reporting. We just really haven't heard too much about it. So you know, at this point, we're getting really close to where those sort of initial Apple car rumors had been, although those have been pushed out a couple of times as well, almost like the Toyota solid state batteries. But with the Apple car, again, just looks like they're not really a lot. There's not a lot of traction there right now, which I don't think is too surprising. And then lastly, as we go into tomorrow, just a quick reminder that Fed Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to speak. And then as we head in Friday after that, we will get the PCE update there, but I don't wrap it up for today. So as always, thank you for listening. Make sure you're subscribed and signed up for notifications. You'll also find me on X at Tesla podcast. And we'll see you tomorrow for the Thursday, September 28th episode of Tesla daily. Thank you.