Welcome to Electrified, it's your host, Dylan Loomis, quick shout out to many more updated patrons, R.S., Rand L., Brian V., Brett K., and Dave V. Thank you all for choosing to support the channel. Tesla shared a timely reminder for Earth Day today on why they exist to begin with, to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. By at least that metric, they're still doing incredibly well.
欢迎来到《电动化》,我是主持人迪伦·卢米斯,特别感谢最新的赞助者 R.S.、Rand L.、Brian V.、Brett K. 和 Dave V. 谢谢你们选择支持这个频道。特斯拉在今天地球日分享了一条及时的提醒,告诉我们他们为什么存在,就是为了加速世界向可持续能源过渡。至少从这个指标来看,他们仍然表现得非常出色。
Tesla has lowered the price of FSD from $12,000 to $8,000 for the one-time purchase, and on the website right now, enhanced autopilot is no longer an option. Thus, for those out there who have already paid $6,000 for enhanced autopilot to upgrade to full FSD is only $2,000. The new monthly subscription payoff time is down to 6.7 years from 10 years before. At this point, given where Tesla is headed and its desire to be known as an AI company, I wish they would have a specific artificial intelligence line on the income statement, where they could actually include revenue and profits from FSD.
I don't think we're going to get that granularity, but at this point, it's clear Tesla wants more people to use the system to be aware of the system, and now, as we've talked about, they're ready for all of the incoming data. Unfortunately, getting burned on Tesla price cuts is just the nature of the beast, but for new Cybertruck owners who just paid $12,000 for it and don't even have the feature on the Cybertruck that's definitely less than ideal. J. In Shanghai reported that in China, Tesla vehicles will support the 3D version of Baidu Maps V20, which will be launched to new and old Tesla owners starting in May. Some folks were asking if these were going to be maps that underlie Tesla's FSD in China, but everything I'm finding says that's not the case.
It looks like it'll just be a third party map service like Google Maps here in the United States that does work natively in a Tesla. This map's V20 will support 3D lane level navigation on the car side and will be the first time to be carried on Tesla's Chinese vehicles. Tesla also cut the prices on the Model Y, S, and X in the United States for all variants by $2,000 each. We have Elon again mentioning Uber saying and the gas savings are very real, that's why so many Uber drivers use Tesla. Then Elon was asked when will FSD be in China, to which he said it may be possible very soon. Yes, there were two other questions asked, but the main point of the post was when will FSD be in China. In case you're new, may be possible and very soon could mean 2025 or beyond.
In China, Tesla also cut prices by about $2,000 for the locally produced Model 3 and Y and for the imported Model S and X. Here's a chart for the China price cuts, the percent change ended up ranging anywhere from 1.7% to 5.7%. There were similar price cuts in Germany and other parts of Europe, along with the ROW, the rest of the world, however so far, Canada has been unaffected. I just want to highlight a line of thinking that I believe is flawed, people like Gary Black and many others are saying Tesla's price cuts in 2023 were negative because they produced a little or no volume growth. While on the surface this is true, the problem is we have no idea what Tesla sales would have been if they had not actually cut prices. I think if we're being intellectually honest, the answer is they would have been even lower. So to argue that price cuts do not lead to any growth in sales volume, I think is flawed thinking.
But do not misunderstand me, at this point at least to me it seems abundantly obvious Tesla needs to spend a significant amount of money on a mass educational campaign. It's pretty apparent the next group, the mainstream adopters, are just not sold on EVs and for that group, these price cuts probably will not move the needle. And I'm talking something beyond your traditional advertising because there's a group of people, you could have the most creative ad in the world but it's not going to land on them favorably at all. There's too many people out there right now in the US given the election year that are just thinking EVs are bad. Tesla has also adjusted its online configurator a bit, making it easier to switch between cash, lease and financing. You can toggle on or off the estimated savings but now you can actually customize with specific inputs. I was goofing around with it earlier and I posted on X just share with your friends, you can now get a Model Y for $11.5k. That's if you include the tax credit and 10 years of gas savings. Seriously though, it is nice to allow customers to plug in whatever specific data they want.
The actual price of the Model Y now starts at $4,290. The Model X is $77,990 and the Model S is $72,990. Consumer reports shared some results that $4 out of the $5 least expensive car brands to maintain are actually American. To get these results, they asked members in their 2023 annual surveys to tell them how much they paid out of pocket for their total maintenance, oil changes, etc. and repairs during the previous 12 months. When comparing cumulative costs by brand for years 1 through 5 and 6 through 10, we found that Tesla had the lowest maintenance costs. At the opposite end of the rankings, several German automakers are clustered as the most expensive brands, namely Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Porsche. A consumer reports data analysts said if you're considering a luxury model, it may be wise to purchase one from a domestic brand that may have lower maintenance and repair costs. For example, over 10 years, Mercedes models are more than double the cost to maintain and repair as those from Lincoln. They shared this table with the navy blue showing the cost from years 1 to 5.
The lighter blue is the cost from years 6 to 10 and then the gray at the end is the total 10 year cost. Looking at the latter, Tesla comes in first with a 10 year cost of $4,035 followed by Buick and Toyota both in second at $4,900. Lincoln and Ford then round out the top 5. All the way down at the bottom, you'll find Land Rover with an average 10 year cost of $19,000. It turns out Tesla is also ending this version of the referral program in North America as well as of April 30th. But that does not mean any credits you already have will become void. Elon said just that new credits will not be earned until we launch a future referral program which is a few months away. Hopefully with that new program, if they have closed as options again, most of them will not be sold out most of the time.
As part of Tesla's layoffs, Bloomberg is saying that the entire United States growth content team, a group of about 40 employees has been eliminated. The US team was led by Alex Ingram, so him and Jorge Milburn, who is leading the global team, were both dismissed. Tesla still has a small team of marketing staff in Europe. There were also significant layoffs in Tesla's design studio and staff located in Hawthorne, California. The US version of the content growth team was only established about 4 months ago. Bloomberg did say Elon was pushing for a 20% workforce reduction which could mean eliminating more than 20,000 people. Remember the way Tesla phrased it was that more than 10% are going to be laid off.
Nick Patain said I'm not going to lie, Tesla could have done a better job with their ads, they were all way too generic and just contained recycled B-roll footage. To that, Elon said exactly, the ads were far too generic, could have been any car. Now the billion-dollar question becomes, will Tesla hire out to an ad agency maybe to run their advertising program for them which could provide a lot of value? Or is Tesla now going to take a break advertising altogether at least in the US market? Even though my expectations for tomorrow when it comes to getting answers for all of the uncertainty at Tesla right now are in the basement, tomorrow still cannot come soon enough.
Less than two weeks after Tesla's FSD12.3.4 rolled out, now we're getting 12.3.5 rolling out to employees and most likely actual customers in the next few days. Replying to Sawyer with that news, Elon said 12.4 is a big release, should arguably be 13. So perhaps this will be the dot release that has actually smart summon and the ability to reverse. Elon did not give any indication on a timeline for this one but if I had to guess I would say sometime in the summer, maybe June or July based on the recent pace of the rollout. Along those lines, charity trades on X said Elon and Tesla can see up to six months ahead of what the public has access to. This was something James Down was talking about in a chat with Dave Lee. To that, Elon said James is largely correct. We know roughly what the car will do in three to six months. When a more advanced AI model is trained, it'll have several breakthroughs but also dozens of bugs where it performs much worse. Takes a few months to fix those bugs and complete safety tests. Naturally, we're now all going to be on a potential breakthrough watch for this 12.4 version which maybe should be the version 13.
I'll share a bit more detail about my experience with 12.3.4 later this week but for now I will just say it has not been very good. And yes, Tesla was vacuuming up the shavings. On X, Elon said unfortunately very heavy Tesla obligations required that the visit to India be delayed but I do very much look forward to visiting later this year. A minor silver lining in all of the upheaval lately at Tesla has been that now at least publicly Elon seems to be a bit more committed to Tesla. Don't get it twisted. I am not saying Elon has not been committed prior to all of this. I just happen to like when Elon talks a lot more about Tesla.
On X, Elon also said that a native X app with integration directly into Tesla vehicles is coming soon. This does now open the door for speculation about Groc integration with our Tesla vehicles potentially for voice commands, the ability to listen to spaces, but time will tell what type of integration this app will have. In Thailand, Tesla now has a limited offer of special interest rate financing starting at 2.49%. There's a report out there from Korea economic TV that saying Tesla has ordered electrodes worth 6 trillion won which is about $4.3 billion from LG energy solutions. However, I am proceeding very cautiously with this one because the second line says it is presumed that Tesla has begun producing its own batteries as it requested electrodes processed from raw materials rather than finished battery cells.
It's definitely not presumed Tesla is absolutely already making 4680 cells. To further diminish the reliability of this source later in the article they said Tesla declared it would develop its own batteries through an innovative process, but it's already passed the 2023 target date for mass production. Maybe something was lost in translation. Maybe they're playing a semantics game here with mass production. Either way, be careful with this one. For what it's worth, they said detailed discussions are currently underway and a contract is expected to be signed in the second half of the year. Supply will begin next year and is estimated to last 6-7 years.
If this turns out to be true, they're saying its estimated Tesla would use these electrodes in roughly 1.35 million EVs based on the cathode materials. But again, throughout the duration of the article they don't really specify cathodes vs anodes, they just say the blanket electrodes. The last time we got an update, we were told that Tesla is actually using DBE, the dry battery electrode process, for the anodes, but they were still trying to crack the code for the cathodes. It was reported that Anthony Thurston, the senior manager of cathode materials and manufacturing at Tesla, who was reporting to Drew Baglino, has been let go. It'd be great to have some more clarity on this one given that $4.3 billion is a massive order. What percentage of it is anodes? What percent is cathodes? Is it definitely for 4680 production?
Does this mean Tesla has lost a bit of confidence when it comes to solving for DBE on the cathode side? With everything going on at Tesla right now, I doubt we get a question tomorrow about Tesla's cathode facility in Austin, but it would be nice if we did. But hey, who knows, maybe now with Drew gone, Elon will let another engineer on the 4680 team step up and take the stage. Honda is planning to build EVs and their parts in Ontario with some financial support from the government. They'll build batteries, process the cathode materials needed for the batteries, and also assemble the EVs. The Ontario premier said this deal could be worth double what VW has earmarked for a factory in Canada, which was about $5 billion, meaning this one could be worth up to $10 billion.
The VW factory in Tennessee has voted and they overwhelmingly decided to unionize with the UAW. This marks the UAW's first successful organizing drive of an automaker outside the big three. They're still officially awaiting certification of the votes, but if no objections are filed, which is the expectation the result will be certified. Going forward, VW will be required to bargain in good faith with the union. The UAW failed to unionize this plant twice in the past once in 2014 and again in 2019. Since KIA is not making the EV9 in the United States yet, they're now going to offer customers a $7,500 incentive to make up for that fact. Thus, the KIA EV9 now starts at $48,7,000.
Ailik's partners ran a survey of 9,000 respondents from March 28th to April 10th, including 2,000 people in the US. The result, 58% of buyers in the US who were very or moderately likely to make an EV their next purchase, were aware of Chinese brands like BYD Leitmotor Neo and Hoson. There's still major hurdles for Chinese EVs to make it to the United States, but seems like the awareness may be higher than some would expect.
I have very high confidence in the long-term value of Tesla. I see a path to a 10x, or a 5x increase in the value of the company, maybe a 10x. Where things go along the way, the trials and tribulations and the mood of the markets, you won't cannot predict. Replaying to that over the weekend, Elon said a lot of work to achieve that, but yes, for whatever it's worth to you, despite all of the chaos, Elon still sees the vision. Tesla stock closed the day at $142.05 down 3.4% while the Nasdaq was up 1.11%.
Ahead of earnings, it was a bit higher volume day for Tesla, trading about 13 million shares above the average volume the past 30 days. I was aiming for a shorter video today given everybody's mental focus on tomorrow, and remember no video for me tomorrow on Tuesday for Tesla's earnings. I like to take everything in, think about it, and then I'll get back to you with my thoughts on Wednesday.
If you've been following along, you should already be prepared for the worst tomorrow, and in the weeks ahead, we've talked at length about how this will be a tough year for Tesla. Hope you guys have a wonderful day, and you can find a way to enjoy the day tomorrow, and the call no matter what the results actually are. 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.