Welcome to Electrified, it's your host Dylan Loomis. Just FYI, there will be no video from me this Friday, the 29th for Good Friday, so tomorrow, Thursday will be my last episode for this week. At least for now, for Model S and X owners when it comes to the new Auto Park feature, it looks like you're going to select which spot you want using the right scroll wheel. I know many users would still prefer the FSD visualizations move over to the main screen so you can tilt and pan and do all of that, but not having to take your hand off the wheel to choose your spot is not a bad alternative.
It's been confirmed, FSD version 12.3.2 is now rolling out to United States customers on a 2024 branch, specifically .3.5. For those of us on a 2024.2 branch, hopefully over the next two weeks, we also make the jump. The Canadians are getting 12.3.1 on a 2023 branch. Yesterday we talked about this user with 2024.3.5, and today, Tesla Scope is saying there's already at least one vehicle on 2024.3.6. That's on a hardware 4 vehicle in Virginia. As it turns out, this new .6 branch actually includes FSD 12.3.2.1, and this is for newly delivered vehicles.
Look at what we have as I was recording from Matt, he said that that FSD version 12.3.2.1 is now rolling out to his Model Y, this is not a new delivery in North America coming from a 2024.2.7 branch. I will now be checking for updates basically hourly. It sounds like vehicles with ultrasonic sensors will get auto park back with the 2024 branch update sometime in early April. Here's an example where I think Tesla could have handled this rollout better. As it stands now, you have paying customers that have been waiting months if not years for a version 12, yet brand new customers that haven't paid for the software are getting it on their cars, while people that have paid and are waiting still don't have it. And please do...
not at all think I'm complaining for me, we just got our car last month, I'm happy to wait, I'm really not in a rush, although of course it'd be nice to have it, but for all the people stuck on V11 that have paid and have been in the program for years, it's just not ideal. Things are definitely moving quickly in FSD land right now, and there's been some new emergent behavior on more than one occasion. Even Elon said, cool. I've never experienced that before. Commenting on that move, a choke said, pulling these off requires extremely accurate prediction in space and time. But for some reason it looks like version 12 is still curb hungry.
To everybody out there that's been saying there's no way Tesla solves FSD without LIDAR, without radar, without ultrasonic sensors, I bet they're not feeling as confident in their predictions right now. I know we're not home yet, but the path to get there is much clearer now in my opinion than it's ever been before. I mean who would've thought that Elon and Tesla's AI team might actually know a little bit more than the general public and Wall Street analysts. There's another job posting on the Tesla careers page for a Linux engineer, but the description is pretty interesting.
This role will define the hardware and software interactions for our next generation of fully autonomous car platform, humanoid robot, and the expanding AI inference use cases. They also mention mass production of the next generation AI chip. As always, I hesitate to read too far into things, but we've heard Tesla talk about the next gen platform many times in the past, this time they're calling it fully autonomous. We know Tesla's feeling very confident about version 12, so how much of that confidence could spill over into how they're designing this next gen platform.
As someone who actually really enjoys manual driving, I selfishly hope that Tesla includes steering wheels and pedals on this next gen platform, but time will tell. Monroe Live is absolutely going to milk the Cybertruck for as many videos as they can, as they should, not complaining, but it's always fun to see their engineers genuinely impressed by Tesla. This is pretty good from an assembly standpoint. Maybe we have to pull back some cables or something, but this is really, really well designed, and I give Tesla a lot of credit. This is magnificent.
This is a great, great design, and how much easier it is to do this type of a design versus anything else that anybody's got. Yeah, looks like it's a pretty natural progression from what we saw with the 4680 Model Y. We've got a lot of similar characteristics here. We've got a lot of the HVAC ducting carried here, seat brackets, seats, and yeah, to Sandy's point, this opens up a lot of opportunity for assembly efficiency and obviously getting the pack out and getting it in. It's quite...
这是一个非常出色的设计,相比其他设计,做这种类型的设计要容易得多。看起来是一个很自然的进化,与我们在4680 Model Y中所看到的类似。我们在这里看到了很多相似的特征。我们在这里看到了很多暖通空调通风管道、座椅支架、座椅等等。是的,正如Sandy所说,这为装配效率提供了很多机会,显然也更容易取出电池组并将其安装进去。情况相当……
a game-changer relative to how we see a lot of these other packs installed. Yeah, from a structure point, this is pretty amazing. With just being able to bolt this up and in place, it's definitely innovative. You got the three bolts up here as you see, the ones on the long, along the side. The couple that you have in the back, these are the three in the front. The couple in the back, and this is your whole floor and essentially your whole structure for the center section of the vehicle. It's definitely, definitely innovative. We can't forget, this is version one for the Cybertruck. So off to a great start and Tesla will as always continually improve the product over time. I know many of us are looking forward to watching the Cybertruck go up this S-curve for production. We have Joe Tettmyer saying Cybertruck production might be at 900 to 1000 units for a weekly rate. I'm going to be that guy pouring cold water on this. Personally, I think best case scenario we're at between 4 to 500 per week. I'd also remind us all, just last week Tesla announced they're only making 1000 car sets or 4680 battery packs per week. So if Tesla was actually producing 1000 Cybertrucks per week, that would not be a great thing. Given that Tesla executives have said they want to keep the 4680 car set production ahead of Cybertruck production, from that standpoint, this would actually be a negative thing. In my opinion right now, for maybe 500 units per week at best.
From April 4th to the 7th, Tesla will be at Poland's largest auto show for the first time. They said the S3X and Y will be there, no mention of the Cybertruck. What we have here is Mexico trying to require companies to have multiple different charge port types at their charging locations. Tesla and the US government have raised objections to those rules. When you hear CRE, that's just the Mexican regulator. They are intending for EV charging stations to have the capacity to operate at least two types of chargers. In response, Tesla said requiring that a station offer different types of chargers adds technical complexity, creates additional entry barriers, increases the cost of the stations, and basically said it's a reason for companies not to want to invest in the region, affecting the consumer experience. Rohan Patel also chimed in saying Tesla charging has invested heavily in a cross country charging network in Mexico, enabling travel throughout the country and North America. Tesla's top priority in Mexico is the EV driver experience, having five different connector standards in Mexico where an operator just has to pick two of the five, does not accelerate deployment and provide a good customer experience. Some of the connector types are being phased out, like CCS1 and Chathamo, or would inhibit cross border travel with the US. We want to make sure Mexico has an accessible network that meets all vehicle needs.
This article is from late last year, but they said Mexico's state owned power utility CFE has received multiple requests from Tesla to install charging station hubs in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterey. However, the energy regulator, CRE, has not issued to guidelines and prices for charging services yet, preventing it from planning a strategy or even shaking hands on new deals. The power utility CFE is currently the only service provider that can charge for electricity in Mexico, but they don't have a metric for collecting payment for EV charging, it cannot yet partner with private sector companies. As of late last year, the federal government in Mexico had not publicly announced a strategy to deploy EV charging infrastructure. Hopefully, Tesla has enough sway here to encourage Mexico to adopt the North American charging standard.
Morgan Stanley put out a new Tesla stock note and Jonas is either going to look like a genius or a total eclueless. For Q1, he's predicting Tesla's operating margin to be 1.7%. Then for fiscal year 2024, he's expecting it to be 3.9%. Going back all the way through 2020, the lowest Tesla's quarterly operating margin has ever been was over 5%. And for all of 2023, it was right between 8% and 10%. So for Tesla to go from 8% down to 1.7% quarter over quarter, that's a massive drop. For Q1, they're also forecasting auto gross margin X credits of 9.4%. Pretty much all of last year, Tesla's hovered right around 18%. The lowest quarterly mark was 16.3%. As we always say, the silver lining for basement level expectations for Tesla financials like this is it makes it much easier to surprise to the upside. Yes, I put this one on the prediction tracker and this is one that we can come back to in the next few weeks.
MKBHD was reviewing the VINFAST VF8 and he was talking about the instant torque delay, so when you press the accelerator, there's a moment before the car actually picks up and goes. Effectively mimicking how ICE cars operate, which is a terrible feature in my opinion, that Drew Baglino said another reason for pedal in delay is to avoid a drive line oscillation. At Tesla in 2013, we developed sophisticated active damping controls to enable a butter smooth yet responsive pedal without triggering half shaft resonances or harsh sounding gear meshing and unmeshing as motor torque changes sign from drive to region. All Tesla vehicles incorporate this technology to deliver our signature effortless drive line feel. No at least a few of you out there will enjoy this explanation.
Tesla Patriots said does braking to stop involve the brakes or is reverse torque applied by the motor? Baglino answered saying the smooth one pedal stops are all accomplished by the motor, handed off to the brakes, imperceptibly to save energy once the vehicle is at a full stop. No surprise here as Ray for Tesla who covers the Chinese EV market pretty closely is saying that most of the main Chinese competitors are watching Tesla closely when it comes to FSD and they're now working on their own end to end models. First improved in February on X, X-Pang actually posted the top 2 ADAS systems in the world, FSD and their own version of it. I have watched a few videos of X-Pangs XNGP and personally not that impressed. I just thought this one was funny, Rocco on X said never let anyone tell you Tesla's controls are dumb, I tried to turn the volume down on this Chrysler Pacifica van and put it in reverse on the highway. And a gear selector knob that does very much look like a volume control.
特斯拉爱国者表示,制动停车是否涉及刹车,还是由电机施加反向扭矩?Baglino回答说,平稳的单踏板停车全部由电机完成,然后传递给刹车,在车辆完全停稳后,对能源进行几乎不可察觉的节省。毫不奇怪,专注于中国电动汽车市场的雷克(Ray for Tesla)表示,大多数中国主要竞争对手在涉及全自动驾驶(FSD)时都在密切关注特斯拉,并且他们现在正在努力研发自己的全方位模型。2月首次改进的X-X庞实际上发布了世界上排名前两位的ADAS系统,FSD及其自己的版本。我看过一些X庞的XNGP视频,个人不太印象深刻。我觉得这个很有趣,X的罗科说,绝不要让任何人告诉你特斯拉的控制是愚蠢的,我试图在这辆克莱斯勒太平洋厦的音量下降并在高速公路上倒车。还有一个挡位选择旋钮看起来确实很像一个音量控制。
Andrei Carpathi just spoke at a Sequoia event and he had some interesting words on Elon's management style. I would say definitely Elon runs this company is an extremely unique style. I don't actually think that people appreciate how unique it is. You sort of like even read about it and what you don't understand it. It's like even hard to describe but I don't even know where to start. But it's like a very unique different thing. I like to say that he runs the biggest startups. I don't even know basically how to describe it. It almost feels like it's a longer sort of thing that I have to think through. But, well, number one is like, so he likes very small, strong, highly technical teams. So that's number one. So I would say at companies by default, they sort of like the teams grow and they get large. Elon was always like a force against growth.
I would have to work and expend efforts to hire people. I would have to like basically plead to hire people. And the other thing is that big companies usually you want, it's really hard to get rid of low performance. And I think Elon is very friendly to by default getting rid of low performance. So I actually had to fight for people to keep them on the team because he would by default want to remove people. And so that's one thing. So keep a small, strong, highly technical team. No middle management that is kind of like non-technical for sure. So that's number one.
Number two is kind of like the vibes of how everything runs and how it feels when he sort of like walks into the office. He wants it to be a vibrant place. People are walking around, they're pacing around, they're working on exciting stuff, they're charting something, they're coding.
He doesn't like stagnation. He doesn't like to look for it to look that way. He doesn't like large meetings. He always encourages people to like leave meetings if they're not being useful. And this is like fully encouraged. And I think this is something that you don't normally see. So I think like vibes is like a second big lever that I think he really instills culturally. Part of that also is like I think a lot of companies, they're like Pamper employees. I think like there's much less of that. It's like the culture of it is you're there to do your best technical work. And there's the intensity and so on.
And I think maybe the last one that is very unique and very interesting and very strange is just how connected he is to the team. So usually a CEO of a company is like a remote person, five layers up who talks to their VPs, who talk to their reports and directors and eventually you talk to your manager. It's not how your company is right. Normally people would talk, spend like 99% of the time maybe talking to the VPs. He spends maybe 50% of his time and he just wants to talk to the engineers. So if the team is small and strong, then engineers and the code are the source of truth. And so they have the source of truth, not some manager. He wants to talk to them to understand the actual state of things and what should be done to improve it.
And also just like his large hammer and his willingness to exercise it within the organization. So maybe if he talks to the engineers and they bring up that, what's blocking you? Okay, I just I don't have a GPU to run my thing. And he's like, okay. And when you don't have satisfying answers, he's like, okay, I want to talk to the person in charge of the GPU cluster. And like someone dials the phone and he's just like, okay, double the cluster right now. Like let's have a meeting tomorrow from now on, sending daily updates on typical cluster is twice the size.
And then they kind of like push back and they're like, okay, well, we have this procurement set up. We have this timeline and video says that we don't have enough GPS and it will take six months or something. And then you get a rise of an eyebrow. And then he's like, okay, I'm going to talk to Jensen. And then he just kind of like removes bottlenecks. So I think the extent to which he's extremely involved and removes bottlenecks and plies his hammer, I think is also like not appreciated.
So I think there's like a lot of these kinds of aspects that are very unique, I would say and very interesting. And honestly, like going to a normal company outside of that is is you definitely miss aspects of that. It's like, do you really think Mary Barra is setting up the culture at GM to be similar to that? The answer is no. And this is the type of thing that will play out over years and years.
I'm sure at least a few of you heard it at the end of that clip. Andre did say he misses parts of Elon's culture. If you're not familiar with Brad Gerstner from Altimeter Capital, he jumps on the all-in pod every now and then. He's just one of those guys that gets it. He just said in the age of AI where Elon is building market leading models, betting on Elon is a no brainer. When everybody else is negative about companies like Tesla, that's where we start getting excited, particularly when they're run by a founder who's as extraordinary a product leader as Elon.
On FSD 12, Brad said, when I took a test drive in it, it was kind of a chat GPT moment. Tesla totally scrapped their prior deterministic models and moved to an imitation learning model that really for the first time, unlike Waymo, which is still a deterministic model, feels like a human driving the car. That's the type of thing other people can't easily copy. Elon has 5 million robot cars on the road collecting data that's training this imitation model. That makes it demonstrably better and almost impossible for all the traditional OEMs to replicate.
So this Tesla stock is not for the faint of heart. You have to size it appropriately. You have to be willing to buy more if the stock goes down. Brad also said he recently bought Tesla stock because it has the best product engineer CEO on the planet. Robin Zhang, CEO of CATL also had some comments on solid state batteries. He said, the much hyped technology did not work well enough. It lacked durability and still has safety problems. He said, I watched the development people working on solid state almost every month so I know all the progress and somehow we still have these show stoppers.
There are still safety issues as lithium would react with moisture in the air if a battery broke open during a car accident. So people push on this but I tell them CATL already spent 10 years. He added his group was second to none in the race to make solid state batteries. Rather than solid state, Zhang said his group was targeting sodium ion batteries and condensed matter batteries which use a semi-solid material. With prototypes already in production. The semi-solid material can store about double the energy of conventional lithium ion batteries. In 2023 CATL supplied 37% of the world's EV batteries. CATL also makes 40% of the batteries used for energy storage.
Add one more company to the list trying to break into the battery energy storage market this time around its Remots. They just opened their UK innovation and manufacturing facility where they will build the first units of their sinus stack best platform. It will serve as a hub for technological innovation and will manufacture the first units of the company's 790 kilowatt hours sinus stack best. It's definitely smaller than a megapack. This would be 0.79 megawatt hours. A Tesla megapack is about 4 megawatt hours.
They'll have to prove it but Remots is saying they have industry leading, cycle lifetime, AC round trip efficiency and energy density. They're starting small but they did say their aim is being one of Europe's largest best manufacturers by 2030. Here's a render of what their sinus stacks will look like. This project is under a subsidiary of Remots, Remots Energy. This product will use LFP cells and they're touting this as a software defined product. They plan to begin mass production in 2025 with 300 megawatt hours annual capacity rising to 1 gigawatt hour within one year and targeting 10 gigawatt hours plus at a future unspecified date. Tesla's megafactories are up to 40 gigawatt hours of annual capacity.
Simultaneously it sounds like things are finally picking up for battery energy storage across the EU. Today the EU has really been lagging behind the US and China but now they're saying the momentum behind energy storage is becoming increasingly undeniable. An advisory group that was at a storage summit said there's been a fundamental change in the way the technology is viewed by policy makers and regulators particularly at the EU level. There's a growing recognition in the EU that energy storage has to be part of the equation.
An analyst at Wood Mackenzie said scale is growing across Europe largely led by EU member states. Germany and Spain are perhaps the most talked about but many others like Italy and Poland are also in the mix. For the first time Germany's government is currently formulating an energy storage strategy. Just an update on the incentive situation also across the EU there are no more EV incentives in Germany. In France subsidies for company buyers have now been ended. On the other side though both Italy and Spain are considering new incentive schemes for 2024. For Germany this will be their first full year without financial aid for EV buyers.
The pricing of the Fisker Ocean has just been cut by up to 39% in an email sent to customers. This will only impact the US market now the Ocean starts as low as $24,900. TechCrunch was also reporting that Fisker temporarily lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments as it scaled up deliveries. This blue Volvo XC90 will be the last vehicle that Volvo makes with a diesel engine. This one is actually going to a museum. Volvo is one of the only OEMs who is sticking to its guns when it comes to EVs. They're still saying they want to be completely EV by 2030.
This Green Lane company which is a joint venture between Daimler Truck North America, next Stara and Black Rock just announced their first commercial EV charging corridor with more than 100 chargers and modern amenities. To start they'll have three main locations out west in Baker, Barstow and Colton. The planet Colton is to have over 60 chargers with speeds up to 400 kilowatts. They did say in the future they'll also deploy multiple passenger car charging stalls as well. They're targeting a spring groundbreaking on the Colton flagship site and they're aiming to open in late 2024. They're really doing it.
The Indiana Department of Transportation has teamed up with Purdue University to build this highway that's going to charge EVs as they drive wirelessly. The first segment of the project will cover about a quarter of a mile along US Highway 52. The goal is to expand the research by electrifying a section of an Indiana interstate. Construction is expected to begin this spring and be completed by next summer. When complete the segment of road will be able to charge both heavy duty and passenger EVs as they travel at highway speeds.
Janet Yellen just warned that China is treating the global economy as a dumping ground for its cheaper clean energy products, depressing market prices and squeezing green manufacturing in the US. She said President Biden is committed to doing what we can to protect our industries from unfair competition. If somebody were to come up to you and ask, is China exporting their cheaper goods to other countries unfair competition for those other countries, what would you say?
Pricing for the Polestar 4 was just announced for the North American market. It's going to start at $54.9,000. At least to start this vehicle will not qualify for IRA credits because it's going to be built in South Korea. It'll be available to order in late April of this year and they are saying you can expect deliveries later in 2024. EPA range up to 300 miles, 0-60 in 3.7 seconds. It'll come with a 94kWh battery pack capable of charging speeds up to 200kW. One day, just said it plans to spend $51 billion over 3 years to bolster its growth in EVs and new mobility business and separately hire 80,000 new employees. More than half of the investment will be allocated for new research and development infrastructure and assembly lines for EVs. A majority of the rest will be slated for research and development in EVs including software-defined vehicles and battery technology.
$17 billion per year on EVs is no joke but we'll see how efficient they can be with their spending. I know for Q1 deliveries you're looking at you lowered to 420k, right? Yes, you think the streets got conservative enough that next week might actually be alright? Look, it's hard to discern exactly where the whisper is but probably in the low, low 400 range below the 420 and we think that's the over-under. If it's over that, we think the stock goes up and again. What we try to do a little bit is reframe the debate.
It's a little bit of supply in there too. We estimate about 95,000 units if there were full capacity at the Cybertruck, full capacity of the new Model 3 and maybe 10,000 units out of Europe due to some fires at Kiga Berlin. Tesla stock closed the day at $179.83 up 1.22% while the NASDAQ was up 0.5%. It was a lower volume day for Tesla trading about 16 million shares below the average 30 day volume. 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.