Welcome to Electrified, it's your host Dylan Loomis. First up today, just a quick heads up, if you go to buy a Tesla and you make your deposit using Apple Pay, and that email address is different from your Tesla account email address, you may have a bit of a process to go through to actually merge those accounts. That's because if your Apple ID email is indeed different, Tesla assumes it's a new account. Just be aware of this, maybe avoid a minor headache.
On the naming front for the new Model 3, Elon responded to an ex-employee saying it's not real, referring to the highland name. And yes, I am aware on Tesla's own electronics parts catalog, they have used the name highland for different purposes. But with this being the official word from the top that leaves us with Model 3 refresh or Model 3 Plus, I'm going with Model 3 Plus, if for no other reason than it's only one syllable. More importantly though, because of this right here, so going forward, hopefully everybody understands my rationale. I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't pass along this meme from Alex responding to Elon saying it's not real.
Speaking of the Model 3 Plus, Australian authorities are looking at this vehicle over issues around the car's child seat anchor points, specifically the accessibility of the top tether point for the rear middle seat. Australian design rules require that every seat with a seat built in a car must have an accessible top tether point for child seats. This is the Australian owner's manual for the Model 3, and this is for the Model 3 Plus, so you see the problem. For now, we don't know what production out of Fremont is going to look like, what Tesla may be looking at here, up to and including a stop sale order and a recall of vehicles already sold, or reclassifying the Model 3 as a 4-seater by removing the rear middle seat belt. In 2022, BYD faced a similar issue with the Addo 3, leading to a temporary stop in deliveries and a recall to modify the vehicles. An interesting requirement to say the least.
Last week, you may have seen Drew Baglino visiting this site, which is now operational, the Capilay Energy Storage Site with 158 Tesla Megapacks, but there's more to the story. This battery has replaced Hawaii's last coal plant, which is great to hear, but there's even more, and even though it's not one of the biggest battery projects in the world, they're calling the most advanced battery energy storage facility on the planet. That's because this is the only large-scale battery capable of combining the basic peak capacity, frequency response, synthetic inertia, and grid rebooting tasks. Basically, they're going to be relying on this Capilay battery system more than any others because of its centrality to the grid operations in the region. With legacy power plants that inertia that was provided through the spinning of the mass of turbines is now being replaced by a synthetic version of that inertia through savvy programming of their inverters, which offers a more economic alternative while avoiding unnecessary carbon emissions, they're also faster and more precise. To sum it up, it's one of the first real-life examples of how to shift critical grid functions from fossil-fueled plants to clean energy. Eventually, the kind of grid services Capilay has pioneered will have to scale nationwide.
The end of the year can be a great time to zoom out and see the bigger picture. This chart from Roland showing domestic China deliveries by year is a great way to do that. So to all of the naysayers who have been saying that Tesla is doomed in the Chinese market, there's so much competition they don't have an affordable enough vehicle, I would say the data says otherwise Tesla has seen steady growth year over year dating back to 2020. Even if 2024 and 2025 are slower in terms of growth, whenever they launched a compact vehicle in this market, it should sell like hotcakes.
Things are getting more real with the Cybertruck we have the first non-employee, someone not affiliated with Tesla in any way, getting a Cybertruck in, this individual placed their order for the foundation Cybertruck on December 9th. Definitely encouraging that Tesla has the confidence to roll out these deliveries to non-employees, people that may be a bit more particular with the product that they receive. For whatever it's worth, this individual lives in San Diego. Most of these non-employees live in California, one lives in Texas, all ordered foundation, dual motor all-wheel drives, all placed orders early December, delivery start late January.
Before we start speculating on what's up with Hertz selling their Teslas, let's have a listen to the CEO. The reality here is that we're experiencing the consequence of a material price decline in Teslas but in EVs more generally. At the beginning of this year, when Tesla took down the price of their cars, residual price falls, depreciation goes up, that's obviously a cost to the business. We need to face that reality. Tesla did what they did for reasons that are presumably good for their company but we just need to adjust to the reality of what the cost input is of this car and so we've made this move to really put ourselves back on track.
It's interesting to note, Jim, that demand for our product is real and is sustaining. What we put in our AK as an indication of what happened in the fourth quarter, demand was there, revenue was in line with what expectations were on a seasonal basis. The issue I'm addressing is one of our cost base and the influence that EVs have had on that cost and there are certain circumstances like price decline, like residual decline and depreciation that's out of our control but you need to react to it and we're reacting to that. So that's interesting because originally the case, the thinking was this will be a nice way for people to experiment. Did that happen or did it happen and it is happening? It's just not happening at a level of demand that justifies us maintaining a fleet of this size at this moment in time.
You know Carl, the one thing I would say is that at some point the reality of EVs and Teslas being the best-selling car will at some point render them the best rental car. It's not yet so we may have been ahead of ourselves in the context of how quickly that will happen but that will happen and I think in the end we're in the business of giving consumers choice. We're including in that choice electric vehicles and there is a significant component of our customer set that are still paying us a premium for these. It's just not at the level of demand that we anticipated. I would point out that our joint venture and the demand we have with Uber is proving very successful and has grown as I talked about on our third quarter call by as much as 50%.
There you have it direct from the source. A silver lining, if anybody out there is looking for a deal on a used Tesla, Hertz Car Sales dot com has some for around $20,000 which means they qualify for the used EV credit under $25,000 of $4,000 if you personally qualify. If you plan to go this route I would encourage you to make sure that you or somebody you know is able to inspect one of these vehicles pretty thoroughly, double check everything with a warranty etc.
Yes this means Hertz will be unloading roughly one third of its current EV fleet but to be clear it's not just Teslas that they're selling, they're also selling Kia EV6's Chevy bolts and some others. There's Nissan Leafs for sale as well as some BMW i3's. In addition to the business aspect and the margins that the CEO touched on you have to think about the consumer side and their experience as well. Example I rented a Model 3 last year it was a miserable experience. Did everything by the book? Did it two to three weeks in advance? Did the pre-check in and everything? When I got to the location they told me they did not have any Teslas available to rent. Not only was I not able to just get in my Tesla and be on my way but I had to wait in line for around 45 minutes and then once I talked to somebody that was back and forth for another 30 minutes before they had any idea what was going on. Long story short eventually I was able to get my Tesla Model 3 that I rented but it was a nightmare to do so.
I also think Hertz needs to change its policy when it comes to charging the vehicle before you drop it off. Why can't Hertz just do that themselves when the customer drops off the vehicle? Raise the prices a bit if you have to. For people that want to catch a flight in a foreign city the last thing they want to think about before dropping off the rental is where am I going to go charge this? Speaking of foreign cities the last thing the average consumer wants to do is learn how to drive a vehicle in that foreign city that they're not familiar with and most likely will not get a tutorial on how to use before they leave.
Don't misunderstand me I'm not at all glossing over the higher repair costs or the lack of demand for these EVs from Hertz I'm just adding a bit more context in that there's probably much more to the story than what the CEO was leading on.
Namely the general public just not being educated enough and not having confidence in renting an EV. I'd also add some level of rental fleet turnover is always going to be the case. These rental companies don't want to hold a vehicle whether it's EV or ICE outside of the warranty for obvious reasons.
For now there's no clear word on how this is going to change Hertz and their plans to eventually own 100,000 Tesla vehicles which was the first order number. Long term I certainly think that original order will be fulfilled it just may take an extra few years.
You know what I've always found to be interesting it's the people that choose to spend we'll call it $100 a month on things like Starbucks, energy drinks, Diet Coke, but then they choose to draw the line when it comes to something like AG1 the sponsor of this video. And listen I know it seems like everybody and their brothers are now talking about AG1 which based on human psychology can actually start to turn us off to something.
Putting our wiring aside it's pretty simple. Our bodies just work better when it's continually fed certain vitamins and minerals. And one most people don't eat balanced diets even if they think they do and two you can't really debate that the quality in the food industry is worsening in favor of greed I mean of profits.
Plus I happen to believe that people like Andrew Huberman and Peter Itia would not choose to associate and join the advisory board of AG1 if they didn't plan to bring their same rigorous scientific approach to AG1.
In the winter months vitamin D can be essential for maintaining energy levels so the free one year supply of vitamin D3K2 if you use my link below maybe exactly what you need. You can also get five free travel packs at drinkag1.com slash electrified.
This is one of those goofy studies so we won't stick here long but AutoTrader UK did a study showing the most popular EVs that have been featured in movies, tv shows and music videos. Three of the top five vehicles in terms of number of appearances are Teslas, the Model S3 and X. No surprise pretty interesting given what Hollywood promotes.
The Model 3 Plus is now available for order in Taiwan but interestingly this vehicle will come to this market from Fremont, not Shanghai. Despite that proximity it's due to geopolitical tensions for now no estimated delivery dates.
Model 3 Plus现已可以在台湾订购,但有趣的是,这辆车将从弗里蒙特而非上海进入该市场。尽管如此,由于地缘政治紧张局势的影响,暂时还没有预计交付日期。
As Sawyer pointed out Fremont factory tours are now back in the referral program for 15,000 credits. Waymo announced this week in Phoenix they're ready to take on the freeways a new endeavor for the company. They're going to start by offering driverless rides to just employees and their friends then eventually paying passengers will have this option.
Waymo may not be scaling quickly they may not be making money but at least a little credit is due for them staying out of the headlines and taking things with a bit of caution. How long can they burn cash is anybody's guess but at least to date they have not gone the way of cruise which is great to see.
We don't know how much of a pay increase but all production associates material handlers and quality inspectors at Teslas Fremont California factory are getting a quote market adjustment pay increase and with that boost Tesla becomes the latest non-union auto maker to raise pay in the month since the UAWs win over the big three automakers.
Now this factory in California it employs more than 20,000 workers and Bloomberg News has reported that employees at that plant have formed a UAW organizing committee Tesla perhaps responding to that pressure.
According to the Nikkei Asia for all of 2023 in the Chinese auto market pure battery powered and plug-in hybrid vehicles made up a 31 percent market share or 9.49 million units. Sales data suggest consumers are increasingly demanding various types of hybrid vehicles.
Fully electric Mercedes-Benz passenger car sales were 222.6 thousand units for 2023 or 11 percent of their overall sales. That number jumped to 19 percent a bend including plug-in hybrids at least relative to some of the other legacy companies these are respectable figures.
It looks like 2024 is going to be the year Tesla passes Audi in terms of global car sales. That's because for 2023 Audi sold 1.89 million just ahead of Tesla's 1.81 million. Fun fact in 2023 globally Tesla sold more EVs than Audi, Mercedes and BMW combined.
Lucid announced their Q4 production and deliveries produced 2,391 delivered at 1,734. I'd love to get Corey Stuubens take on all of this since he transferred to Lucid but for the year they delivered 6,001 vehicles and produced 8,428 not up very much at all from 2022.
Add in the fact that throughout the second half of 2023 Lucid was offering discounts and incentives and that's not a rosy picture right now for Lucid. It is true this production figure actually met Lucid's adjusted production guidance but let's not forget back summer of 2022 they were actually guiding for 14,000 units produced for 2022.
You know how I said X-Pang has been talking about making flying vehicles well now they're saying it'll be available for pre-order in the fourth quarter of this year. That does not mean this is entering production anytime soon it could be years later if ever. Just wanted to pass this along though because I saw a comment somebody said I didn't know Trevor Milton landed a new job. That is a top tier comment in my book.
Subaru plans to leapfrog ahead in the EV race thanks to a new R&D and design center. Executives say this will have product development lead times and cost while also enabling it to have the number of parts used and required production processes. Last year Subaru sold 14,000 EVs worldwide including 8.8,000 in the United States out of 852,000 delivered globally. Subaru plans to roll out four fully electric crossovers by the end of 2026 but for now the only one that's available is the Subaru Solterra which is effectively the same vehicle as the Toyota BZ4X just with different badging.
Today we're hearing that Tesla will suspend most car production at Gigabirlin from January 29th to February 11th suiting a lack of components due to shifts in transport routes because of attacks on vessels in the Red Sea. In a statement Tesla said the armed conflicts in the Red Sea and the associated shifts in transport routes between Europe and Asia via the Cape of Good Hope are also having an impact on production in Grunhaida. The considerably longer transportation times are creating a gap in supply chains, the extra route adds about 10 days in a journey from Asia to Northern Europe and about 1 million dollars in extra fuel. Given a day or two to ramp back up production from most of it being shut down for about two weeks that could be a production loss of anywhere between 7 to 10 thousand vehicles for Tesla in quarter one. This also serves as a really good reminder that there are plenty of things that are out of Tesla's control.
Check this out. Now this is actually being built by Elon Musk and Tesla. This is the beginning of the building and it's going to be open before the end of the year. That actually is going to be a restaurant. I've seen artists renders of what this is going to look like. They're going to put a movie screen over here and another one over here. That parking lot is going to be filled with superchargers for those Teslas and they're going to be serving food and I heard rumors that the waitstaff is actually going to be rolling around on roller skates. How freaking cool is that? Now this is all going to be happening here within the year. This is happening on Santa Monica Boulevard and that's going to be the Cross of Orange. This used to be the old Shaky's. Hopefully they'll do a nod and at least have some mojo potatoes in there for some of those food things. But again, this is not just for Teslas. Now it is owned by Tesla. It is an Elon Musk thing but they're saying that the charging stations are going to be here for all electrical vehicles.
So don't forget check out AG1 linked below and try it for yourself if you have the means. Hope you guys have a wonderful day. 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.