Welcome to Electrified, it's your host Dylan Loomis, quick shout out to my newest patron Eric G. Thank you for choosing to support the channel. We got a post on LinkedIn from Lars Lengacker, a Tesla employee, specifically a quality engineer for General Assembly. He said when he started at Gigabrelin, there were two challenges in his mind, making sure the Model Y was safe enough for his mom to drive and good enough for himself to drive. He said challenges accepted and completed, then shared a photo of some t-shirts on the hood of a Model Y, all the way from 1k up to now, 6k. Then on LinkedIn, Bob Folks chimed in, who is the director of quality at Gigabrelin. He gave us the confirmation of that picture, saying the Model Y scattered with trophies of our achievements, 1000 all the way to 6000 and beyond. Then he shared this photo of the Gigabrelin team.
Here we have our production milestone chart, comparing Gigabrelin to Gigatexis now with this most recent milestone of 6000 Model Y's produced in one week. First things first, there are no guarantees Tesla is able to sustain this 6000 per week rate for an entire year, but hypothetically if they did, if we assume 50 weeks in the year to allow for two weeks of downtime and other things, that of course would be 300,000 units per year in terms of a run rate, and given that the current installed capacity at Berlin is 375,000, that would mean Tesla would be at roughly an 80% factor utilization rate. Further, we've known for some time that Gigabrelin has been approved for up to 500,000 units per year, or roughly 10,000 units per week.
Berlin certainly is one of the most advanced manufacturing factories in the world, but this jumped from 5000 to 6000 took 314 days. Prior to that, the longest we had to wait for one of these 1000 per week milestones was 106 days when Berlin went from 1 to 2000 units per week. Tesla's listed capacity for Berlin has now sat at 375,000 units dating back to quarter two of 2023. Before that, key one, it was over 350,000. This all means that cumulatively, it's taken Gigabrelin 687 days to go from first delivery to 6000 units produced per week, almost two years. There are plenty of things we could speculate on for why this jumped from 5 to 6000 took so long, but one of them really was the IRA. There was a time when Gigabrelin was set to be ramping up 4680 battery production, but IRA became a thing and they came out and said they were shifting their focus from 4680s at Gigabrelin to making those in America. I don't know how true these reports were, but over the past year, there have been multiple reports that Tesla has at times struggled finding employment for Gigabrelin.
Yes, additionally, Elon has made some public comments about expectations for Berlin in 2022 when he expected Tesla to build half a million vehicles in Berlin in 2022. I know that things changed, but the reality was in 2023, Tesla ended up making roughly 200,000 Model Wives in Gigabrelin. I wouldn't read too far into this, but cumulatively in the past, Gigabrelin has been slightly ahead of Gigatexus, so this could be an encouragement that in the next few weeks we get a similar 6000 unit per week update for Gigatexus. As Tesla drives up, it's factory utilization rates. If you hold everything else constant, that would then of course mean better economies of scale and improved margins.
Don't forget we still have to figure out what happens with this spring of last year. We heard that Gigabrelin was set to expand to 1 million units of production capacity per year. Tesla applied for this expansion and they said it would not increase the factory's physical size. The current Gigabrelin footprint is big enough to produce up to 2 million vehicles when it reaches full capacity. The production equipment required to reach 1 million vehicles will be built inside the existing building. As I said on X, I would love Tesla to do a quarterly update for some of the lesser known business lines, Tesla electric, Tesla insurance, and more relaxed forums like that could give investors the opportunity to ask questions for things like Gigabrelin and what the hold up and delay to hitting 500,000 in a million units really has been. We can speculate as much as we want. Does it have to do with Chinese exports and the cost of that? Is it demand in certain regions? Is it factory limitations? Good or bad, we would just love to know.
We got the Tesla China wholesale figure for January, which includes both domestic and exports. The total was 71447. Comparing this to January 2023, that number was 66,051. We'll get the full breakdown in the next few days and seeing significant declines month over month is totally normal going from December to January, honestly, to be expected.
Just two days later, Tesla has already settled that hazardous waste lawsuit in California, agreeing to pay a $1.5 million settlement. Tesla did not admit to any wrongdoing with this settlement, and they also agreed to take steps to properly handle waste and hire a third party auditor to examine its waste practices over five years.
It became very clear today that after a slew of headlines that looked like this, Tesla recalls millions of vehicles amid probe of autopilot crashes that the higher ups at Tesla are also fed up and frustrated with this entire recall scenario. This was one of the more ridiculous ones we've had to date. Some visual warning lights were too small and the user interface. You already know this is just an OTA update.
Look at this from Reuters. Tesla to recall nearly all its US vehicles in largest ever recall. The official Tesla account chimed in fighting back saying this is a minor OTA software update that increases the size of the brake, park and anti-lock brake system warning indicators. Holmars was highlighting the absurdity and Elon chimed in saying literally.
Rohan Patel said a physical letter telling a customer that they have to do nothing is confusing and environmentally wasteful. Millions of dollars in useless paper. For a physical recall where a vehicle actually has to go to a service center, no physical letter is required if the recall has been completed before the 60-day deadline. But NHTSA recently decided without any notice or comment process that all software updates require a paper letter. The agency should move into the modern era. Many other countries have changed their process to allow for electronic notifications. I'd venture to guess at least 95% of all Tesla owners would just prefer an in-app update for any recalls like this rather than getting something in the mail. Technostic recommended the same thing to which Rohan said exactly we have offered this to no avail. Replying to Holmars about this paper notice requirement Elon said the physical letter requirement is super wasteful. As Carlos pointed out, the indicator icons have been updated on 2024.2.2. Here we have the visualization and the root cause of all of these ridiculous headlines today. Three of these indicators now have bigger text for park, brake and ABS.
I know we all joke about this but the truth is the general public really consumes their information and shapes their worldview primarily through headlines. I can't tell you how many times I've talked to people in the general public acquaintances. They'll ask what I do. I tell them the first thing they say, oh that company that always has all of the recalls. Then of course I do my job of explaining the truth but oftentimes you can tell they already have their mind made up of what type of company Tesla is. It's honestly crazy what's happening here because the reality of the situation Tesla is being punished from a brand perception standpoint every time they issue a software update to make their cars better for free. Welcome to 2024 in America.
I'm guessing most of you have seen this already but in case you haven't a good reminder from Sawyer that yes other companies even Mercedes with a car like the GLS also has struggled with panel gap alignment at times.
Tesla has cut the price of the Model Y in Canada only for both the rear wheel drive and long range variants by $4,000 each. This now means the long range variant qualifies for a combined $12,000 in rebates if you live in Quebec. Customers can now get up to $7,000 from Quebec in addition to the $5,000 from the federal eyes of rebate. You Canadians who have just placed an order but not taken delivery. The word is don't hold me to it that Tesla will adjust your price accordingly before your delivery.
And check this out we have the Canadian Configurator the Model 3 rear wheel drive price $53,990. Switching to the Model Y rear wheel drive $53,990. The long range Model Y $63,990. And the Model 3 long range also $63,990. The three and the Y are the exact same price right now in Canada. Those prices are before any incentives.
I know you can interpret that many different ways but I would take that to mean that right now Model 3 plus demand is pretty strong. Many of you will know I'm fully on board with a price cut strategy. It may not be optimal but it's what Tesla has decided and I'm not going to change their mind. I would just continue to show this chart to remind people of why they do it. Lower prices means much higher total addressable markets more sales. I know people in the Tesla community have argued that Tesla would have sold as many cars if they didn't cut prices like they have. I firmly disagree with that stance and I don't think I need to make an argument for why.
Tesla Americas confirmed it on X that up to $12,000 in incentives are available for those in Quebec. This has been going on for a few days but the aero covers for the Cybertruck. These are now going to be a collectors item. The word is some Cybertrucks are currently being shipped with no aero covers. Now that we've had the truck and driven it a couple thousand miles well there is an issue. So on the bottom of the tire you have the effect of the vehicle being loaded and then you get the contact patch. So the tire deforms which is totally normal that's how it's engineered to work. The contact patch which is where the tire contacts the ground is going to cause the tire to bulge out a little bit down here. Well the problem with the tire bulging out is the sidewall gets wider on the bottom when it's contacting the ground and now all of a sudden these fingers are in direct contact with the tire sidewall on the bottom. Simply put you got some friction with the fingers on these now outdated Cybertruck aero covers. Sounds like Tesla is working on a new design for new aero covers that hopefully they have sooner rather than later.
Despite this just being one anecdote I think this is a very important post from whole Mars. Still seeing more safety critical interventions in FSD beta 12 compared to 11. That doesn't matter to me happy to get it to try it early. We'll keep you guys posted on when I feel it surpasses 11 in reliability. Omar my guy if you happen to see this we would love to see some of those drives with these safety critical interventions. It's always fun to see the highlights and the good things in the progress but we need to see the bad as well to get a fair complete picture of where FSD 12 is really at. I think some folks out there in the community were starting to get carried away with V12 so it's just one post and again one anecdote but I think it's an important one.
Then Jamescat on X somebody I have immense respect for and I would encourage all of you to follow said Kimball de facto claiming FSD solved in five years no steering wheel is quite the walk back. Here's the exact quote that James was referencing. How far before this year's world I would say maybe five years really you think it's definitely in this decade yeah I mean I think that we might come out with the robo-texi before that and they would have no steering level. It's just also there's also if to do government regulations. They do require steering wheel still so but to get through that as well. Which doesn't seem like it's a easy process to sort through. They're just very traditional and they should be the safety first. I just wanted to make the distinction that Tesla solving FSD can be a different thing than actually removing the steering wheel. I do not believe they are one in the same hypothetical example not what I'm expecting but Tesla could solve FSD in six months from now and decide to keep the steering wheel. Kimball did also say that potentially before this five year mark Tesla releases a robo-taxi without a wheel. In case it wasn't clear the way I'm interpreting this five year number from Kimball it was just a guess not at all like it's some internal timeline or even expectation at Tesla. Just needed to inject some of that commentary into the discussion.
Some of you will remember Eola Hughes from Ramotion who we had the pleasure of doing an interview with last year. She gave us a nice little update on the battery energy storage market for 2024. Taking a bit more detail on the grid side of the market in terms of a key trend for 2024 we can expect projects to get bigger. So this is something that we've been seeing for a few years now and what this chart is showing you is just the average project size in these key markets and across these four key markets we're really seeing a big step up in the average project size for the next year and not only are they getting bigger there are more of them which are larger and just a few things to highlight this. So in 2023 in our project database we tracked 74 projects over 1 gigawatt hour which entered the pipeline and this is compared to just four projects which came online last year which were over that 1 gigawatt hour mark quite interestingly as well. China of course was leading the market so with that 66 gigawatt hours so really kind of dominating the space. However they didn't make it into the top five so four out of the top five were in the US and then we have one in South Africa making it into the top five of projects as well. So in 2023 the vast majority of these projects were lithium-ion so lithium-ion making up 98% of storage projects coming online. However in 2024 we are set to see a bit more diversification come through with five gigawatt hours of non-lithium-ion grid projects which adduce come online. Sometimes these timelines do have to be taken with a bit of a pinch of salt.
We often see delays particularly when it comes to new chemistries but that is a mix of both flow batteries and sodium-ion which I'll touch on in more detail shortly. This was a great reminder from the CyberTruck guy on X that Tesla continues to update and add features to service mode through these software updates. I would not recommend beginners playing around in service mode but for those that know what they're doing this gives the DIY community continually more and more functionality with their Tesla vehicles something that people complained about for a long time. Between this and the online service manuals and the parts catalogs Tesla has made so much progress on this front over the past few years and I think it just gets brushed over.
Ford just released its US sales for January 2024 and it's only one month but it's also not good. In 2023 for their full EV lineup last year Ford sold 5247 units the same month this year 4674 down 10.9% full beevs looking very weak but they made up for it with hybrids up 42% year over year for the month of January going from 7.8000 January last year to 11.1000 this year January of last year the Machi sold 2,626 units January of this year 1,295 clearly getting smacked by losing the IRA tax credit. That figure is down over 50% year over year. The F-150 Lightning effectively flat year over year doing 2.2000 sales for January. It's only one month but for the Machi it's starting to look very clear that a lot of demand was pulled forward into Q4 with the availability of the tax credit. The high watermark for Machi sales in the United States was last year in Q3 doing 5.9 in one month but in November and December it was doing just over 4000 units. As I said earlier a step down in January is always to be expected but this is more like skipping a few steps. So we'll see what the next few months have in store for the Machi and the F-150 Lightning. We already heard Ford tell its suppliers that this year they're only expecting to produce around 1500 lightnings per week and if the Machi stays at that figure or below Ford is going to have a very difficult if not impossible time turning a profit with volumes this low. It seems plain as day that right now when it comes to Ford and full BEVs they're simply stuck in neutral.
All together today 223 miles per mile 69 kilo hours used I've covered 309 miles still got 6% remaining about 20 miles left so there we go real world and we weren't hanging around weren't trying to drive efficiently the heating's been on all day the radio's been on all day but this car does really quite happily go over 300 miles and that's in some fairly chilly conditions and driving kind of 70 that last bit was really all 70 miles an hour so even mostly 70 miles per hour you're talking four and a half miles per kilo hours or 223 to 225 miles per mile.
Now I'm fairly confident if I was in that one of the previous long ranges I'd have been more like 245 250 255 watt hours per mile so about four miles per kilo hours and this has been about four and a half miles per kilo as an overall average there are certainly times when you could easily make it do five miles per kilo hours so I can make this car go quite a lot further I mean I've used 69 kilo hours there's probably 75 odd kilo hours available here so there's certainly a few left to go but nonetheless 309 divided by say 94% used that'll give this car a range of to 329 miles based on today's conditions so this is impressive very very good indeed.
Figured I'd share at least one more anecdote of the Model 3 plus efficiency in the real world looking very good and a few days were set to get the reveal of the 2025 updated Porsche Ticon the early reviews of this prototype have been mentioning the range estimate accuracy more importantly though across the board everybody has been talking about higher peak charging rates and an improved charging curve in these early tests in California that were basically perfect conditions the charging rate got up to 327 kilowatts for this one reviewer and remained above 200 kilowatts until the battery was 75% full.
One of the biggest complaints over the past few years about the Ticon has been you get everything you want but you have to sacrifice the range to get it it's not official but in some of this early testing on Porsche's own website they're touting 365 miles of real world range for the 2025 Ticon we don't have many other details about the new vehicle but the new battery pack could be bigger up to between 100 and 110 kilowatt hours from 93.4 kilowatt hours before motor trend said how does a 10% increase in battery capacity result in a 35% increase in range in addition to equipping a larger energy store Porsche made the Ticon more efficient revised battery chemistry made possible by tech that was not available when Porsche in 2016 began developing the original Ticon plus the new chemistry could also explain the faster charging TBD what happens to the price for this 2025 variant but for right now it starts around $90,000.
Also direct from Porsche in 2023 the Ticon posted double digit gains 17% with 40,629 customers taking delivery the chairman of the national auto dealers association who is on his way out had some interesting things to say to start no surprise he was voicing his frustration with the US government for moving too quickly with EVs saying it could result in major losses in sales billions of dollars in fines for OEMs and losing manufacturing jobs all things we've heard before but he did say he spoke of his personal experience with owning a Tesla calling himself a student of electrification then he said he took a 10 day trip to China last year to meet with the dealers where he got to learn from their brands firsthand he said China has a 10 year head start on EVs their electric cars are very well made beautifully designed and very competitive he said US regulations create the potential for Chinese EVs to enter the North American market he said previously whenever waves of European Japanese Korean brands arriving in the US in the past those were opportunities for dealers the Chinese EV wave could be a similar opportunity but something quite different a giant wave that could sweep away some auto manufacturers along with its dealers it may be nothing but we've now heard from a few people in the industry who have all had a commentary about the Chinese maybe actually showing up in the North American market and now the chairman of Neda is saying the regulations may be set up to allow it.
Tesla stock closed the day at $187.91 down 0.5% while the Nasdaq was up 1.74% the volume for Tesla stock today came in right in line with the average 30 day volume I hope you guys have a wonderful and a safe weekend you can find me on X linked below please like the video if you did and a huge thank you to all of my Patreon supporters you.