Hey Joe, well Tech Giant by Do has a fleet of 500 Robotaxes already in the city of Wuhan and this week the company announced that it plans to expand that to 1,000 fully self-driving Robotaxes by the end of this year. But not everyone can ride, but notice pops up and warns no young children, pregnant women, elderly, the infirm or anyone with a bad heart. I'm in the right part of town to get the service, but the ab says that I need to walk about 100 feet to get to the closest station to board the Robotaxes. The trip costs about $3 and thanks to steep discounts, that's about the same as a regular taxi. We got one and it's coming in 15 minutes. So here's the Robotaxes, but there's a driver inside. The staffer told us to catch an unmanned cab, we needed to go to another pickup point, less than half of the taxis still come with safety personnel.
We did. And another showed with another assistant. Finally, we got one without a human. Wait, no one is inside except for us. The Baidu Robos service is 24-7. From the time that we first called for an unmanned cab, Joe, it took us four hours before we actually got the cab. But once we were in it, it actually works. Yeah, so it's obviously not camera only. So my assumption is that it would be Lidar just because there are now six generations of these cars. And Baidu is working with different car manufacturers, all local, to be able to bring the price down.
In fact, this week, they announced the sixth generation of their car and they said that they can now sell it for $28,000 per car, which is less than half of what they were selling the previous generations. Welcome to Electrified. It's your host, Dylan Loomis. So first up today, Giga Berlin has one approval for expansion. The problem is there's plenty of confusion around what has actually been approved. Thanks to all of the protests, as of late, the meeting took place under police protection. Just to show you the type of people Tesla is dealing with at Giga Berlin, one of the people opposed to the expansion said, I can assure you that you will no longer have a good life here as a municipal representative if you agree today to the expansion.
This article says this work will be supplemented by 40,000 employees, which would be up from the roughly 12,000 employees at Giga Berlin now, and potentially 2 million units of annual capacity in the future. During the meeting, though, they confirmed the current installed capacity still sits at 500,000 per year. There were 19 people that were able to vote, 11 of the 19 voted yes to the urban development contract, and the same number voted in support of Tesla's expansion. Andre Tereg, the plant manager of Giga Berlin added some context on X. Playing were extremely pleased the Municipal Council approved development plan number 60 for the Service and Logistics Center. The revised plan will preserve more than 70 hectares of forest, and as a result, we had two abandoned projects that were originally planned as part of the expansion.
The development plan now enables the further expansion of a sustainable and environmentally friendly public infrastructure it creates the planning conditions for greater use of rail. The reduced truck traffic in the region and this approval has created planning security for medium and long term expansion. Those involved in the planning now have the necessary basis to plan and implement the transport projects in detail. Notice here how there's nothing about actual vehicle production capacity. As one would come to expect at this point, those that were opposed to this expansion are now already talking about bringing a lawsuit. I would also add, Tesla is not totally in the clear here as the Ministry of Environment still has to approve the separation of the property from the landscape protection area and the Otterspre district must grant the requested exemption in accordance with the Water Resources Act. Only then can Tesla begin clearing the land.
So the gist of this expansion really has to do with a freight station and a logistics area allowing Tesla to transport more vehicles via rail rather than truck. Despite many people now saying this expansion is approving Tesla for 2 million units of capacity as far as we know that is not the case with this vote today. Just to confirm, here's a German source talking about this plan number 60 that we just saw Andre Tereig reference. We have the preservation of 70 hectares, check, some state roads and a freight yard, check and finally another frequently made claim that plan number 60 was for increasing production capacities must also be rejected. This was never the goal of the planning. It was simply a matter of creating additional storage and logistics space as well as the possibility of accommodating employee relevant facilities.
The latter facilities are now completely eliminated as part of the compromise. Plus the freight station and heavier use of rail won't just be for outbound vehicles but they could also use that for inbound supplies as well freeing up the local roads. Not only that but it should lead to much less pollution as well. The reality of the situation is right now Berlin just does not need increased production capacity. On Tesla's Q1 deck Berlin is listed at over 375,000 units. Earlier this year in February we learned that Giga Berlin produced 6,000 modellis in one week that was most likely just a burst rate, nothing that they were sustaining, doing the math over 50 weeks per year that's 300,000 units per year. Even if you use the most recent burst rate throughout the entirety of the year that's still only 80% of the listed annual capacity. And for further evidence that was likely just a burst rate if you look at Troy Test likes tables for production in 2023 from Berlin the total number for the year was 200,000.
Then looking at quarter one of this year Troy had 47,000 units of production from Berlin. So even with growth from Giga Berlin for the remainder of this year they're still likely to come in well under 300,000 units produced. Now yes it's absolutely true that Elon has said the following. I think it makes sense to produce the semi-truck in Europe at Giga Berlin. He has also said the model too will definitely come to Berlin in the long term. Down the line it is likely that Tesla will at some point push for a greater production capacity for the factory and need to go through all of the approvals but right now Tesla doesn't really need that extra capacity. We've been over this many times already but just a fact to keep in your mind Tesla manufacturing said at Giga Berlin they recycle up to 100% of the factory processed wastewater and using just 1.8 cubic meters per Model Y far below the industry average of 3.7 cubic meters.
Because I know you're all wondering wait a minute what about the treehouse protestors well for now they've been allowed to stay by the Berlin Brandenburg higher administrative court. This was after the police filed a complaint about the treehouse camp. However the court rejected that complaint and ruled in favor of the Tesla treehouse protestors camp. Their protest was initially supposed to last until May 20 but some of their representatives recently said they plan to extend that. And according to drive green on X Giga Berlin's Model Y has been fully upgraded to hardware 4. I gotta be honest if you're not using a VPN in 2024 you're unnecessarily leaving yourself open to targeting and tracking that can be so easily avoided. Even Elon is out here talking about how easy VPNs are to use and as censorship grows around the world it would be wise to familiarize yourself with all the benefits of a VPN like Surfshark the sponsor of this video. It was a few years ago now that I saw Matt Farrell from Undecided recommend Surfshark and given how much time I spent online I looked into it and I realized it was a no brainer given how affordable it is.
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In more tariff news the Biden administration will announce a 25% tariff on Chinese made synthetic graphite later this month to be imposed in stages over the next two years. EV and battery makers favor synthetic graphite made from a derivative of oil because its quality is more consistent than that of the natural version. Both the tariffs on natural and synthetic graphite would take effect in stages reaching 25% in 2026.
As it stands now Chinese companies process about 69% of the world's synthetic graphite which is used in some two thirds of the world's EV batteries. Dating back to the Trump administration the US has exempted synthetic and natural graphite from tariffs imposed on most Chinese goods the result of lobbying by EV makers including Tesla that said there was almost no other source for the material. The Biden administration has extended that exemption four times.
Two years for these tariffs to kick into full effect may seem like a long time but given that the US graphite market is really starting from scratch both for natural and synthetic that's not much time at all. You may have heard of Novonix they have a factory in Tennessee and they're supposed to begin supplying Panasonic who also supplies Tesla with synthetic graphite by the end of this year. Don't forget Sera Resources which is an Australian producer does have a supply deal with Tesla.
At this stage it's nearly impossible to analyze how this will actually impact Tesla over the next two to five years but it's plain as day that the trade wars are in full effect between the US and China. Isaiah Simmons a linebacker for the New York Giants officially has one of the cleanest looking Cybertrucks out there. Now seems like as good a time as ever to remind everybody that it's pretty clear Tesla is going to sell significantly more than just 1000 Foundation series Cybertrucks.
Unfortunately the court system in Sweden has now denied an appeal from Tesla. In the past we talked about how post-nord was refusing to deliver license plates for Tesla vehicles to Tesla's buildings. Tesla questioned if that was legal so they sued them. But a Swedish court ruled today that Tesla's appeal against a previous decision will be thrown out. The ruling indicates Tesla is not entitled to the plates.
A statement from the court, the general court does not have jurisdiction to hear the action brought by Tesla. It should come as a surprise to no one but VW admitted it will need more plug-in hybrids as EV sales decelerate. VW has also shelved its plans to seek outside investors for its battery unit and they scrapped plans for a $2.2 billion EV factory in Germany. Not only that but VW is selling so many combustion cars it's on track to overshoot its emissions allowance next year.
In response, Oliver Bloom is now asking regulators for leniency. Not only that but Bloom is striking partnerships with companies like Xpeng to win back young customers lost to BYD and Tesla. The problem for full EV fans is that all of these legacy OEMs are currently making money hand over fist with hybrids and almost all of them are planning more hybrids not less. We have Toyota out here making record profits so the demise of these legacy OEMs is going to be a lot later than I think many people were hoping for or expecting.
Eventually there will come a time when the general public realizes that full EV is just the better powertrain because there's only one. But as we're learning right now the consumer needs more choices and with many of these legacy OEMs not building EVs at scale it's going to take time for those choices to get here. Following Tesla, Lee Otto is now going through an organizational restructuring and they just had their first price reduction for the first time in company history.
Rather than calling them layoffs they said their optimization involves more than 5600 people or 18% of its workforce. As part of that it's smart driving team will be reduced to less than 1000 people. In 2023 Lee Otto delivered a total of 376,000 vehicles with a net profit over 11.8 billion yuan making it the third profitable NEV company after Tesla and BYD. 7.8 billion yuan is roughly 1.6 billion dollars. The cherry on top Lee Otto also lowered its sales forecast from 800,000 units down to 560 to 640,000. I do think Tesla's sales will recover in quarter 2 and throughout the remainder of the year but it is plain as day that globally there is a structural slowdown in demand for fully electric vehicles. Items like this I hesitate to even share because how much trust can we really pay for the legacy OEM plans for EVs if we've learned anything the past few years we can't put much trust at all in them. What we've really learned is any EV plans they make publicly are ultimately later drastically reduced.
But Honda plans to invest 65 billion dollars over the decade for EV and software development. That would double what they had planned as of 2022. Their confidence in having enough money for this spending lies in the profits generated by strong sales of hybrid vehicles. The money will go toward building EV factories and developing new models.
Honda will also make a pair of roughly 12.8 billion dollar investments in software and battery procurement. Through these efforts Honda aims to cut battery costs by 20% by the second half of the 2020s it also plans to reduce production costs by 35% by building its dedicated EV plans in the near future. The company targets a 100% share of EVs and fuel cell vehicles in sales by 2040 globally. Honda is aiming to introduce 10 EV models by 2027. A separate article said Honda will also adopt large scale gigacasting. Honda will first use megacasting to produce battery cases for its EVs. After it masters that technique it'll apply megacasting to large cast aluminum body frame parts.
We've been talking about the Rush or Chinese EV makers to flood the European and global markets with their EVs is also in full effect. This Rush transportation of EVs from China to Brazil and Mexico began in March and will continue in June. Because of this shipping container prices for the China to Brazil route have risen between 4 and 6 fold since late March. The container only costs around $1,500 earlier this year and it's now well above $6,000. BYD is also accelerating construction of its plant in Brazil to tap the booming local market. And BYD confirmed its plans to build a new plant in Mexico. Unfortunately given the tariffs and elections and incentives and everything going on with public charging there is a lot of uncertainty around electric vehicles right now. Don't misunderstand me I'm not saying their long term isn't any sort of jeopardy but for the next 12 months it may be a tough scene for fully electric sales until some of these things actually settle. As always it should go without saying but interest rates staying higher for longer is definitely not going to help in the US.
According to a joint study by the US Electric Power Research Institute the rate of failure for battery energy storage projects fell 97% between 2018 and 2023. The failure rate went from 9.2 failures per gigawatt for best projects in 2018 to around .2 in 2023. The report found 65% of incidents could be linked to operation and integration of batteries and just 11% were caused by failures of battery cells or modules. Reluctance from battery OEMs and integrators keeps transparency limited and the authors found that out of 81 incidents in the database sufficient information to assign a root cause was made public for just 26 of them. More transparency in this arena will certainly help with adoption in the years ahead but best projects clearly making great strides in reliability.
You know things are tough out there in EV land when Ford is waving the white flag effectively asking its suppliers for any help it can get. Ford has issued a call to action to suppliers asking for help reducing costs on EV production. The company recently contacted parts makers on EV programs and requested ideas for cutting costs. In the memo Ford asks suppliers to develop incremental cost reduction proposals for a list of EVs both current and upcoming. In the memo Ford said we need your best ideas to drive cost reduction even if they've been previously rejected by Ford. We also would be willing to consider ideas that may require investment but support profitability everything is on the table. Ideas to reduce cost could include commercial design content footprint and value chain. This includes adjusting capacity quickly downward where necessary, repurposing capital as needed, understanding spending curves and discussing all options with Ford.
If you've been following along you may be thinking well there's going to be a problem here. Many of these EV parts suppliers to the OEMs have been complaining now for years that the uncertainty from the order flow from these OEMs is causing a major drag on the suppliers business. Initially we saw big EV parts and battery orders from the OEMs but over the last two years they've all pulled back drastically on those initial plans leaving the suppliers holding the bag. And now we have Ford and likely many other OEMs going back to the same EV parts suppliers saying hey we need you to give us an even better deal. I'm speculating here but I would not be surprised if the reaction from some of these EV parts suppliers would be telling the OEMs to go kick rocks and flip flops. And listen I would love for there to be plenty of awesome EVs for consumers to choose from. However, items like this are somewhat vindicating as we've been saying now for years how incredibly difficult it is to make an EV profitably at scale.
For years most people including Wall Street didn't buy it saying nah OEMs are going to catch up no problem. Well turns out we were right they were wrong. Speaking of unprofitable EVs we have Chevy starting customer deliveries of the affordable equinox. Most equinox trims should be available over the next few months but the base model won't be available until later this year. Right now the equinox starts at $41.9 and with front wheel drive you can get 319 miles of range. This vehicle does qualify for the full federal tax credit. I'll be watching the delivery numbers for this one closely because this car is supposed to be a high volume seller for Chevy. In case for some reason you didn't think these tariffs are a big deal well we already have Neo considering changing its global operations as a result of the tariffs. Their CEO said we now have Envo and then we'll have Firefly and even lower priced entry level brand. We can enter the global market and in the process of doing so we will have some changes. We can look more for local partners. That can include local distribution or production describing the strategy overall as global capability local operation. Neo is of course one of the many Chinese EV makers that is still struggling to turn a profit.
Local stock closed the day at $174.84 up 0.49% while the Nasdaq was down 0.26%. It was one of the lower volume days we've seen over the past few months trading about 40 million shares below the average volume the past 30 days. Don't forget check out Surfshark linked below if you do. I'm sure Elon would be proud. 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.