Welcome to Electrified, it's your host, Dylan Moomis. If you're in the mood for a commitment from Elon, here you go. He said, the super strong support from retail and large investors meant a lot to me. I'll do my utmost to ensure that their faith is rewarded. This was kind of cool. There were 29 different Cybertruck owners taking delivery at the same time. And right before that, the Cybertrucks did a little light show and front dance.
But unfortunately, I shared that to contrast with this video, where we have tens of Cybertrucks that were sitting in a lot waiting to be delivered. And somebody vandalized them with spray paint and they eloquently wrote F. Elon either on the hood or on the side of the trucks. And for whatever it's worth, I did find this video of this gentleman removing spray paint from stainless steel. So here's the before through some of the scrubbing and then there's the after.
So maybe it's possible to have it removed. Either way though, this is obviously ridiculous. And of course, the first thought is, well, check the cameras and try to find who did it. But then the question arises, was sentry mode on for these vehicles just sitting in a lot? And if it was not, is there any way Tesla can still access the camera footage?
Just a quick reminder, if you know any upcoming high school grads, you can let them know about the MDP Tesla's Manufacturing Development Program. Tesla is currently accepting applications. For you SpaceX fans, Tesla has announced a new supercharger is now open in Brownsville, Texas, at Boca Chica Boulevard. In response to what Elon said the other day about power and cooling needed at Gigatexus and that it could be over 500 megawatts in the next 18 months, Matt Smith asked a great question, who's providing that 500 megawatts of power?
But I brought this up again though, because I saw some people saying, oh, Tesla's solar roof at Gigatexus will have it covered. Unfortunately, no. The last update we got, they said when it's complete, the system will be the world's largest solar rooftop installation with roughly 30 megawatts of power. That's clearly not going to get it done. Joe Tettmeyer did say Austin Energy and LCRA via the new switchyard on the north side and cables along raceways along the east parapet wall. Most of this is now installed.
As Joe pointed out, the Sandhill Power Station is located right across the street, but that's listed at 694 megawatts. And then as Matt highlighted, this is already providing power to the Urcott Grid, so it's not like they can just take all of that and feed it to Tesla. So if anybody out there hears anything about this before I can find something, feel free to shoot me an email. Elon's lawyers are now saying that the shareholder vote should delay a hearing on the award of billions of dollars in fees to the lawyers that challenged it.
Tesla's attorneys are saying the vote impacts significantly what remains to be decided in this litigation. Thus Tesla has asked for a delay of the July 8th hearing so it can lay out the shareholder votes implications. Tesla's filing said the vote alters the course of this litigation and arguments about it should be briefed expeditiously and decided before this court rules on legal fees to be awarded. A delay in this hearing over those legal fees would further hold up the judges' decision on how much to award in lawyer compensation, which needs to happen before she issues an order finalizing the case and then opens a window for Elon to appeal the ruling.
The word is, Judge McCormick is under no legal obligation to recognize the shareholder vote under Delaware law, but she can choose to take judicial notice of the development. Once she rules on the legal fees, she can then issue a final judgment in the case, and then again, Elon can appeal after that. In response, the plaintiff's attorney said the vote to ratify Elon's pay has no legal effect and the only way for Tesla to challenge the January ruling is to appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court.
As we know, the plaintiff's lawyers have asked for around 29 million shares, but today they said Tesla could, as an alternative, pay at least $1.1 billion in cash, which would be justified by the court's precedent, although they described that as unfairly low. If there are any modern family fans out there that made me think of Cam starting big and then winnowing down. Tesla on the other hand urged the judge to put aside the fee dispute and determine the impact of the shareholder vote, which in turn could drastically reduce the legal fee.
The plaintiff's lawyers of course disagree, saying that Tesla's board process for proposing that ratification vote was flawed. The law was misused by Tesla and the shareholder vote was coerced by Elon's threats to take potential products from Tesla. The plaintiff's lawyers want a decision on their legal fee as the next step in the case. This is where hopefully Alexander's legwork and the 8000 shareholders that signed that form, that petition, may actually come into play and swing the balance a bit. No decisions have been made yet, but the stage is now set. Alexander also shared a little tidbit I thought was interesting. Generally speaking, for the Delaware legislature, they are passing some, apparently, controversial 2024 amendments. It sounds like Judge McCormick did not like these amendments and a former chancellor called Judge McCormick out, as well as a vice chancellor for their public participation in the debate over the legislation. The former chancellor said, I was taught that judges need to stay in their lane and need to be applying the law legislators give them. Judges don't need to intrude upon the process of law because if they do, they become the makers as well as the suppliers. Just tangentially related, but there you have it.
A PSA, there's a bug in Tesla's software 2024.20.1 that is basically breaking dog mode. This is a problem because the screen is actually showing the appropriate messaging as if the feature was working, but the cabin temperature is not being maintained after they leave the vehicle. Just FYI if you're taking your furry children anywhere with that software version. This marketing material from Tesla Japan was floating around the internet and if you translate the image, Tesla owners in Japan can now transfer their FSD for a limited time, this one only until June 28th. Elon did agree to another quarter of free FSD transfer, so hopefully this gets the ball rolling for that.
Just a quick word on Tesla's FSD12.4.1, there are definitely mixed reviews out there, some users are having a better experience, tried to watch all of them and listen to all of the commentary. Personally, for whatever it's worth, I was a bit disappointed, I don't know if it's my expectations were too high or watching AI driver and his experience with the overall build. And I know .4.releases can smooth things out and other people are saying there are improvements without a . update. Either way though, this is part of what I've been warning about when it comes to Tesla not having the ability to write explicit code to solve specific problems. Given the black box nature of these neural nets, version 12 may be a scenario of fixing some problems here, but then other things break over here and it becomes pretty difficult to figure out how to balance it all. Don't get me wrong, I still think Tesla's going to figure it out, I just think it may be a bumpy road and not move as fast as some of us were hoping right when we saw version 12. So at least for now and at least for me, my expectations for the pace of progress for version 12 have come down a few pigs.
Monroe put out a new teardown video on the cyber cell and I'll share the main takeaways. One of the main visual differences was on the bottom of the cell when it comes to the venting. This one on the right with the pink foam of death is the Gen 1 cell and on the left is the new cyber cell or Gen 2. The cyber cell now has these welds on the bottom and there are two different variations, some with nine welds and others with 12. They said that helps with venting and that's in contrast to the Gen 1 cell. They said the copper tab that was in the Gen 1 cell has been removed which leaves more space in the cell in favor of these welds. Monroe also said the cyber cell has all but eliminated the cobalt and Jordan from the limiting factor said that the Gen 1 cell had about 12% cobalt. Monroe did not share a specific figure but there's a chance Tesla's cobalt use is down under 5% with the cyber cell.
Sandy said the cyber cell has mostly nickel and the cobalt is mostly all gone. He also added there's no manganese in the cyber cell. Monroe was just speculating here but they think it has to do with the dry battery electrode process. They said manganese isn't really in short supply and it's not that expensive so they thought it had to do with DBE. And we know that Tesla was only using DBE for the anode with the Gen 1 cell but Monroe did say something very interesting. They said they have high confidence that they'll find the dry process was in use for both electrodes this time the cathode and the anode. They think Tesla eliminating manganese had something to do with it. And excitingly when it comes to energy density it was confirmed that Tesla is now using at least some silicon in the anode. Tesla had forecast to us that they were going to do this eventually and now it's been confirmed. They said the separator between the anode and the cathode was basically the same as Gen 1 and the electrolyte has not yet been analyzed but there may be some differences there. So Monroe is confident when they do further testing they'll find out Tesla is using DBE for the cathode which would be a huge breakthrough.
Personally I'm still not convinced. The main reason for that is multiple sources have confirmed that Tesla has been importing cathode parts for 4680 production at Gigafactory Texas. Things definitely could have changed since then but for now I'm keeping my expectations low. And if you go back to the actual study on the teardown of Tesla's Gen 1 4680 it was around 233 watt hours per kilogram. That was early so let's just call it 240 watt hours per kilogram if Tesla really is pulling off a 10% energy density increase that would take it up to about 264 watt hours per kilogram. But for now neither Monroe or Jordan at the limiting factor have actually done that testing. For reference Panasonic's 2170s have an energy density in the neighborhood of 265 to 270 watt hours per kilogram. So there's a chance Tesla's cyber cell is now approaching that energy density figure of the 2170 cells and as Elon and team said hopefully the cost will be at least on par if not below that by the end of this year. I'll say it again I know Tesla's progress with the 4680s may be a bit slower than some were hoping for but it's such a hard problem and we have to remember Tesla is definitely making progress. Give them another 12 to 24 months and if they can crack the nut for DBE for the cathode which Monroe thinks they may have already done don't sleep on the 4680s. We have some new renders again from Dominic on X and this is nothing official from Tesla but this time he talked about a Tesla van camper edition so just wanted to share his work because I was very impressed.
There's a CNBC article saying Tesla's workforce is officially down 14% from the peak last year which at one point got up to 141,000 global employees but this new data is really just from Tesla's email distribution list and the one that goes out to everybody. According to that email list Tesla's employees would be down to about 121,000 or down 14%. No surprise as the reporting was Tesla may be looking to cut as high as 20% of the workforce with this most recent round. Kia's global fully electric car sales were 19.4,000 for the month of May. That figure is up 93% from last year. Looking at global year to date figures for Kia's wholesale numbers the EV6 is leading the way at 35.1,000. The EV9 did 15.9,000. The EV5 did 4.1,000. Thus total for the GMP platform is up 20% year over year. I think part of the problem around Tesla having a demand problem or not boils down to the semantics in how you would actually define a problem. I did want to point out though graphs like this one that Alex shared to prove that Tesla's demand is just fine doesn't tell the whole story. Now sure is Tesla outselling other brands? You betcha but is Tesla also down year over year across the EU? Also you betcha. It's also been reported Tesla is operating below capacity at both Gigafactory Texas and Gigafactory Shanghai. So is it a problem implying that Tesla is doomed? Certainly not but is it a problem that I think should be addressed? I would say yeah. And it wasn't Whole Mars but some other accounts on X were taking this post of the top 10 EV brand registrations in the US through April this year to say that Tesla's demand is again doing just fine. But this also says nothing about year over year data and outselling companies like Ford, Hyundai and Kia really isn't saying that much. You can certainly argue that the competition is not coming if you would like but to use these charts to say that Tesla's demand is doing great is just not accurate.
Here's a message from a well known Tiktoker George Saliba who I believe owns a car dealership. Don't really know what to say. Don't buy electric cars other than Tesla. If there's a new electric car on the market besides anything that's a Tesla. Don't buy it. Chevy Silverado EV stay away. Lucid stay away unless you're robbing them. Chevy bolts are great. Kia EV 6s are great. Don't buy Kia EV 9s. Kia dealerships are discounting them out the butt. And why would you buy Kia EV 9? You can buy a Rivian R1s. It's like the same price. Rivian R1s and S's are cheaper actually. You can buy one for like 75 grand. Way better of a vehicle. And yeah man the EV market's a very volatile market. New EV coming on the market other than Tesla. Stay away.
这是一个知名Tiktoker George Saliba的信息,我相信他拥有一家汽车经销店。我不太知道该怎么说。除了特斯拉,别买其他电动车。如果市场上有一款新的电动车,不是特斯拉的,就别买。Chevy Silverado EV 要避开。Lucid 也要避开,除非你打算占他们便宜。Chevy Bolt 很不错。Kia EV 6 也很好。别买 Kia EV 9。Kia 经销商正疯狂打折卖 Kia EV 9。而且为什么要买 Kia EV 9呢?你可以花差不多的钱买 Rivian R1s。实际上,Rivian R1s 和 S 更便宜,大概 7.5 万美元就能买一个。车子好多了。是的,电动车市场非常不稳定。出新的电动车,如果不是特斯拉的,就别买。
This article about Ford being roughly two years away from hands-free technology was a couple weeks ago but it was really circulating today. If you don't remember though Farley said we're getting really close we can do it now pretty regularly with a prototype but doing it in a cost effective way is just the progress we're going to need to make. Thus Ford thinks they can bring level 3 autonomy by 2026. But as we know Ford's blue cruise is currently under investigation for some fatal accidents and Mercedes level 3 is essentially a gimmick. Most importantly this has been added to the prediction tracker and yes one day we will go through when we have enough results in.
There was an article going around trying to argue that Tesla's factory in Mexico was in jeopardy thanks to the new incoming president. The article said the new president highlighted concerns that Tesla's factory in Mexico would exacerbate droughts in the region. But if you actually tracked down what she said it was just that Tesla's gig in Mexico should not affect residents drinking water supply. But it's a good opportunity to introduce everybody to the new incoming president Claudia Shinebaum. She happens to be a scientist who has co-authored award-winning research on climate change and she said both private and public financing have a role to play in moving toward cleaner energies. Adding Mexico must accelerate its energy transition and yes she will be the first woman to lead Mexico when she takes office but it sounds like her background lines up very well with Tesla's ambitions.
The center for strategic and international studies just put out a new report and their takeaway is that China has spent 230 billion dollars over the past decade to develop its EV industry. The scale of government support represents 18.8% of total electric car sales between 2009 and 2023. The ratio of that spending to EV sales has declined from more than 40% in the years before 2017 just above 11% in 2023. It's definitely helped with scale but as we know it hasn't really helped with profitability yet. They said BYD's net profit per car declined over the past 12 months to the equivalent of $739. Compare that with Tesla's net profit per car sitting at $2900. Going to the actual study here are some of those incentives the nationally approved by a rebates, the exemption from the 10% sales tax, government funding for infrastructure like charging, R&D programs for EV makers, and government procurement of EVs. But of that $230 billion number, the buyers, rebates, and sales tax exemption have accounted for the vast majority of the support for the industry.
And that's part of why you may have heard that a Bank of America analyst warned the Detroit Big 3 that they need to get out of business in China as soon as possible. The analyst said the D3 automakers need to focus on their core products in more profitable regions. He said China is no longer core business for GM, Ford, or Stellantis. As we've said in the past GM's market share in China used to be up around 15% back in 2015. Now as of last year it's down to 8.6%. The analyst said Tesla has a roughly $17,000 cost advantage in EV components compared with the traditional Detroit 3.
Electrify America in partnership with the utility Rocky Mountain Power have rolled out the first of 20 DC fast charging stations in Utah. So far, four of these stations are online and they'll be up to 350 kilowatts. As a reminder, Electrify America is supposed to start using the NACS connector by 2025. As our Gigapress expert, Luca has confirmed the world's first 16,000-ton gigapress has been commissioned, this one will be making parts for expaying. Here it is installed in the factory and ready to go. At one point there were rumors that Tesla ordered a 15,000-ton gigapress that was going to be for the next gen platform, but as far as we know Tesla has backed off those rumored plans.
Tesla's stock closed the week at $183.01, up 0.79% while the Nasdaq was down 0.18%. It was a lower volume day trading about 10 million shares below the average volume the past 30 days.
I 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.