I got to take a ride in full self driving 12. How was that? It was mindboggling. I think this is going to be a bit of a chat GPT moment for full self driving. But what it really just reminded me of the magic of this moment. Tesla rebuilding their models for how they do self driving around imitation learning and all this interesting stuff going on over there. Like, you know, I think they probably made more progress in the last 12 months than in the last seven years. Wow. In terms of in terms of what's going on there. And it's going to be rolled out here. It's already rolled out to, I think, 5000 people. And so like, people are going to start experiencing that.
Well, here's where I think the world's going. We met with these robotics companies. We meet with Tesla, et cetera. Imitation learning. Okay. They're not even going to know what the stop sign is or the traffic light is or the dog in the street. They're not going to write C plus plus for every one of those specific incidents. They're literally going to watch the behavior of the five star human drivers for enough hours and they're going to imitate our welcome to electrified. It's your host Dylan, the Miss quick shout out to my newest patron, James fee. Thank you for choosing to support the channel. A shock reposted a video of FSD version 12 driving around some puddles of water saying this is the sort of driving that's really hard to code explicitly. But our end to end approach brings in almost effortlessly. I saw a lot of people out there saying, wait a second.
What's the big deal with FSD going around the water? It's done that in prior builds. And while that's true, the point of shock is making is that no one taught or no one trained no one wrote code to teach the car how to do that with FSD 12. It just knew to do it by that imitation learning. So version 11 and prior, it was really hard to code explicitly to get the car to avoid these puddles of water. Now with version 12, they don't have to really do anything. It's just happening effortlessly. Again, just by imitating how other good drivers behave. Tim Zaman, who used to be the head of AI infrastructure at Tesla commented saying impressive, great demo and to end is the only way. I think it may be time to give George Hotz his flowers. This interview was from three years ago. Hotz argues that driving at least level five fully autonomous will require an end to end approach rather than viewing the problem as a series of smaller controllable problems.
This was in conversation with Lex Friedman and Hotz said I think that it's much easier to get the level five with an end to end approach. I think the other approaches are doable, but the magnitude of the engineering challenge may exceed what humanity is capable of on the tech. Rohan Patel said the progress of FSD in the last few months has been astounding. The teams are making insane progress. Then he took a subtle jab at NHTSA and the regulator saying you'll be forced to pay far closer attention while using FSD than you normally do while driving with no level of automation and with many distractions. Which doesn't make sense to me, but is the reality given our driver monitoring systems and regulator requests?
I thought this move was pretty impressive. You see right here the light turns yellow, so being in the middle of the intersection a regular may be inexperienced driver would be saying alright once these two cars are gone I need to get out of here. However had somebody actually done that you'll see this car kind of takes its time getting around the corner so had the driver went they would have been stuck and this car was also flying through the intersection. But FSD waited almost like it knew it had just enough time to wait for that car to go through and then closely got out of there as quickly as it could. When it comes to non-Tesla vehicles using these magic dock stations these were the instructions before. Once unlocked using the app meaning the adapter being unlocked you'll be able to remove the cable with the adapter from the dock as shown above and start charging.
Now in the app there are new instructions. Press and hold the button on the handle for two seconds then push into the dock and pull out to detach the adapter. So at least for the first step they have removed the need to actually use the mobile app. So the assumption is now that Tesla is gearing up for plug-and-charge functionality for non-Tesla's at these magic dock stations. Ford did confirm earlier this year that its customers would not have to use the Tesla mobile app in order to use the Tesla supercharger network so Tesla may be rolling out that red carpet. Speaking of that we have a user on X reporting that Tesla was shooting a commercial or a video at the 62 stall Santa Monica City supercharger to show you how you can charge any EV there soon filming with the Cybertruck Hummer Mustang Mach-E Mercedes and others. We have Jeremy McCool.
Yes that's actually his real name who's the CEO of Hevo a wireless charging company. Jordan from the limiting factor put together some highlights from the space he was just in. Before I share a few points Jeremy did chime in saying nailed it. The only other thing to mention is that cost is slightly higher at level 2 charging levels but can beat plug-in charging at higher power levels because of reduced material requirements. Key point one wireless vehicle charging is now nearly as efficient as wired charging which I know is hard to believe. Two wireless charging is now capable of super charging power levels and beyond. There will be aftermarket options but given it may need to be tied into the cooling system the push for wireless charging will mainly be driven by making this a feature on vehicles from the factory. And in case you've missed it over the past few months multiple Tesla executives have said Tesla is already working on wireless charging for its vehicles. At least for now the glaring use case for this technology is obviously for robotaxes so they don't have to have somebody or some other technology plug in the vehicles when they need charging just pull up somewhere and start charging.
If you saw the episode yesterday you'll be familiar with this Tesla Pie story and to that Elon said just hearing about this will make things good with the bakery. People should always be able to count on Tesla trying its best. Whichever Tesla employee actually did this I'm guessing they won't be employed later tonight. Erevant energy has just secured over one billion dollars in funding for a solar plus storage project in California. This phase of the project a phase two will be 600 megawatt hours. This project is currently in the early stages of construction in Kern County and operations are expected to begin in the first quarter of 2025. This project will be using Tesla's Megapact 2 XL. When this phase two is operational and paired with phase one it'll then be roughly a 1.2 gigawatt hour solar plus battery project making it one of the bigger ones in the United States. Tesla has raised the price of the model three long range in the United States by $250 and they increased the price of the white interior on the three to $1,500 from 1000 before. If you've been around the channel for more than a year or so you'll most likely know that in my eyes Edmonds is pretty much a joke they've put out more than one hit piece on Tesla in the past. They struck again saying no Tesla has ever met its EPA estimated range in our real world testing. Now the Cybertruck fall short of Tesla's own 340 mile estimate. Well shout out to community notes that pointed out the Cybertruck in the article had all terrain tires which Tesla lists at 318 miles of range. Plus the Cybertruck they tested did not have the arrow wheel covers on. In Edmonds testing they got 334 miles so compared to Tesla's actual estimate of 318 it beat it by 16 miles. Now yes Edmonds has admitted its mistake but only after it was called out publicly by many different people. So to everybody saying oh well done Edmonds good correction no absolutely not this is poor journalism they would not have fixed anything had they not been called out and clearly been in the wrong. I mean seriously if this is now our standard for journalism that we're going to applaud all of these companies for making corrections after being called out on something that should have been a simple fact check to begin with it's just not great. Yeah I'm pretty confident demand for the Cybertruck won't be a problem for some time.
For my Australians if you have a model S3 X4Y after 2019 with a power wall and solar today is the day that charge on solar goes live in the Tesla app. So if you wanted to charge up to say 50% using energy from the grid but only go further than that if you have excess solar that option should now be available. Tesla now has 15 job postings for its entry into Malaysia. Right now as far as I can tell Malaysians can pre-order a model Y or they could buy a model 3 plus but only from inventory. On Lucid's conference call Peter Rawlinson was challenged when it comes to his recent compensation.
I'm not going to read it to you it's not what I want to show you here but pause the screen now if you would like to read it. This is what I actually wanted to highlight and in my opinion it shows a sense of arrogance maybe in the company. Lucid CFO said we're also a technology company and I believe our investments into areas like R&D is an advantage and gives us the opportunity for higher returns than any other automotive company because we're monetizing the IP through agreements like the one with Aston Martin. So he's arguing that their research and development will give them the opportunity for higher returns than any other auto company. Meanwhile they're losing more per car than maybe any other auto company.
I mean I guess in the executives role you kind of have to put lipstick on the pig for now but how about we start with breaking even before we start touting the highest returns in the entire industry. Lucid is planning to invest 10 million dollars for an engineering R&D center in Detroit. Tesla manufacturing posted we built over 500 chargers in our car park at Gigabrelin for employees, visitors and guests. All chargers are public and free to use. Just yesterday we were at 100 cyber trucks ready for delivery in the lot.
Fast forward to today and Joe Tettmeyer said another record over 140 on site today. Now this does not guarantee that the production rate for the cyber truck is around 40 per day but it might be. I'd still guess closer to 20 to 30 per day. I won't dive into it since it's not really electrified related but Elon did clarify a senior executive at Google called him and talked to him on the phone for an hour. He assured Elon that they're taking immediate action to fix the racial and gender bias in Gemini. Time will tell according to Elon. Here's a real world story about why I trust and recommend AG1.
Did you know that ascorbic acid is not the same thing as vitamin C? Now I had an astute electrified viewer asking about where AG1's vitamin C actually comes from. It's a valid question because sadly there's plenty of this in the wellness industry. Oftentimes synthetic ascorbic acid is derived from genetically modified corn aka GMOs and processed with a host of chemicals like acetone, yes like the nail polish remover. The truth about AG1's vitamin C? Well it comes from ascorbic acid and other sources like acerola cherries, rosips and goji berries.
The ascorbic acid is made through a multi-step fermentation process from sorbitol. It's non-gmo, free from artificial sweeteners and is NSF certified. Now yes AG1 is the sponsor of this video but I'm sharing this science because in all of my research I have found AG1 to always go the extra mile when it comes to the sourcing of every last ingredient. It's pretty simple. If you have the funds I would just encourage you to try it out for yourself for a few months and see what happens. Yes it's a great way to support the channel but more importantly your own health.
My link below will get you 5 travel packs in a 1 year supply of vitamin D3K2. Enjoy. GM announced today it's going to start factoring in the company's performance with electric vehicles, software and services and its cruise autonomous vehicle unit when calculating salaried employees bonuses for this year. Talk about the last thing you'd want to hear if you were an employee of GM. I think realistically if you were grading all three of these areas for the year you could say F and F. Carlos Tavares the CEO of Stellantis just made some new comments about the EV transition.
He estimates the industry has 2-3 years to bring the price of EVs down to parity with ICE vehicles. By then Chinese automakers will start making inroads in the United States presumably by assembling vehicles in Mexico and that'll put tremendous pressure on EV profits already happening in Europe. So add one more person to the list that thinks Chinese automakers will actually come to the US. Tavares said within a decade he foresees consolidation down to 5 or so global giants including Stellantis. The pressure to make EVs affordable and profitable is why I think it's Darwinian. That's why I think that in a few years if you want to have the scale to be as efficient as a company like BYD can we afford to be fragmented like we are today.
But that's the question for the industry not for Stellantis because I believe we have the scale. Sure maybe they do but for now. I said for now because the Jeep CEO just said the brand is in transition. We need to do something about market penetration and market share because it's not where this brand deserves to be. Jeep sales in the United States were down 6.1% in 2023 from one year before. The fifth consecutive year of US sales declines. Carlos said he agrees with Elon in that the Chinese automakers are the biggest threat to western automakers but the solution is not protectionism especially if such policies would imperil the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement. Stellantis has recently invested in a joint venture with Chinese leap motor and of that JV they said a crucial benefit of the investment is being able to benchmark against the Chinese automakers lower costs. He called these comparisons very precise and eye-catching and that the Chinese companies have a roughly 30% cost advantage.
Volvo's board of directors has just proposed distributing about 63% of Volvo cars shareholding in Polestar to Volvo cars shareholders at the annual general meeting. If this is approved after the meeting, Volvo will then only own about 18% of Polestar. This will most likely be approved as Gili who owns 78.7% of the shares has already said it will vote in favor. We did talk about this one a few weeks back. Basically Volvo is no longer going to fund Polestar. It's going to focus on itself so that responsibility will be shifted to Gili. Ford has halted shipments of all 2024 model year F-150 lightning pickups over an undisclosed quality issue. The lightning stop ship order went into effect on February 9th. Currently it's unclear when it will be lifted.
We're right on the precipice of the humanoid robot era being upon us. Now we have Bezos, Nvidia and some other big tech names investing in figure AI, which we highlighted before is already backed by OpenAI and Microsoft. Figure AI is raising $675 million, giving it a pre-money valuation of about $2 billion. Bezos through his explore investments is investing $100 million, Microsoft $95 million, Nvidia and Amazon are each providing $50 million. Intel has invested, LG Inattec has invested, Samsung has invested. Just so you know that $2 billion valuation does not include the money that the company is currently raising, hence pre-money valuation. Getting money is one thing, but knowing what to do with it is an entirely different thing, so over the next year or so we're about to find out what figure AI is all about.
Tesla stock closed the day at $191.97 down 2.76% while the NASDAQ was down 0.28%. It was a very low volume day for Tesla stock trading about 30 million shares below the average 30-day volume. Rivian had another brutal day down an additional 12%. Don't forget check out AG1 linked below, thank you in advance if you do. Hope you guys have a wonderful and a safe weekend, 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.