Welcome to Electrified, it's your host, Dyla Loomis, quick shout out to Minuis Patrons, Richard L, Charles F, Curtis W, and my brother Han Zhen. Thank you for choosing to support the channel. We've learned that Renji Zhu, who was the director of manufacturing at Tesla for just over five years, who was most recently responsible for launching the Cybertruck program at Giga Texas, has now left the company. At this point, based on his LinkedIn post, it's not clear whether he was fired or decided to leave on his own. I bring this up as a reminder that all of the legacy OEMs in the United States should be watching these Tesla layoffs closely and reaching out to all of these ex-Tesla employees. When this round of Tesla layoffs in the restructuring is done, there could be between 10 and 20,000 ex-Tesla employees with incredible experience, that would be a huge value to some of these other companies working on building up their EV supply chains and production lines. Thus, if you support the overall EV movement, this could be a silver lining to what's taking place right now at Tesla. Personally, I think this one is being blown out of proportion, but Gary Black said that Yippet credit card data showed just 2% of Tesla owners with the 30-day trial of FSD have actually subscribed after their trial expired. However, if you keep reading, you find out the sample size was only 3500 users and looking into this Yippet company, I would have some questions about the reliability of even that data. Reading through Yippets about us page, it really does not say anything about what the company actually does, it just talks in vague platitudes.
We also have to keep in mind, as of just 2 days ago, there was still 26% of Tesla's fleet that was still on FSD version 11.4.9. This is just a representative sample from Tesla-Fi, but those with the free trial on version 11 would certainly be less likely to actually subscribe. I think with FSD in its current state, a lot of the general population will only subscribe for a month here and there, maybe if they plan to go on a road trip or drive more than usual. I would guess that those with a free trial of version 12 or better would have a higher take rate than 2%, but I also don't think it's anywhere up near 25 or 30% like some were expecting. Still FSD really is more set it and forget it and the supervision aspect continually comes down and the lag goes away hopefully in 12.4. I'd just speculate there's a lot of people out there where it's just going to take time and not even a month will be enough time to actually trust the system, to understand how it's going to behave in different scenarios, and ultimately for it to broadly be a stress reducing feature rather than a stress inducing feature.
We also just learned that nearly 2 thirds of US drivers expressed fear of self-driving tech in the latest related AAA consumer survey. 66% of respondents in the survey said they feared self-driving technology, that's an increase from 54% three years ago. At that time, 14% said they trusted the tech, only 9% said they do now. A JD power survey said confidence fell in autonomous tech from 42 on the 100 point scale in 2021 to 37 in their latest survey in October. But there's a silver lining, once consumers experience the technology they tend to form favorable opinions. Consumers who have been in a Robotaxian Phoenix or San Francisco had a 67 confidence score, a full 30 points higher than non-riders. And just so you know, the Los Angeles City Council this month passed a motion in support of proposed legislation in California that if enacted, would allow municipalities to regulate autonomous vehicles throughout the state. AKA, companies would have to go city by city or even county by county to actually get AV approval. And lastly, by the time we get to version 12.4 and 12.5 possibly toward the end of this year, the take rate given this current version today will largely be irrelevant, depending on how good dot four and dot five actually are.
And it's not like Tesla can't do a free one month trial again in the future. They could do it every quarter. They could do it every time they have a big dot release. So I think we'll see something like this again in the near future. Plus even if the take rate really was only between two and let's say 5% Tesla will still learn a lot from this free trial, understanding where the general population is when it comes to FSD adoption. We also have no idea how this Yippett company is accounting for people who have the trial end, but maybe they're going to wait a week or a few weeks to actually subscribe. It may not be accounting for that group of people. However, with all of that said, I think one of the most important things is we all need to come to terms with knowing that no matter how good version 12 is right now, again to the general public, it's not good enough to pay even $100 per month. So even if the take rate was actually 15 or 20%, that still leaves 80 to 85% of people that do not think it's good enough as it is right now.
Tesla released a schedule 14a telling us that they're actually spending some money to run some ads on both Google search and on X to encourage shareholders to vote for the upcoming shareholder meeting in the filing. They shared some of the ads they're running. They also released a letter to shareholders specifically highlighting voting for proposal three and proposal four, those ones being reincorporating in Texas and ratifying Elon's 2018 compensation plan. They also shared this fact sheet showing that since March of 2018, the total shareholder return in Tesla stock was 1,100%. Tesla also generated $15 billion in profit, which was a turnaround from a $2.2 billion loss. There's some people out there today that are upset Tesla is spending money on running ads like this.
However, to that I would say two things. One, we have no idea how much money Tesla is spending on these ads. And two, I think the more important point, this just shows how important these upcoming votes are to the future of Tesla as a company. I've said it many times before, but I just think shareholders don't truly understand what the future of Tesla would look like without Elon and if Tesla were to remain incorporated in Delaware. I'll go on record again saying that if Elon's compensation plan vote goes south, just prepare for a lot of turmoil with Tesla stock ahead in that event. In my eyes, this action from Tesla all but confirms that notion.
The East Brandenburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry seized the protests against Tesla as a threat to the region's economic development. We just had one company settle here in the region that was a ray of hope for all young people who wanted to stay in the region. This will be permanently damaged by these actions. According to the current economic report, 80% of companies rate their situation as satisfactory or bad. The willingness to invest is also low. Translation, the protests against Tesla have further deterred investors in the region. The protests over the weekend did end on Sunday. However, some groups announced further actions. The Grunhida Municipal Council is expected to discuss the planned expansion of the Tesla site on Thursday.
We have Merrick Cubic who was the ex-founder of Fluence Energy with some interesting comments on battery energy storage. An overlooked milestone, cumulative stationary battery storage installed globally is set to overtake Pomp-Tydro in 2025. Just four years ago, in 2020 you can see the Pomp-Tydro in battery storage total market was 90% Pomp-Tydro. This year, that number is expected to be down to 56% for Pomp-Tydro and then the flip is expected to happen next year. Here's his takeaway. My intent here is only to correct a misconception of just how significant a role Bess is already playing in world power grids. Bess is now arguably just as mature and bankable of an asset class as Pomp-Tydro which has long been considered an energy storage gold standard of maturity. The difference for me is that Bess still has an exciting learning rate still ahead of it. Continued cost, density and performance improvements over time are guaranteed as it continues to scale, hence the hockey stick growth.
Tesla has again been sued by an environmental non-profit that accused Tesla of violating the Federal Clean Air Act hundreds of times by letting the plant in Fremont emit harmful pollutants. The Environmental Democracy Project has said Tesla has been exposing nearby residents and workers to excessive nitrogen oxides, arsenic, cadmium and other harmful chemicals. The non-profit wants an injunction to halt excess pollution plus civil fines of up to 121.3 thousand dollars per day per violation. You may recall back in February, Tesla paid 1.5 million dollars to settle a similar lawsuit. This time around the lawsuit is focusing mainly on the operations in Fremont when it comes to the paint shop.
Today the Biden administration has announced a major increase in tariffs on Chinese EVs and solar panels and some other materials as well. Chinese EVs will be subject to a 100% tariff 4 times the current 25% rate. Biden's economic advisor said the move is to offset China's unfair practices and subsidies into level the playing field for US automakers and auto workers. China is simply too big to play by its own rules. China is using the same playbook it has before to power its own growth at the expense of others by continuing to invest. Despite excess Chinese capacity and flooding global markets with exports that are under price due to unfair practices.
The tariff rate on solar cell and semiconductor imports from China will double to 50% while the rate on certain steel and aluminum imports will increase to 25% more than triple the current level. The hikes will take effect this year for EVs, steel and aluminum and solar cells and next year for semiconductors. Already China has said the US politicization and weaponization of economic and trade issues are typical examples of political maneuvering. China strongly expresses its dissatisfaction. It will seriously impact the bilateral relations. The US should immediately correct its wrong practices and cancel the tariff measures imposed on China. China will take resolute measures to defend its own rights and interests.
It's true that this will not have a major immediate impact because most of the major Chinese EV makers are not exporting their vehicles to the United States yet. And reading between the lines given the administration is doing this during an election year this most likely has more to do with politics and trying to win the battleground state of Michigan. This move is most likely to be celebrated by Detroit because if those Chinese EVs were to undercut the US auto market they most likely would suffer the most. Also part of this new tariff plan we have tariff rates going up for lithium ion EV batteries from China. The tariffs will rise from 7.5% to 25% this year.
At the moment it's unclear exactly how all of this will play out but one thing to keep in mind for Tesla any batteries they're importing from CATL from China could be impacted from these new tariffs. The expectation right now is that when it comes to EVs that will be impacted there are only two. The poll starts to involve those S90 hybrid. And yes this move by the administration is not fully in line with transitioning the US to a sustainable economy but clearly the administration places a higher value on protecting the American workforce. The big question right now is how is China going to respond. This could be a problem for the US because if you go back to 2023 data you'll see the US had a $279 billion trade deficit for the year.
So given the United States exports significantly less to China than it imports from China I think China has a bit more leverage here than the US would like to admit. Again though I think a lot of this is political as over the weekend Trump has proposed attacks of 200% on every car from Mexican plants. However that one would have significant impacts on the US auto market right out of the gate because Ford and GM and eventually Tesla will be making vehicles in Mexico. When it comes to that Trump comment I'm not sure he'd even be able to do that unless he were to repeal the entire NAFTA agreement which seems unlikely.
Also the tariff rate for battery parts will increase from 7.5 to 25% this year tariffs for natural graphite and permanent magnets will go from 0 to 25% in 2026 and tariffs for certain critical minerals will go from 0 to 25% this year. As part of the move Biden has vowed that the US will never allow Beijing to unfairly control the market for EVs saying China heavily subsidized all these products pushing Chinese companies to produce far more than the rest of the world can absorb and then dumping the excess products onto the market at unfairly low prices driving other manufacturers around the world out of business. And frustratingly the Trump campaign said Biden's action today is a week in futile attempt to distract from the grievous harm his insane EV mandate is doing to the US auto industry and how his radical policies are wiping out thousands of American auto jobs. Trust me I'm not at all getting political here but just sticking to the facts you can certainly make the counterpoint that the inflation reduction act has brought thousands of new jobs to the United States which are all very closely related to the EV industry. We've been talking about it all year the political posturing is in full effect and we should expect it for the next few months. For now I'll just say it's a guarantee that this is not the end of the story now China is up to bat.
This one is squarely in the rumor mill but Tesla Chan is saying the image is speculated to be the center console of an upgraded model Y vehicle potentially project Juniper. The main difference would be the chrome trim around the wireless charging pad. I believe this is from Shanghai but either way we're most likely going to have 3-6 months of leaks and speculation and sightings before the actual launch of Model Y Juniper. We have the sympathy strikes against Tesla in Sweden actually ramping up Sweden's biggest union today through its weight behind the strike. Yif Matal said the strike is ongoing and we have no signs of reaching an agreement in the near future. More than a dozen unions have launched action in support of Yif Matal with Unionen the latest and the biggest. Unionen began a blockade on Tuesday affecting work for Tesla when it comes to equipment inspections. They said if Tesla seeks to circumvent the blockade by hiring other providers Unionen was prepared to do more. The good news despite all of these sympathy strikes Tesla's new vehicle registrations in Sweden have broadly kept pace with the market. Only Elon did say that these strikes in Sweden are largely in the past but now some of the largest unions in the area are trying to prove him wrong.
这则消息纯属传言,但特斯拉长(Tesla Chan)称这张图片被认为是经过升级的Model Y车型的中控台,可能是Juniper项目。主要区别在于无线充电板周围的镀铬装饰。我认为这可能来自上海,但无论如何,在Model Y Juniper真正发布之前,我们很可能会经历3-6个月的泄霩、猜测和目击事件。实际情况是,在瑞典,对特斯拉的同情罢工实际上在升级,瑞典最大的工会今日力挺这场罢工。Yif Matal表示罢工仍在继续,我们尚无迹象表明在不久的将来会达成协议。十几个工会已经发起了支持Yif Matal的行动,而最新的、最大的是Unionen。Unionen于周二开始了封锁,影响了特斯拉在设备检验方面的工作。他们表示,如果特斯拉试图通过雇用其他供应商来规避封锁,Unionen已准备好采取更多行动。好消息是,尽管所有这些同情罢工,特斯拉在瑞典的新车注册量与市场基本持平。Elon曾表示,瑞典的这些罢工基本上已经成为过去,但现在该地区一些最大的工会正试图证明他是错误的。
Tesla has filed the Model 3 performance with the MIIT in China which is the last major regulatory hurdle before the car can be officially sold in China. This also matters for Canadians because it looks like they'll be receiving the Model 3 performance from Giga Shanghai not from Fremont. Charlie Billello gave us an update on the used Tesla vehicle market we're now down to a record low of $31.1,000. However it appears as though we're approaching a local minimum as for the past few weeks this number has flattened out. Unless Tesla enacts more price cuts for new vehicles and or their next gen lower price vehicles begin hitting the used market this number for Tesla could stabilize right around $30,000 and maybe hold above it. Thanks for my people in New Hampshire if you missed it you're about to get your first Tesla dealership and service center it's currently under construction. The goal is to open by the end of the year.
Cox Automotive did a 2024 EV adoption study and they said a second significant wave of shoppers ready to consider buying an EV is poised to begin entering the market in the second half of the decade. They said while we've seen EV sales growth slow and consideration dip we believe this is part of a normal growth curve and not the end of the story. We remain bullish on the long term future of EV sales in America as many skeptics today will be carefully considering an EV by the end of the decade. With more infrastructure, education and technological innovation and improvements we believe EV sales will continue to grow in the long term. The study projects EV consideration will notably increase in 3-5 years with 54% of current skeptics expected to become active EV considers. Within 10 years 80% of today's skeptics will have become EV considers.
Currently only 45% of consumers in market for a vehicle within the next 12 months say they're considering an EV that's down from 51% last year. While current EV ownership is heavily tilted toward luxury and high earning households, the study shows the EV market is casting a wider net attracting Gen Z, multicultural and less affluent shoppers. In 2021 62% of EV considers were looking at used EVs. Today 77% are considering used EVs. Meanwhile Ford continues to be the most considered EV maker not named Tesla. Still apart from Tesla a majority of vehicle shoppers are not even aware of EV offerings from other major automakers.
The survey included 2.6,000 American vehicle shoppers and it was done in quarter one of this year. Their methodology was structured to capture a broad spectrum of demographic variables including age, income, geography and current vehicle ownership. We got the final Tesla China data for April. We're looking at 63.7,000 units produced, 31.4,000 domestic, 30.7,000 export for a total wholesale of 62.1,000 for the month. Thus adding up the wholesale figure for January through April of this year we're currently 7.8% behind the pace of January through April of 2023. We also got the weekly Tesla China data it came in at 9,800 comparing that to the same week in quarter one that number was 5,600. So Tesla making up a bit of ground quarter over quarter but we're still down 4.6% quarter over quarter. And looking at the year over year figure Tesla is down 13.9%.
Just to show a quick example for the impact of Tesla's 0.99% financing for the Model Y for this month. Using these assumptions right here on the left your monthly payment would be $891. Then using those same assumptions but dropping the interest rate down to 0.99% from 7% before your monthly payment goes down to $769. However, what most financially literate people actually look at is the total cost of the loan with the 0.99% financing you're looking at $57.6,000 over 5 years. Compare that to $64.9,000 with 7% financing everything else setter as parabas. Thus with this offer from Tesla that individual would be saving over $7,000 over the life of the loan.
Tesla has appointed Bon Egleston as the new head of the 4680 program. He's been tasked with driving down 4680 production costs significantly. His mandate includes not only continuing production without further layoffs but also ensuring Tesla's 4680s become cheaper than those offered by major suppliers like Panasonic and LG by the end of the year. But listening to the Q1 call it sounded like Tesla was already on track to pull that off by the end of this year. I also disagree with what drive Tesla said later in the article in that 4680s are also expected to power future models like the RoboTaxi CyberCab. At this point, at least to start, I think that's unlikely as the CyberCab will most likely use LFP selves and to our knowledge Tesla is not making 4680s with LFP tech inside.
They also said if Tesla does not drop costs by the end of the year that a failure to do so might lead to Tesla reconsidering the viability of the entire 4680 program. They've invested too much, they've come too far, they've made too much progress to stop at this point, even if they missed their goals they'll continue to make the program better. Bond has been at Tesla now for over 7 years working mainly on cell manufacturing. Mercedes who originally wanted to go all EV by 2030 is now saying they're stopping development of their MB.EA large platform. The reason for this is disappointing sales figures for current luxury electric cars. Now like many others, Mercedes is saying we will be able to flexibly offer vehicles with both fully electric systems and electrified high tech combustion engines well into the 2030s.
Kyle Vogt, the former cruise CEO, has launched a new company, the bot company focusing on humanoid robots for in-home sale, has teamed up with some former Tesla employees and they just raised $150 million. The bot company is already valued at $550 million. The startup aims to create home robots capable of handling household chores like cleaning and laundry. The company's business model is centered on selling these robots directly to consumers with the added feature of customization through a discord like chat server. As mentioned, Kyle Vogt is teaming up with former Tesla tech lead and manager for AI, Paril Jain. At Tesla, Paril was leading the planning, imitation learning and reinforcement learning team for Tesla AI. His team was focused on building the foundation models for autonomy that can scale to vehicle as well as humanoid platforms.
And then on X, Paril announced his move. He said as for Tesla, talking about version 12, it finally seems closer than ever to a robotaxi. While I had always planned to help Tesla get to the final destination of global deployment of robotaxis, I think it's time to accelerate the rest of the robotics industry and build more bots that give people time back. You will love the upcoming versions of V12 and obviously actually SmartSummon. The team is on an amazing trajectory to continue pushing forward more improvements on the road to being driverless. And don't miss what McHale said who also just left Tesla. Tesla will achieve self-driving and have the biggest autonomous fleet in the world.
This became obvious to us internally in the past few years and is becoming obvious to everyone else as FSD rolls out. We got a counterpoint from George Hott saying, It's like investors learn no lessons from the graveyard of self-driving car companies and now we have to speed run it again for humanoid robots. The same scammers will profit and the same public will lose. To which Kyle Vot said aside, George said you aren't as bad as figure robot but still give 130 million back, drop the hype narrative and ship an incrementally useful product. To which Paril said, ship an incrementally useful product on it. NHTSA has now opened an investigation into Waymo thanks to 22 incidents in which the company's cars were involved in collisions or may have violated traffic laws. The word is, Waymo vehicles have crashed into objects like gates, chains and parked cars. This probe covers an estimated 444 vehicles.
Just to clear the air on this one from yesterday, Tesla hiring back, some of the roughly 500 members of the supercharger team that were let go. Chief among the personnel coming back is Max Dezegar, the director for charging for North America. He was one of the top managers after Rebecca Tanucci. It's still not immediately clear how many laid off workers have been rehired. In case you did not have a chance to read the Musk biography, this is just how he operates. His philosophy has always been to delete, cut and remove as much as you can, whether it's from a product, the workforce or a process. The thinking goes, if you're not looking to add back roughly 10% of what you cut, then you didn't cut enough in the first place. That's because once you make those mass cuts, then you can actually see where problems crop up and where you actually need people, aka who or what is essential.
Case in point, what Elon did with Twitter. When in, laid off a majority of the staff and then started hiring people back slowly. How about a Tesla example. There was a time when Elon said he was going to close most of the retail stores, but just a few days later, Elon then backtracked on that decision. Don't forget, at the time this was March 2019 and analysts said the seemingly spontaneous yet dramatically altering strategic decisions does not lend to a lot of confidence. A friendly reminder, since March 2019, Tesla stock is up over 893%. The exact same thing is happening today. Plenty of people are doubting Elon and his judgment saying that he's making rash decisions, the same thing people were saying over 4 years ago. As it turned out, Tesla did just fine over the last 4-5 years.
Porsche is planning to roll out a hybrid version of the 911 and it looks like it'll make it stay view later this month. When Ford said it was going to cut around $12 billion in EV spending, things like this should be expected, Ford has now begun cutting orders from battery suppliers to stem EV losses. For what it's worth, CATL said its cooperation with Ford is moving forward as normal. Stellantis and Leet Motor put out a press release saying that their joint venture is now complete 51% for Stellantis. The companies are now laying the groundwork for their T03 and C10 vehicles first in European markets, then expanding to India and Asia Pacific. The gist of the partnership will be Leet Motors technology and products along with Stellantis supporting in areas like overseas channels, services and marketing. Stellantis has said this move is only going to be complementary to their own EV plans, but you don't partner with an EV maker from China if you're overly confident about your own EV prowess. Yes, there can be strategic benefits, but oftentimes these joint ventures can bring unnecessary levels of complication.
Crews said starting this week its AVs will begin supervised autonomous driving in Phoenix. To begin, these rides will have a safety driver present. This will be a testing and a validation phase. They've talked about their over 5 million driverless miles before, and they said they'll begin supervised autonomous driving in Phoenix and will gradually expand to Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert and Chandler. Rivian has informed state officials it plans more layoffs in California. It's planning to lay off more than 120 employees, including 89 in Irvine and 28 in Palo Alto. The job losses will begin in June. US sales of Volvo's battery powered XC40 recharge and C40 crossovers plummeted 65% in the first quarter to just 970 vehicles. The owner of Volvo Cars in Memphis said dealers are accepting fewer EVs from the factory saying we just don't see the consumer interested in EVs. Volvo has adjusted to reality by dialing back EV supply while ramping up plug-in hybrid vehicle allocations. In the first four months of the year, Volvo's plug-in hybrid sales in the US surged 55% to 10.1.
Carnival Corporation, the world's largest cruise company today announced 100% of its ships across the global fleet are equipped with Starlink. The upgrade rivals on land connectivity experiences. The added bandwidth also boosts each ship's operational and communications capabilities with more continuous onboard equipment monitoring and real-time connectivity and data sharing between ship and shore teams, along with the enhanced versatility to more quickly roll out new guest services and features. Tesla stock closed the day at $177.55 up 3.29% while the Nasdaq was up 0.75%. It was a lower volume day for Tesla trading about 16 million shares below the average volume the past 30 days. And in case you missed this meme from Elon about Reuters, I had to share it as I was actually LOLing when I saw it. 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.