Hey everybody, I'm Zach, and I'm Jesse, and you're watching Test the Time News, episode 419, on Now You Know. Now it was 419, a prime number, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby. Yes. See, now that we're getting into the big numbers, it's less and less likely that it's a prime number. That's true. When's the next time we hit a prime number? Let us know down below. Yeah, exactly. You mathematicians out there. Okay, Zach, what do you think? Is this the Tesla Robot Taxi? It looks like a sixth grader's show and tell project. What are you talking about? Well, according to dent 3D wheel and boopety-smoop on Reddit, this was spotted driving around Warner Brothers Studios with a model Y closely following it. Oh, so really good sources. Okay. It's heavily camouflaged, so I mean, it could be a little robo-taxi under there. I mean, that makes sense, right? Because if Tesla is planning to have the 1010 RoboTaxi event at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, then they probably need to be testing it to make sure that everything's going to go smoothly. I wonder who RoboTaxi is going to pick up and drop off at the event? It would be cool if there was a bunch of fun celebrities like Morgan Freeman, then they could have Jerry Seinfeld with his new show Comedians in RoboTaxi is getting driven to coffee. They have to deal with cars that drive all by themselves. Do they have to go to the DMV and get their own driver's license now? Oh, man, this is getting exciting, but I'm almost afraid to get my hopes up or to set the bar too high because I know how the mainstream media is going to cover this, right? Tesla RoboTaxi event is a flop. And I want to go back to that picture of the RoboTaxi. So we're assuming that this is the RoboTaxi. We're assuming that it's camouflaged. We're assuming that this isn't like, that this isn't part of a movie or something. I mean, it could be. We don't know. It looks like it could be a RoboTaxi. The fact I'm furious. RoboTaxi version. Yeah, but look, you have to understand, it's not going to look cool because it's camouflaged, right? The whole point of camouflage is so that when we do see a picture like this, we don't know what it really looks like. When you camouflage something, do you usually paint it bright yellow? I thought I thought I put it in. I mean, I get that it's like, that is so Tesla though. They're like, we are going to paint this taxi yellow because it is a RoboTaxi. If you think about Warner Brothers, there's a bazillion people who go through it every day with cameras, right? Oh, really? So I think they probably wanted to make it look like nothing you'd want to take a picture of. I guess. Right. If you camouflage it the normal way with all the really sexy, you know, whatever and it's just Tesla on it, then everyone's like, oh, that's the Tesla world. So is it really, really smaller? Is that just me? No, it looks really small. And I mean, this is very similar to the prototype design that we saw made out of cardboard and foam that Franz was standing there. I mean, I, I think this could be it. But what do you guys think? Let us know down below. I mean, 10, 10s coming soon, I know. Thank you to Beam for sponsoring today's episode. I've been taking Beam's dream for a while now and it has been a game changer. Dream is a revolutionary approach to sleep in the form of a guilt-free, indulgent hot chocolate. The natural sleep supportive ingredients can help you to fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer and wake up ready to tackle your day without grogginess. It's an easy habit to adopt in my routine because it's like having a little cup of cocoa before I go to bed. 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Use our code now you know to get up to 35% off at checkout. So Tesla North America started a new promotion. Zero dollars down at signing now available for Model 3 Y long range and performance in the US applies to new orders placed 912 or later. And Tesla North America also posted 1.99% APR available through 930. Okay, so if we listen to the Tesla Bears, then all of these Tesla promotions that we've been seeing lately are signaling that Tesla is seeing slipping demand. I have a slightly more nuanced take on this. I think that number one, Tesla is gathering data. Okay, so by having these promotions kind of tightly packed together, it eliminates changes in the economy as a factor. And instead, let's Tesla see what promotions move the needle with buyers the most. Number two, the economy is getting tougher, right? For all car makers, interest rates are still historically high, inflation has hit everyone's wallets. And so yes, I believe Tesla is trying to be as competitive as possible. These promotions are generating interest in potential buyers. And number three, promotions like this one are actually more profitable for Tesla because it pushes more of the purchase price into financing the car. So it's cheaper to buy up front, but more expensive over the life of the loan. And lastly, these promotions all have tight deadlines, which are designed to motivate buyers and get them to buy quickly, which historically is an effective marketing technique because you're under pressure. So what do buyers save with this zero down promotion? It makes it easier for buyers who don't have to come up with a down payment, but instead of 1.99% interest, the interest rate does go up a bit to 2.49%. And you are then financing more over time. So again, Tesla makes out by getting more money from you over the life of the loan. So to me, these zero down promotions that are so common with traditional car dealers, they generally lure consumers who may not actually be able to afford the car that they are buying into the showroom to buy the car. So hang on. So they have the 1.99% interest, but that's if you do a down payment. Oh, okay. Yes. And so if you have zero down, then it's the 2.5%. Right. It's still better than what you'd normally get from a normal auto loan. Yeah. As long as you've got good credit. Yes. The other question that I have is normally when you get an auto loan, it's through a bank or it's through that company's financing department. But typically with a bank, the bank is paying the car dealer the money and then collecting the interest for themselves. With this is Tesla collecting the interest for themselves? Not sure. I mean, sometimes, yes, sometimes, no, I'm not sure in different locations, Tesla seems to push it off to a bank and sometimes they do the financing. So I'm not sure. Let us know in the comments below. You'll see it on your finance statement. So let us know if it was Tesla doing the financing. This promotion applies to buyers with good credit who order and take delivery of a new Model 3 or Model Y by the end of Q3 and that's only a couple weeks away under pressure. So you want to attend Tesla's 1010 event. Tesla said Tesla retail shareholders sign up and verify your shares on the Tesla shareholder platform by midnight central time on 917 for a chance to attend our 1010 event in LA. Go to ir tesla.com and Elan says, please sign up to vote. Omar's catalog says 1010 will be the most significant moment for Tesla since the unveil of the Model 3. And Elan says, in my opinion, yes. So I think that's a key point here. The Model 3 event was a huge event in Tesla's life, right? Because that was when the majority of people could actually start to get excited about this company. Now we're expanding it even more. You don't have to buy a Tesla. Think about that for a second. The Robotax you just means you only have to be able to afford the ride exactly. I think that this is really interesting because I think that there are plenty of people who own a car and they drive to work every day. But there's also a lot of people who own a car, but they don't drive to work every day. I don't know. They either work from home or they take public transit and they don't necessarily need that car, but they do need that car because they need that car because we live in a world where you need the car. Stay with me. When we have Robotaxi, it's going to be a lot like when Uber came into the market and cheapened the price of getting a ride. It's going to cheapen it even more to the point where a lot of people are going to be able to ditch their cars entirely. Oh, totally. And I think that that is a really big deal that nobody wants to talk about because we have been advertised brainwashed into thinking that you need to have a car and that that car is an extension of you and an extension of your personality, which it is not just because I drive a cyber truck does not mean that I am a cyber truck, right? I am my own human being. And I think that with Robotaxi, we're going to get closer to the I don't want to say the city lifestyle where you don't own a car, but I think that it can be brought to a lot of different places where you aren't going to necessarily need a car. So Tesla has added wheel path visualizations in the latest FSD update 12.5.2. Now it was already in the cyber truck starting a few months ago, which really helped with the four real steering backing into and out of tight parking spaces. Easiest car I've ever parked. Yeah, because of that four wheel steering, which is insane because it's a giant pickup. Right now, because then we get into the Ford F one 50 and we're like, what I cannot for the life of I will sometimes park the F one 15 be like, that was the best parking job I've ever done. And then I get out of the car, I'm like, Oh, I'm so I think that this is really great. It shows you where the front and the rear wheels are going to be. Yeah, when you're backing up, it really helps. Now wheel path visualizations come to all Tesla vehicles with FSD 12.5.2. So any vehicle with 2024.27.2 or higher should have this, let us know in the comments if you have it. And if you enjoy it, Tesla and Uber have now launched an integration so that rideshare navigation can go directly onto the Tesla nav screen. As Uber tells their drivers, enjoy bigger and bolder navigation. Once you accept a trip request on your phone, pick up and drop off info will be sent to your Tesla screen automatically. And the integration also includes battery aware matching. What's that? Uber explains it as when you connect the Uber app to your Tesla, you can enable battery aware matching so you'll only see trip requests within your Tesla batteries range. Now on one level, this may seem like an obvious and fairly straightforward integration. Easy for Tesla and Uber to implement makes for easier, safer and potentially faster pickup and drop off times, having the directions right there on the big nav screen. And Tesla has offered up to $2,000 for Uber drivers to purchase a Model 3 or a Model Y earlier this year, you may remember. But I think Tesla has another reason for doing this, and we'll explain this week on investor club bonus stories, so join us on Patreon today. So Tesla posted over the weekend, produced our 100 millionth 4680 cell across all our factories. And I think it's significant that Optimus is featured here in the post showing off the 1 millionth battery, because Optimus was part of the vertical integration at Tesla that makes it possible. Now you might be like, did he actually build the batteries? Not yet. No, it seems like he's only moving. Me? Well, his name is Optimus. It's a robot. It's an it. It only moved the batteries from here to there, but that's still part of the process, right? Otherwise, it would have been humans doing it, so it made it cheaper. The last time Tesla announced a 4680 production number was on June 5th, when they produced their 50 millionth cell. So I plugged this latest data into our 4680 spreadsheet that I started a while back, and I charted the number of cells produced over time. And look at this, it's beginning to look exponential. That definitely looks exponential. Now what else have you gleaned from the data? Well, it's getting quite exciting, actually. Number one, first off, the total number of vehicles that Tesla could make with these 4680s, assuming 900 cells per vehicle, and you might be like, how did you get that number, Zach? Well, a Model Y long range has 828 cells, a Cybertruck has 1344 cells, so I averaged it according to sales volume and came up with about 900 cells per vehicle. Anyway, if we assume 900 cells per vehicle, then 100 million 4680s is enough to make 111,111 total vehicles so far. Wow, so that gives you some idea of how many that is. Number two, Tesla now appears to be making about 44.2 megawatt hours per day of 4680 cells. And I know that number doesn't mean much to most people, so let's put that in terms of cells, that is 495,04680 cells per day, or to put it another way, that's 550 vehicles worth per day. Number three, at this rate, assuming Tesla doesn't keep increasing, which, of course, they will. That would be a run rate of about 200,000 vehicles per year that could put these 4680s into them. Number four, though, if we extrapolate a bit, and I think now we can, because we have a lot of data, Tesla could be at a run rate of double that by Christmas. That's 400,000 vehicles worth of 4680s per year. And just to keep in mind, 4680 is not the only battery cell that Tesla makes. Exactly. They also make the 2170s, and they also make the 18650s, and they're spread across the different vehicles that they make. So I mean, this is really interesting to me, because this is the latest and greatest battery that Tesla makes. It's the cheapest to make, because making one battery is usually cheaper than making two. And so they make bigger batteries, which tends to be cheaper in the long run, or that's the idea anyway. Because you need fewer processes to make the same amount of, like, battery capacity. Right. There's 7,000 cells in a vehicle, there's, you know, 1,000 cells, which is cheaper. Yeah. And I mean, this was the limiting factor on the Cybertruck, right? And so now that we're ramping this up faster and faster, it means that we can pump out those Cybert trucks and model-wise faster. All right. So remember this guy? Oh, yeah. Trevor Milton, the founder and former CEO of Nikola. I remember he was convicted by a jury in October of 2022 on two counts of wire fraud and two counts of securities fraud for misleading investors about Nikola's progress on their hydrogen/electric badger pickup truck, which was not real. And the Nikola one, the hydrogen semi-truck that he rolled down a hill said it would look like it was actually driving, which it wasn't. Yeah. In addition to being convicted on criminal charges and sentenced to prison for four years, Milton was also sued by the board of Nikola in order to pay 97% of Nikola's SEC fine, which was $125 million. And this went to an arbitration board, and the arbitration board agreed that he should pay it. It appealed the decision, but last Monday, that decision was upheld by U.S. district judge, Diane Humateewa in Phoenix, Arizona. Milton was ordered to pay the 97% of the $125 million fine, plus $46 million in legal fees. So that's $167.7 million that Trevor Milton has to pay. Nikola. Nikola's lawyer, Mark Castowitz, said that they were gratified but not surprised at the court's decision, considering the former CEO's pattern of sharing false and misleading public statements. So it says, we look forward to collecting the award. And I don't think that Trevor has actually started his prison time yet. Oh, you get to just, you just decide when I think, you know what? I think I'll start that. The fall would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I'll start when I'm 79. All right. So I put the cyber truck round up, you know, the cyber truck roundup. So Sean shared this video. He took of his cyber trucks horn to listen to this compared to the model X for comparison. He said, I don't know if Tesla did this by accident or what, but there are at least two cyber trucks in the wild mine included that sound like a fire truck or a police car when you honked the horn. There's a thread over on cyber truck owners club forums about it. So isn't that the assignable horn sound? Like, isn't that the one that you can, you put it in boombox mode? Can't you assign sounds to the truck? You can the boombox? Well, it's in park, but that was not it because it was a much louder than the model X's real horn. Does yours have that? No, mine sounds like a normal car. So he got a cool horn in him. How do we get that? I want a cool horn. That sounds sick. That sounds like, you know what, that sounds like what the cyber truck horn should be. And look, we're sponsored by the cyber truck owners club and this is where we get all this cool information, but I mean, I have to head over the now and find out because I want that horn. Exactly. That sounds cool. Maybe it's, maybe it's broken. Maybe only certain states can have, or certain locations, maybe, maybe like NHTSA doesn't allow it on the road or something, like because I would confuse people into thinking it's a fire truck, whatever. I don't know. NHTSA. Maybe you have to be a firefighter to have it. The cyber truck saw a huge uptick in sales in July, according to S&P global mobility. 5,175 cyber trucks were sold in July. That is up 61% month over month. And that means that Tesla almost beat all the competitors electric pickup truck sales combined in July. Yep, so there was 5,546 units of Ford F-150 lightnings, Hummer EV pickups, Chevy Silverado EVs, and Rivian R1Ts that were sold in July. So the total of all of their competitions, EV pickup truck sales, including pickup trucks, right, actually most of them that are cheaper, except for the Hummer, all of them combined, they almost beat all of their competition. Yeah. And keep in mind that this is with Tesla only selling the foundation series cyber truck with an extra $20,000 premium. Once that goes away soon, the price drops $20,000 and becomes a whole lot more affordable. This is also before, keep in mind that we get to the $60,000 single motor rear wheel drive, uh, cyber truck. And if you can get it below $80,000, you get the federal tax credit. So I mean, none of us yet have gotten that credit because we're above that limit. If Tesla can get it below that, which I think it can, uh, then you get that on top. Little tip, if you own a business, this truck gets the Hummer credit, baby. And if you don't know what that is, talk to a tax attorney because it's a fun one. It's a very fun taxes usually aren't fun. This is fun. But do you know what's down 80% cyber truck wrap options? Let me see. Cyber truck. I don't give a, you're down on your luck. You never get stuck. So don't be a schmuck. Oh, I see what you mean. There aren't a lot of like truck rhymes. No, no, no, not that kind of rap. This kind of rap. Oh, oh, cyber truck wraps. Oh, okay. Um, but what are you talking about down 80% Tesla originally offered matte black and satin white and then expanded it to five color options and then 11. Oh, right. I remember that. But now on Tesla's cyber truck color paint film website, there are only three color options. Wait, down from 11 to three. They have the satin rose gold for 6,500, the satin metallic black for 6,000 and the satin ceramic white for 6,000. So I'm guessing that Tesla had like data showing that all the other colors weren't that popular. I mean, we've seen a lot of rap cyber trucks, but most of them seem to have either been super custom or colors that Tesla didn't offer. Yeah, my guess is that people who want to wrap their cyber trucks want them to be something really personal and unique. And so Tesla is reducing their offerings to colors that were really in demand. What do you think of Tesla's reduced selection though, comment down below and let us know your thoughts. I mean, I also think that it might be a little cheaper. If you do the wrap yourself of all the cars in the world, this is probably the easiest one to wrap. And most of wrapping a car is the labor. So you could buy the film yourself and apply it. And even if you mess up a little bit, it's probably not going to be as noticeable as it would be on like a Corvette. I want, please comment down below how many people who've wrapped your vehicles, any kind of vehicle did it yourself versus hired someone? Is it like 50/50 or is it just a small minority of people that wrap it themselves? I think it's a minority of Honda Civic drivers, just kidding. But I think it is pretty rare in the world of, you know, once you get the car above $40,000, I think most people tend to pay because it is a heck of a lot of work. But cyber truck could be a lot easier. You see so many people on e-scooters nowadays. Yeah, maybe you're feeling a little left out. Or maybe you've had an e-scooter before, but it didn't last and you're kind of gun shy about getting another one. That's what we're here for. This week on now let's review, we reviewed the Navi V40 electric scooter. We review dozens of e-scooters, e-bikes, e-long boards and more over on now let's review. We've been doing it for years and we try to bring that experience with so many brands and models to you in every review video we do. You have so many e-mobility products to choose from. We hope that we can help you make informed decisions since let's face it, there aren't many places or any places that we know of that you can go see all these brands and models lined up for you to test out yourselves. That would be awesome by the way, but the next best thing is to stop by our now let's review channel and go for a virtual test drive today. I mean, wouldn't that be awesome if there was like a Home Depot just full of e-bikes and e-scooters, it's like aisle six is just for riding. Exactly, aisle six, it should be around the park, yeah. Somebody do that. I know. With all these abandoned malls, you know, just ride through the mall. So over on our disruptive investing channel, we interviewed the metals company, the CEO, a really exciting company because so many of us think that the only way you can get materials for batteries is to do mining and this company does not do mining. Yeah, I'm not going to tell you exactly what they do, but involves a underwater room book. It's really exciting stuff. It's one of these things where when I first heard about it, I'm like, no, nope, nope. And then you get to meet the CEO of the company and talk to them and find out who else joined the board of the company, which you'll find out in that interview. And you go, oh, wait, this is actually was just beyond my brain power. You also get to see them actually working on it. There's footage of them actually doing it, which I think is really, really cool and exciting. So if you wanted to go check that out, head over to our disruptive investing channel. That's a separate YouTube channel over on YouTube. Just search for disruptive investing and subscribe. So our buddy Kyle Connor without a spec just range tested a new refreshed model three head to head with a pre refreshed and old model three. And guess what he found the refresh got more range. Yep. A lot more. Kyle said new Tesla model three long range. Oh, we'll drive blows past the EPA rating. We traveled 370 miles at 70 miles an hour constant in our typical loop style range test. It then traveled to further miles, not able to maintain 70 miles an hour before we ran it to dead. The bigger news is how much farther it went than the original car with the same exact battery, even accounting for degradation. The new car went 60 miles farther than the old car on a perfect side by side comparison. Whoa. Wait. So the Tesla website says that the refreshed model three long range all wheel drive has 341 miles of EPA estimated range, but Kyle got 370 miles. Yeah, that's 29 miles more. And as Kyle points out, that's 60 miles more than the old model three long range all wheel drive. Wow. Wow. Go check out Kyle's video for all the deets. But it appears to be the same battery, which is the cool part, because normally I would have been like, Oh, well, they just shove more batteries in it. But no, with the refresh, remember, we heard about how they were doing all these improvements to the powertrain, the wheels, the body, like all these little things are like, Oh, 2%, 3%, you add those up and you get what he just got. And that's the relentless innovation that Tesla does that, you know, a lot of us are like, Mm, it doesn't really matter. It does matter. It really shows the cool part of electric cars, which is that instead of in a gas car, where it's like, we made it slightly more efficient, but the engine is still 30% efficient here because the motors are like 98% efficient. When you make a slight change to the body or a slight change to the drive train, you can significantly, significantly improve the range. Yeah, it's really cool. Take that range anxiety. I know right. So whole Mars catalog posted this week, first test of pure vision auto park on the Tesla Cybertruck. I'm impressed. So cool to see the Cybertruck wheel moving on its own for the first time. And Elon responded, we should change that so the yoke is stationary as it is not mechanically coupled to the wheels. Same goes for when it's on autopilot. Makes sense, right? I mean, why bother turning the yoke if it's not physically connected to the wheels? Just have it stay fixed while the vehicle parks itself. But then Adam brought up a good point. Honestly, don't. If a human override needs to come in, it needs to be at the position where it's steering already for the human to intervene safely with their intuitive driving skills. And so I see his point. If all of a sudden you're like, oh, no, don't do that. You want to grab the wheel at the point that you are used to the wheel being. And that way, when you make a correction, you know, oh, I'm going from right to left, as opposed to it just sitting there. And when you make that grab it, you don't really, your brain's like, which way do I turn it? I don't know if he's right because this has never happened. It's true. It's never happened before that the wheel wasn't moving when the car was steering. I feel like if the car was about to hit something this way, I would know to intuitively turn it the correct way. But I don't know. Right. I mean, I think that that's kind of standard. And I know that people would be like, oh, as soon as you grabbed it, it would then try and steer to that position. I think that what Tesla could do would be to have like a two or three second period where if you grab the wheel and you move it, it's going to mathematically create a new center point of the wheel and slowly bring that center point back. So like imagine for a minute the wheels returned like this and the steering wheel is flat. And you grab the wheel and you turn it left. It's going to want to really turn left. So you go, ah, and then the wheels come back and then they follow it. Or let's say you need to, let's say it's like a little bit to the right and you need to turn right more. You'd go, ah, and it would follow you. I feel like that could work. I think that it could, excuse me, a knitzer must get involved in this. I have some checklist to go through here. I just, your, your joke is not turning it. It could work. I think that it really could work. I think that people sometimes, I don't want to say that they lack imagination. I'm sure that you know what we asked our patrons and later in the show, we will tell you what they think. Okay. I do think though, if you prevented the wheel from turning except for human intervention, then instead of, because like I've seen people where they put in an autopilot and then they like hover their hands over the wheel because they don't know what to do. Or they might like sit their hands on their lap or they might like take out their phone because they're like, well, I can't leave my hands on the wheel because I don't know what the wheel is going to do. Sometimes the wheel does something and I might accidentally take it out of autopilot or whatever. I see. If I could rest my hands on the wheel, it could basically just be like something that I just hold inadvertently. And then if I go like, oh shoot, then I can actually, like I can, I think it could work. You know what we should do? We should roll out this to half of the cars and get some feedback and see how many of them smash and how many of them don't. Tesla can actually do this. I know, right. Do you know that that's impossible for any other car maker to do? No, it would be really cool if you had the choice though. And that way we could see if drivers like it or not. That's a really good point. That's a really good up to us. Leave it up to us. That's a really good point. Yeah. That's cool. Cars Direct Kia has started a promotional program called the Tesla competitive bonus program whereby they are offering current Tesla owners and LEC's $1,000 off a new Kia EV6 and $1,500 off a new EV9. Elon said, but here's the rub. Tesla never has to bribe Kia drivers to buy a Tesla. So this incentive along with the $7,500 off that Kia is now offering on both models would bring the starting price down to $36,000 for the EV6 and $47,4 for the EV9. And August Kia had their best U.S. sales month ever for all their types of cars. So gas, hybrid, PHEV and BEV with 75,217 units sold. But EV6 sales were down 25% to 1885 units while the EV9 sales were up 27% to 2388 units. It kind of reveals the Tesla is the car company to be. That's true. When you're like, Hey, if you want to buy, if you drive our competitions cars, please now, I will say that I think that I have not driven the Kia EV9, but I think that the look of it and the size of it are things that people really, really glom on to. Hey, that's all I like that. That's a big rectangle. I can fit my culture. Exactly. And look, people will buy it based on that. Absolutely. Although the Tesla sold more cyber trucks than that in the month of June. I'm willing to just give you an idea on sales. So 75,000 Kia sold in August in the U.S. Tesla sold roughly 50,000 units in the U.S. in August. Even though they sold less, that was with Kia's entire offering, including gas cars, some of the cheapest cars you could buy, which is pretty interesting. So I mean, that does give you some perspective how Tesla is doing. I mean, they're when they're actually in the same range as these big automakers. Right. Do you think that $1,000 or $1,500 is going to make a big difference to buyers? I don't know. I mean, if you already own a Tesla, I don't know what would get you out of a Tesla. I mean, so that's the part I'm like, what would move you away from a Tesla? Let me know it out in the comments. Is it is it political? Because you don't like Elon anymore? Is it a trade-in, though? I mean, could this basically be a secondary car? Because I can totally understand having a secondary car that's not a Tesla. I suppose maybe just, I mean, the Kia owners that I've talked to like the buttons. So maybe it's just, you know, I just missed my button. I feel like you wouldn't miss them after you got into a Tesla, but that's just me. So remember we reported a couple of weeks ago how the great grandson of the founder of Chrysler wrote this scathing letter to Stellantis, which now owns the Chrysler and Dodge brands, saying how unhappy he was that Stellantis has been destroying those brands. Well, now the CEO of Stellantis, Carlos Tavares, has gotten another scathing letter, this time from their own auto dealers. Yeah, the letter from the chairman of the US National Dealer Council, Kevin Farish, says, "The reckless short-term decision-making to secure record profits in 2023 has had devastating yet entirely predictable consequences in the US market. Those consequences include the rapid degradation of our iconic American brands, brands like Jeep, Dodge, Ram and Chrysler, that have over a century of history in America. The market share of your brands has been slashed nearly in half. Stellantis stock prices tumbling, plants are closing, layoffs are rampant, and key executives are fleeing the company. Investor lawsuits, supplier lawsuits, strikes, the fallout is mounting. Your own distribution network, your dealer body, has been left in an anemic and diminished state." So what did Tavares do? He wrote back, basically saying he disagreed with their assessment. We take absolute exception to the letter sent by the president of the Stellantis National Dealer Council in the United States, Kevin Farish. Last month, we introduced an action plan developed with the dealer body that has already shown results. August sales were up 21% over July, market share was up 0.7 points, and dealer inventory was reduced for two consecutive months by 42,000 units were approximately 10% in total. This is the result of working together with our dealer network, and we want to thank them for their constant support and engagement. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Look, the dealers are right. I mean, in July, Stellantis reported a 48% year-over-year decrease in net profits, mainly from poor sales in North America. So they can talk all about how they increased sales, what they did was they just slashed the prices. I mean, you can sell almost anything if you slashed the price. I also just love, I know that this has nothing to do with numbers, but I love it when he's like, we want to thank our dealer network for their constant support. They literally just sent you a letter saying that you suck, and you're like, "Thanks for your constant support." They're political, yeah. It seems to me like this merger between European and American brands did not go that well, especially for the American brands. For instance, Stellantis's Ram and Jeep brands have seen a 19% decline from 2019 until now. As Stellantis struggles to understand the market and to electrify their offerings. Yeah, no, I mean, this is what happens when you do these mergers, right? It's just you're getting in the economies of scale to help you, but other than that, you've got a bunch of people who don't know how to run a car company effectively. They're just basically running it like any widget that you would sell. It's also not really economies of scale because normally you scale up. You're scaling up. This is where you have a bunch of losing companies that all band together. Yes, but we're really good at firing people. So you get the economies of scale for companies that are shrinking. So it doesn't, when you're scaling down, when everything's, when you're losing, it really hurts your economies of scale. I think the moment that showed that they didn't really understand their American brands was when they opened an Alfa Romeo museum in Michigan. It was like, "Uh, no, that's not, mm-mm." Well, people love Alfa Romeo in America. So Elon Musk reposted this from the boring company, and that's a wrap, boring company's 15th tunnel. Well, that's really cool. And we're going to talk more about some boring company stuff. It's really boring. BORRY! Over on our Patreon bonus stories this week. Yeah, kind of interesting tidbits that we learned. We'll see you there. All right. So for some SpaceX news here, this was such an exciting week for me and Jesse. I mean, the Polaris Dawn mission launched last Tuesday, September 10th. Elon said, "The Polaris program astronaut mission is headed for an altitude three times higher than the space station, the furthest that humans have been from Earth in over half a century." So Kiko Donchev, who works at SpaceX, says, "There are launches, and then there are launches. Hard to describe the blood, sweat, and tears that got the Polaris program crew to orbit today." Elon said, "Congratulations, SpaceX team and the Polaris program crew." And look at this little X, how cool to be in the launch, I mean, wow, the stories he's going to have to tell. SpaceX said Falcon 9 will launch Dragon to an elliptical orbit of 190 by 1,200 kilometers, where it will orbit the Earth eight times before raising itself to an apogee of 1,400 kilometers. This will be the highest humans have traveled in Earth's orbit since the completion of the Apollo program over 50 years ago. And Elon said, "During this mission, Dragon will travel repeatedly through the orbital altitudes of over 10,000 satellites and bits of space debris, no room for error in our calculations." Oh, that's a little scary. Yeah. They only really have understood that now after they've gotten back safely. SpaceX said, "Achieven unlocked apogee 1,400.7 kilometers, forward bulkhead Draco firing during burn." Elon then said, "Fire, and then the Dragon astronauts are now further from Earth than any humans in over half a century." SpaceX then posted, "Polaristan is the first mission to test Starlink laser-based communications using the plug-in-plaser inside Dragon's trunk to communicate with Starlink satellites throughout the mission." John Kraus says, "Reaching an apogee of 1,400 kilometers during the "Polaristan mission" today, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis, both SpaceX engineers, have traveled farther into space than any women in the history of humankind. And I didn't hear anything about that on the mainstream media, did you? I haven't heard it practically anywhere else. It's really cool. Well, it's not just cool. It's super cool. It's super cool. And then it was time for "Space Walk." [applause] There's SpaceX. Back at home, we all have a lot of work to do, but some gear looks like a perfect world. [applause] So Elon said, "About to begin spacesuit pressurization, that will be followed by venting cabin air to vacuum, at which point the only thing keeping the astronauts alive is the spacesuit itself." We got to see SpaceX's. This is a SpaceX spacesuit, by the way. Yes. This is not NASA. They did not help them with the spacesuit. Nope. For some people, it was a little underwhelming. You have a guy stepping out into open space. And a girl. And a girl. And then they kind of do a lot of hand things, and people are like, "What are they throwing up gang signs up there?" They were testing the suit. They were testing out the suit. It's basically a spaceship that you wear. So the flexibility in all of the joints, in all of the arms, and stuff like that. That had never been tested before. These are not clothes, okay? I know that people think, "Oh, it's just clothes, and why does it look so bulky?" They have to pressurize it in a vacuum, okay? You know when you like get a hickey, or something, or if you like hold the vacuum cleaner up to you? Yeah. That's nothing compared to space, and they need to have a suit on a spaceship that keeps their innards in their bodies. Not to mention temperature. Everything has to be taken care of, including breathing, everything. Physics has accomplished that in an open vacuum, which is insane, while also having quite a bit of flexibility. Now you also may wonder, "Why is Jared Isaacman looking so goofy? Why is his arm like that?" That's because the suit is literally pressurized, and that is where it rests, and there's no gravity, so he doesn't get pulled down to the ground. It's absolutely astounding. I know that he wasn't stepping on the moon or anything, but this is really insane because this has never happened before. We have not had a private company launch private astronauts into space on a private capsule with a private owned space suit. This is stuff of governments and SpaceX is able to accomplish this. Yeah. And I mean, it was so scary when I was watching them open that airlock because there is no airlock. There's no like other room. You know how like on the space station you can go into another room like they do in the movies? Right. There's the pod made doors out. Right. You open this, and you are in space. SpaceX had failed another astronaut said, "The big irreversible decision to open the hatch soon. If it doesn't close properly, the crew would have had to do an emergency deorbit with pressurized suits serious business." And Elon said very. So SpaceX said Dragon is performing the spacewalk in an elliptical orbit of 190 to 700 kilometers today after reaching a max altitude of 1408.1 kilometers on day two of the mission and breaking the Earth orbit record set by Gemini 11 over 50 years ago when that spacecraft reached 1373 kilometers. Elon said, "Dragon is now more than three times further from the Earth than the space station." And he says, "Love our new helmet." SpaceX says, "Commander Isaacman conducting suit mobility tests while Dragon flies between Australia and Antarctica." And then Elon posted these two pictures and he said, "Once upon a dream." Yeah. And this is because Sarah Gillis played a beautiful John Williams song while the rest of Earth was playing it in tandem. It just blew my mind that she had to actually test her violin to make sure it wouldn't destroy itself when the capsule was in zero pressure. I think they had to either depressurize it on Earth to off gas all of the stuff, or I think they kept it in a special pressurized container while they were doing their spacewalk. How does she keep it in tune? I mean, seriously. Did you know she's on top of being an astronaut? She's also a concert violinist. I know. Incredible. Damn. Yeah. And then splashdown of Dragon confirmed welcome back to Earth and Polaris crew is home safe and sound. Wow. I'm relieved now. I'm so excited. And I just, I think what just really made me so mad this week was that I thought the whole world was going to be talking about it. I thought it would just be non-stop talking about it. And then I'm like looking around on social media and everything and it's like, where's the mention of Polaris Don? I think it's, it really comes down to like three different things. One is it didn't get any media coverage. Like, right. Pretty much any. I know that there was a couple of stories and they really, really focused on the violin. The violin is fun. It is a fun part, but it is not the important part. Well, because I think a lot of people thought it was just someone on the ISS. So okay. So there's no media coverage. Then SpaceX doesn't live cast to YouTube anymore. So they lose out a bunch of viewers that way. And thirdly, a lot of the cool stuff that was happening was happening when it was like midnight or three o'clock in the morning in the United States. No excuse though. And you know, teachers out there show this stuff to your kids and your classes because this is what's going to inspire the next generation of space flight. And basically tell them that this just happened. And show them and just be like, this just happened. Sarah Gillis was playing violin in space. The furthest away a woman has ever been from Earth. I mean, that is insane. I hope there's another Netflix documentary or something. I really do because I think that it's so hard to tell this story. Just you or I. There needs to be a lot of visual. There needs to be music. There needs to be a visual medium. But follow SpaceX on X because there's a lot of good stuff there. So Starlink said just 10 months after opening our factory in Bastrop, Texas, the Starlink team there has built 1 million Starlink standard kits. The team is ramping production to meet the surging demand for high-speed internet around the world. And Elon said 100%. And this could put Starlink's annual production rate at 4.5 million units a year. And it's a good thing that Starlink is pumping out all those Starlinks because the Philippine Commission on Elections just reported that they will be using 7,000 Starlink terminals in their upcoming 2025 mid-term, countrywide elections. Get this. There's 500,000 candidates running for 18,000 seats for national and local positions all running Starlink. How cool is that? Because when you think about the Philippines, it's this huge country that you can't like necessarily drive from every place. So can you imagine trying to get paper ballots all to one place and they're like, "Okay, wow, man, where's that guy from that island?" And it's like, "Let's store me!" So having Starlink is going to be able to enable them to have an election that way. Yeah. And talking about islands, Starlink is now available in the Cook Islands. Nice. Also, Gwynne Shotwell, President of Starlink, says we're excited to team up with United Airlines to transform the in-flight experience across their fleet of more than 1,000 planes. With Starlink on board your United flight, you'll have access to the world's most advanced high-speed internet from gate to gate and all the miles in between. And you know how SpaceX was fine for spilling potable water on the ground at Starbase? Well, Masmo said, "I would invite everyone to post this as a response to every clown worrying about SpaceX spilling potable water on the ground." And Elon said, "Yeah, that happens a lot." So when will Starship fly? Well, currently Starship is ready, but the FAA says now that they won't issue the permit until late November. That would be the next flight of Starship, which, you know, Starship, next flight Starship is ready to fly. We are waiting for regulatory approval. You know, it really should not be possible to build a giant rocket faster than the paper can move from one desk to another. That stamp is really hard, approved. SpaceX posted a blog post last week called "Starships are meant to fly" that explains how SpaceX learns from each launch of Starship. And so for them to develop the ability to launch and reuse the booster and Starship and then explore other planets, they need to launch Starships regularly and in quick succession. SpaceX explains that Starship's permitting is being delayed by different regulatory agencies like the TCEQ, FAA, EPA, and Fish and Wildlife for no legitimate reasons. Yeah, Starship was ready to launch in early August, but has been held up by bureaucratic red tape. And it's not just like a world we just need to be careful kind of bureaucratic red tape. It's a politically motivated red tape. And if you're wondering why Elon endorsed Donald Trump, this is one of the major reasons why. Again, Elon doesn't endorse Donald Trump because he agrees with all of his policies. He mainly is supporting Trump as we'll see in his tweets of the week because the Democrats have basically just told him to go screw himself, exactly. John Krause says a new record has been set for the most people in Earth orbit at one time. 19 people. That's it? Yup. That's insane. And Elon said, "Cool. Cool. Very cool." And John saw T-Mobile's CTO posted, "T-Mobile and Starlink have made history. We've sent the first ever wireless emergency alert from the US to space. This test shows that we're on our way to Starlink satellites one day serving as space-based cell towers, enhancing connectivity in remote areas like mountains and national parks for all, regardless of their network provider." And Elon said, "Cool. Cool." And here is Sitka Alaska, population about 8,500 people. Sitka. Sitka. Sitka loses internet frequently and when it does, it usually goes out for days and days. Our patron, Greg, shared this story of their broadband department, getting 24 Starlink dishes and installing them throughout the community at hospital, schools and even the Coast Guard. Starlink is enabling communities all over the world to connect the internet that otherwise couldn't. Yeah. Pretty amazing. All right. It's time for Into the Future. Sponsored by our friends at Henson shaving. Thank you so much for Henson for sponsoring this show. You can use our code to get over 200 shaves for free. That's 100 blades. You can get those by using our code. Now you know at checkout, that's now you know with no spaces and you will get 100 blades when you check out with your new Henson razor. Your face will thank you. So Mobileye has announced that as part of our regular review of the long-term technology roadmap, we now believe that the availability of next generation FMCW LiDAR is less essential to our roadmap for eyes off systems. Uh, could I get that in English? They're ditching LiDAR. But wait a minute. Remember what Taylor Ogan said back in 2019? Yeah, he said history of Musk saying Mark my words, Elon Musk, April 23rd, 2019, anyone relying on LiDAR's doomed LiDAR's lame in cars, it's freaking stupid. They're all going to dump LiDAR. That's my prediction. Mark my words. In reality, all public Robotaxes use LiDAR. Most flagship EVs have LiDAR. Wait, wait. So let me get this straight. Mobileye and pretty much every other company working on autonomous driving plus all these other so-called experts like Taylor Ogan, CEO and founder of Snowball Capital, who even moved his company to China because he was so sure that LiDAR was the key to autonomy. They all got it wrong. By the way, and now Mobileye is laying off 100 people who are all working on LiDAR for years. And hundreds of millions of dollars spent on LiDAR years after Elon said it was a crutch. Yep. It's not like Elon was in his secret layer developing autonomy and not letting anyone know how he was doing it. Elon was telling the world, don't waste your time with LiDAR and yet nobody believed him. LiDAR is a fool's errand and anyone relying on LiDAR is doomed, doomed, expensive, expensive sensors that aren't unnecessary, it's like having a whole bunch of appendices, like one appendix is bad. Well, now they want to put a whole bunch of them, that's ridiculous, you'll see. And now look where we are, Tesla is achieving full self-driving without LiDAR and all these other companies have been trying for years are now having to admit that they went down the wrong path. Yeah, as Austin Alred said, Tesla moving away from LiDAR really seemed much crazier at the time than it does now, was met with near 100% derision and scorned from analyst types. Everyone shouting that Tesla was full of hubris and ignorance. And Elon said, yeah, and it turns out he was right, because he is a guy who can call the shots, but he also understands what the f*ck he's talking about. And when you're in a corporate culture, unlike Tesla, we have to keep showing progress, even if it's incremental, you're going to stick with LiDAR because you know that you can, well, since we move so slowly, we can just keep using the LiDAR relying on it like a crutch. And I can make my boss happy for the next couple of years until they realize that LiDAR is a stupid move and then you get fired. It's time for our Cover Your Ass meeting. I'm going to cover my ass. All right, time for Going Green. So we've reported on the Tesla-funded electric train at Giga Berlin that runs from Berlin to the Gigafactory. Now a new bus line that Tesla funded started running last Monday. The first bus starts at 5 a.m. and runs the route six times a day. So the 45-minute route connects first-in-walled, Hengelsberg, the Tesla factory in Gronheim, and Erkner all together, and it's primarily intended for Tesla employees, but the general public can ride it as well. So this was paid for by Tesla, even though the general public can ride it. Isn't that something the government should do, you know, like, just a little, seems like, I mean, I get it's for employees. I mean, it's great. Yeah. You know, you can take the bus to work. Yeah. I can't wait till it's an electric bus though. That's true. But if you live in the Atlanta, Georgia area, you should start seeing these on your streets soon. Are those the next generation delivery vehicles that the US Post Office has been delaying for years? Yep. So remember Postmaster DeJoy? He pushed back hard against electrifying the US Postal Fleet, you know, those 1980s Gruman mail trucks with single digit miles per gallon gas mileage. But then in 2021, he signed a deal to electrify 10% of the fleet. Yeah. And people pushed back. And so after lawsuits, congressional hearings, the Post Office finally agreed to 100% BEV purchases after 2026 with a small number of ice trucks coming from Oshkosh before them. Oh, right. Oshkosh defense contractors got the contract for electric vehicles that they've ever made before. Right. No government corruption there. Absolutely not. Can we make electric postal delivery trucks? Sure we can. We make tanks, don't we? Why can't we make electric vehicles? How hard can it be? Now this is a cost plus contract, right? Now the USPS already awarded a big contract to Ford for 9,250E transit trucks that will join the fleet. So keep your eyes and cameras ready to spot these new electric nigtives, which will start rolling out in Atlanta. We're already hearing from postal workers that they love them compared to the old ones. Yeah, they've now got air conditioning and airbags. Welcome to the 21st century or 20th century. Also, didn't the old ones catch fire a lot? Define a lot, a lot. I heard from one postal worker that they actually like trained the postal workers how to get out of the truck in case of a fire. So I mean, can you imagine it's like, all right, so today we're going to learn how to deliver packages. Also, how to unbuckle that seat belt get out of the truck when it catches on fire. Much like a tank. You'd have to practice like in a tank because again, it was developed by a defense contractor. So we reported last week that Tesla and EVJect, the company that makes the escape connector, had reached an agreement. Well, great news, Tesla has officially dropped the lawsuit against EVJect. Tesla dropped the suit because EVJect agreed to include thermal sensors in all of their upcoming devices. So EVJect is ramping up production of the Nax EVJect supervised version 1.2 with thermal sensors and it should be shipping later this year. It'll be shipping those along with the CCS1 and CCS2 versions that are available for pre-order now. Finally, Tesla and EVJect continue to work together to provide us options to escape while plugged in. I do know that EVJect is working with several automakers, UL, which is underwriters laboratories, and EV consortiums to provide options to all EV drivers worldwide. If you'd like to pre-order your EVJect escape connector version 1.2 with thermal protection, use our code, now you know 30 to get 30% off. All right, time for sunspots. Now we talk a lot about how grid scale batteries make the grid more resilient. Here is a case in point. Tesla Megapack posted on February 9th, a generator in Oahu, tripped causing a rapid drop in frequency. Megapacks at PlusPower's KES facility responded within 250 milliseconds, providing 50 megawatts of fast power response from grid forming frequency droop and fast frequency response controls, stopping frequency decline and ensuring the grid recover to the stable frequency level. Sometimes, can you say frequency in one tweet? Frequently. Here's the, I just want to start off by saying it's crazy that a generator can trip. Oh, oh, it just tripped. You may not know this, but the grid runs at 60 Hertz in the United States. It runs at 50 Hertz in Europe. And what that means is when you start reducing the amount of power, the reason you hear the power go like when they do the thing that's dropping from 60 Hertz down to zero. In this case, it did not drop even dramatically anywhere close, but you can see the frequency take a dip as the generator tripped. And then you can see it start to come back up as the Tesla Megapack was deployed. Yeah, along the bottom there, that seconds. So basically with less than a second, so you would have just probably seen a flicker in your lights and then the power was back to normal all because the batteries can do that. Now you might be like, well, okay, why not just do that with another power plant? The other power plants take up to 15 minutes to get up to that. So you would have had the power go out for 15 minutes and then get your power back. The other thing is the frequency can't be allowed to droop too much, otherwise it causes damage to many, many electronics. Exactly. And this is why you have surge protectors and things like that. But also the grid will actually just shut down if the frequency drops too low. Exactly. So protect itself. This is a really interesting case in point. I know that it's a little bit in the weeds. I just thought we'd bring it to you because it's really cool. And this is the resilience part that we talk about. And I know it's in the weeds and I know that most people don't understand how the grid works. And every second of every day, there's grid operators making sure that you're getting exactly the power you need. But if it's not for batteries, you wouldn't have a grid that could do this. So on places like this, you would have just, this would have been a story about a power outage. Right. And I know you go like, oh, power outages. They're kind of fun. You know, you go, you get the candles and you get all the things that can't happen when you have power. You can't pump gas. You can't, you know, hospitals have to close. Exactly. And I know that this idea of like a power outage being this kind of romanticized thing, yeah, that was from the past. That was before you had a router. That was before you had all sorts of things that you relied on in your life. You'd be like, oh, I guess we'll go get the, we'll go get the board games and some candles. It's not like that anymore. I think that we all can understand that. But it's also, it's life threatening to lots of people to have power outages, especially in places where it can be very, very hot. And if you'd like to get batteries for your house, maybe solar as well, but you have a lot of questions. There's so many choices out there and you don't know where to start, call our friends at EnergyPal. They'll help you go solar and battery for less and they'll do their part for free. So contact them. Their link is down below in the show notes and tell them that Zach and Jesse sent you. All right. It's time for our video contributor stories. Remember, we need your stories to make the show great. Send them to hello@nayonochannel.com. What do we got this week? We have Endicott Tom with his Cybertruck. Hey Zach and Jesse, hi. This is Endicott Tom from up here in sunny well for you guys that's out west here in sunny Endicott, New York, not too far from Binghamton. And there's not too many Cybertrucks up this way. So I'm basically the only guy in this area. So I got to behave because it would be really easy to figure out who's doing crazy stuff in their Cybertruck. But I'm sure the people in California, Florida and Texas don't have this problem because there's a whole bunch of them out there. But I'm the only one out here, along with you guys out in Massachusetts. But it's interesting because every time I go out of you where I have to schedule an extra half an hour to an hour, whenever I go out because I have to usually give my 30 minute dissertation on what the heck this thing is. So I thought maybe I would give you the short form of my dissertation so that people can basically keep this in their back pocket if they ever get stopped with their Cybertruck. So here's my short form dissertation. This is my seventh and last truck. Love it. It's the future. All-electric. Quick, steer by wire, four wheel scaring, tires, basically one size bigger than my last truck but they're on 20 inch wheels, air suspension, 48-volt low voltage, ethernet loop, almost no maintenance. Back into the garage, plug it in. And most importantly of all, last truck would go to 150 miles on $60 of gas. This thing will go to 150 miles on $15 of electricity. So hopefully this will help some of our Cybertruck brethren out there who get stuck every time they go out getting a dissertation on what the heck this is. Now you know. Thanks, Tom. Nice list. All right. Cyber Patreon bonus stories. And on the show this week, we've got a lot of stories just for our patrons. We got the Juniper Model Y spotted. We got the US Navy got stinky. What does James May think of a Cybertruck and more? So you can see all these stories for just a buck a month. Head on over to patreon.com. Don't forget we have the investor club as well. We'll see you over there. All right. We're back from a Patreon bonus story is it's time for the Patreon poll we asked earlier. Should Tesla keep the yoke stationary when the vehicle is auto parking itself? And what did our patrons think? They said no. Have the yoke turned so that drivers can take over easier if necessary. I get it. But I also think we just don't know. Maybe it would work really well without it. So I think I do think it would be cool if they gave us the option. Give us options. Just say, do you want this feature or not? I think so too. I mean, it's a very green eggs and ham kind of thing. It's like if you've never tried it, how do you know that you don't like it? And you could try it in like an empty parking lot, you know, in a place where you wouldn't get into an accident and just test it. Also, I do have to wonder like how often do we use auto park collectively? I think we're going to use a lot more. Probably. Especially when we're not in the cars and it's going and parking itself. All right. It's time for Elon's X's of the week. Hassan says iPhone 16, same phone, just two new buttons and a new color. Elon said for only $50 billion in R&D, what a bargain. All right. So there's going to be a lot of posts here about Haitians who might be eating cats or sacrificing cats and things like that. And so just put it in context that there is more and more evidence that that is happening. And so if you're coming from like CNN world where it doesn't happen, you might find all these offensive if you're coming from the world where you've seen these things happening, you know that this is what's going on. So Ashley St. Clair said, remember when Americans had to be evacuated out of Haiti because a cannibal gang leader named barbecue took over the entire country, Elon said, it appears that the vetting process for flying in vast numbers of people from Haiti was not rigorous. And then he posted, save them. Not to be said, the legendary James Earl Jones has passed away. Elon said, RIP. He was awesome. Elon then said, just had a conversation at the all in podcast. Really good. And if you want to find out like what Saturday lives skits didn't make it, there's a great story about it. Alex has questioned, if you could shrink the size of government with Trump, what would be a good target? And Elon said, are you trying to get me assassinated before this even happens? And the nervous emoji, Elon then said, government overspending causes inflation, end of story. That is why prices at the store keep rising, stop government overspending to end inflation. Stephen King says popular mechanics as SpaceX explosion in November blew a hole in the ionosphere. Ojan said, I'd be surprised if he actually knew what was ionosphere. Dylan says, here's why I hear someone say they won't buy a Tesla because of Elon's politics or that FSD is a danger for everyone on the roads. I just laughed because I know they've been programmed to look around people. And yeah, so he posted this basically showing that Toyota Honda Mazda had falsified safety data, VW had dieselgate, GM had ignition switch debacle, Ford's scheme to avoid higher duties. And Elon said, bizarre that so many people still believe the media. Elon then went on and say the publicly stated goal by almost all leaders of the Democratic Party has to legalize the about 15 million illegal migrants as soon as possible, as well as bring in tens of millions more. That would immediately make all swing states deep blue, just like happened in California with the 1986 amnesty, turning America into a permanent one party state. This is the last reelection of Trump loses. So Taylor Swift this week endorsed Kamala Harris and she posted this tweet where she said that she was, you know, didn't have any children and that she was a catwoman. It's a joke. It's funny. And then Elon replied with a joke. Taylor, you win, I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life. It's all joking. It's a joke. A lot of people don't seem to understand jokes. They're very, you know, chronically online. They don't get that she was joking about being a cat lady because she is one of the richest women on earth, one of the most popular musicians to ever live. That's a joke, right? And Elon was joking right back. But a lot of people just they love to take it out of context of like, yeah, he's kidding and making fun of himself. You want to say, unless there are significant government reform laws and regulations, we'll keep getting worse every year until every great endeavor from high speed rail between our cities to making life multiplanetary is effectively illegal. Trump supports a government efficiency commission to allow great things to be done. Kamala does not. We will never reach Mars if Kamala wins. America is being slowly strangled to death by an accumulation of millions of regulations. Tens of thousands of new rules are added every year, but very few are ever removed. Eventually, everything becomes illegal. And then he posted another joke to do with cats. Toxoplasma Gandhi is a danger to our democracy. If you want to know more about the content of a post, just highlight and ask Grok. So I did. And he said the definitive host for T. Gandhi is the cat. Behavioral effects are in humans. Some studies have linked toxoplasmosis with changes in behavior or mental health, including increased risk taking behavior, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Right. So that's the it's that little, um, it's like a worm that lives in cat feces and then you can contract it. And it's like changes your brain chemistry to love cats or something. Right. So it's these joking, right? It actually affects mice and rats and stuff. It makes them more bold so that cats can catch them. Then he said, there should be rules and referees for any field. For example, pro sports could choose to have no referees or rules, but they do not because it would make the games worse. We should have a reasonable set of regulations and regulators for matters affecting public safety, not too few and not too many. There is not currently an effective mechanism in government for removing bad regulations or agencies that have negative net public good. That's why there needs to be a department of government efficiency to force garbage removal of bad regulations and negative net good government agencies. I think a good way to think about this would be you've probably watched like a football game before and like more of the game was taken up with the rough, the refs making calls and you're like, wait, like more yards have been made than some of the like passes or running plays and you're like, man, this game kind of sucks. Just because the refs seem to be over overstepping their bounds, you know, you've watched games like that before. David Gurus says a humongous AI data center that Elon builds in South Memphis near historically black neighborhoods where poor air quality has given residents elevated asthma rates has been allowed to skirt environmental rules and it's shrouded in secrecy. Elon said, what are those idiots talking about? It's literally just a bunch of computers, not a toxic chemical plant. And Scott Threat says, yeah, sure, it's the AI computer, not the three refineries, half a dozen chemical factories and handful of asphalt plants on President's Island that are causing air quality issues. And Elon said bullseye. Amuse says fact check and last night's three on one debate, the ABC News moderators use misleading crime data from the FBI to fact check Donald Trump. The reality is that Trump as he usually is was right. Crime is not down. It is up way up. And Elon said you are being lied to. Doge designer said SpaceX an American company just completed the first ever commercial space walk. The farthest from Earth in over 50 years yet no recognition or appreciation from the president for the Democratic Party politics always comes first, not America. Elon said, Sai Rokana who is a Democratic congressperson said it's an extraordinary achievement. All Americans who love Kennedy's Rice University speech and call for the exploration of new frontiers should be proud. And Elon says, I wish there were more people like you in the Democratic Party. If so, I would still be a strong supporter. And I might think might say that this might be one of the most important tweets this week. Yes. It really does highlight where Elon is coming from with his decision to support Donald Trump. He does not really want to support Donald Trump. He didn't support Donald Trump in the last election. He didn't support Donald Trump in the election before that he really doesn't like the guy. He quit one of his councils because Trump wouldn't listen to him. He doesn't really like Donald Trump. I want you to realize this, it's just that the Democrats have been systematically attacking his companies and preventing him from, he wants to get to Mars so badly that when somebody prevents him or slows him down from getting to Mars, he hates that person and he should. This is like if somebody prevents you from doing something. Like to an annoying extent, you would start to hate that person and you might change political parties because of it. You don't think this was his most important tweet of the week? New TV series. Madalorian. New York Post said feds in the city cracked down on animal sacrifices in New York City's Jamaica Bay after dog carcasses with snap necks and wounded pigs were found. And Elon said, save them and then he posted another AI image of some pets. Elon said, well, one lesson I've learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn't mean it's going to be all that hilarious as a post on X and turns out that jokes are way less funny if people don't know the context and the delivery is plain text. That is so true. That is very true. Youtuber. I just want to go back to that tweet about Taylor Swift. I think that's what he was talking about exactly because people are taking stuff. When he's talking to people, they are near him, which means that they know a little bit about him. And so when he makes a joke in a funny tone, people understand that it's a joke and then out go, he's a creepy weirdo. And lastly, the carousel of destiny spins ever faster. All right, so I'm for a community mail time, Brian spotted a wrapped model three Highland in Bellevue, Washington and a tiny Cybertruck. That's the $1,500 Cybertruck for kids. Oh, I thought he just had a really big Tesla next to it. David spotted this model three in Knoxville, Tennessee, and he also has a question. He said, I have examined closely the original public rendering of the Tesla cafe, you know, the one in Hollywood, okay, you may have access to a better resolution image than me. And if so, you should double check me, but I cannot see a human shape in the dining room or in what I assume to be the kitchen. Is it possible that the staff will mostly be optimists? It could be. I think it's probably going to be aspiring actors. That's my guess. Would it be great if each person had to play a part like Elon Musk and Franz and I think it'd be great if they played actors? I mean, this is their West Hollywood, you know, thing they should all have. I once was at a restaurant and a guy looked exactly like Michael Keaton. He was my waiter. Wow. I wish he had played the part. It would have been really funny. Yeah. Was that place in Hollywood Johnny Rockets where all the actors like do skits and stuff? I think that'd be really fun. That would be fun. So what are those? James spotted these solar chargers on Interstate 10 near San Antonio, Texas. And so did a little research because I'm like, what are those? I believe that those are the EV arc 2020 solar chargers made by beam. They look like this when they're fully set up. Interesting. Mark spotted some Lucids when he was driving from New York to St. Louis. Somebody who shall remain anonymous got these photos of the exterior and interior of the Rivian R3, which should start production in 2026. Well, let's take a look here. So there's the Nax charge plug. Looks pretty spiffy, I might say. And it looks. Yeah. It looks like a Rivian inside. Just be interesting to see if they can pull this off. Because you were in an early R1T years before it was made. And you told me when you got home that basically things were just stuck on with tape and the rear view mirror was falling off because the glue had failed. So I mean, this is obviously just a pre-production. But it'll be interesting to see if they can keep the quality up because a lot of people have been complaining about the new versions of the R1T and the R1S. The sound systems suck now. So as they have to cut costs, things get worse. So it'll be interesting. Yeah. But thank you so much, Anonymous, for taking those. A long time viewer, Jordan, shared this photo of a Model X in Adina, Minnesota, with the license plate Gasless. Jordan says, "Also, I wanted to state that current sentiment in Minnesota surrounding EVs is tenuous. A lot of people love them, but many can't afford them or are waiting for the next generation. While this is an anecdote, I hope it may serve as a helpful indicator as to the state of adoption in Minnesota." Well, the good news is that a new law in Minnesota now offers a rebate for $2,500 for a new EV and $600 for used EVs with no income caps. Nice. RAV from the Thames EV Association in Ontario, Canada, shared these photos of Ex-Pel-Rapped Teslas. Wow. The Ombre one looks kind of cool. That is cool. Brian spotted the Cybertruck at the San Antonio, Texas airport departure area. David says, "Hey guys, spotted this Ford Mustang Mach-E outside of a Walmart in Wellland, Ontario, Canada. It was purchased by a Ford employee in Oakville, Ontario who was laid off for two years due to extended tool changes to start producing EVs. The not so funny part was due to this change, I work for a company that produced the floor panels for the EV they planned to make, and I was laid off permanently. I say permanently because instead of making any EVs, Ford ended up making Ford F-350s at this factory in Oakville. What a radical change that affected my well-being quite a bit. Anyway, now you know. That's sad. And all because Ford was going to make EVs and then decided, "No, you know what people want, $350s." Rick sent us this update on the Rivians in Revia. Hey Zach and Jesse, we're at the site of the old Wonderland dog track, and it's currently being used as a parking lot for vehicles. There's about a hundred Rivian SUVs in almost as many in the pickup trucks. Well, now you know. When I say Rivia, because it's Rivia, Massachusetts, I used to go to Rivia Beach as a kid. That's how they talk. Rivia. Mark spotted these two electric buses coming and going in Montreal, Canada. He says, "I think it shows even here in Quebec, we're making strides towards the electrification of transportation." Daniel shared this America, Cybertruck, he spotted in Illinois. That is really cool. That's a custom wrap if I've ever seen one. Our buddy Roy in Mexico shared these photos of his new 2025 BYD Dolphin Mini Plus, which he calls Limoncita. Oh, that's really cute. That is a cute car. I love the dog there for scale. That is tiny. That is a tiny little car. Josh spotted this Cybertruck in Alexandria, Virginia, charging at a beam solo charger. Brian spotted the Cybertruck and Model 3 in San Antonio near the airport. A lot of people get the Model X and Model Y confused. Steven spotted a plane Model Y in New Zealand. How did he know that was Model Y? It says not X. Christopher spotted this lucid air in New York City last week. That's a sexy photo. With the blue light on the car. I would park my car there just to make it look cool. Fabio from Italy is confused how this 2020 Model 3 is running full self-driving in Crescendino, Italy. Is it like a hack or are they like FSD beta testers there? Could they have imported the car from the United States and it doesn't realize that it's in Italy? You're in New York. You're in New York. We're in Little Italy. It's got to be really tough because the roads are different. The signs are different. I think we should send you there to check it out. And Pailey took a trip from Honolulu to Sacramento on Hawaiian Airlines, the first airline to sign up with Starlink and got internet speeds to get this 866 megabits per second during the flight. Aloha. What are you going to be downloading like multiple movies? I guess it's a long flight. All right, time for beautiful superchargers. And we got a couple here. So Tesla just opened a new 20-stall version for supercharger location here in Rina, Norway, which is located between Oslo and Trondheim. Now what makes this supercharger site beautiful is that there's this walking trail along the River Gloma. So if you visit, please review it on our website and send us pictures. That looks really pretty. And a little call back to September of last year, the 50,000th Tesla supercharger stall in ultra red, which is located in Roseville, California. Yeah. And by the way, Tesla is now up to over 61,000 stalls globally, but that does look sick. That is a cool supercharger. It's got to be broken more frequently than the rest of them because everyone's going to use it. All right. It's time for supercharger reviews. Let's see what's out there in the world. Hey, Zach and Jesse, I'm here in Park City, Utah at the 20 stalls off the Jeremy Ranch exit exit 145. The location is an automatic 10 out of 10 because we have no choice. There are no other superchargers in Park City, Utah, the highest concentration of Teslas in the entire state. And we're finally getting our first supercharger 20 stalls. It's got trash cans. There's a Macy's grocery store, many shops and businesses, a Starbucks coffee in the Macy's grocery store, oh, shucks, bar and grill, great music on Thursday nights, Ace Hardware, Billy Blanco's is one of the coolest restaurants you'll ever see, Hot Rod Shop. At 145 in Park City, Utah, 10 out of 10. Hi, Zach and Jesse. We're in Dillon, South Carolina at a 40 stalls per charger charging the Cybertruck. It's got ore pull through stalls here. So if you were towing or you have bike rack on your Cybertruck, you have no problem charging here. Plenty of places to eat. We started by with the Popeyes here. We got a Zac B's chicken here across the street. You've got a Starbucks, a Taco Bell, and a Dunkin' Donuts at a Waffle House down there. Another Burger Place cookout over here. Plenty of places to eat. I said 40 chargers here. Biggest on the East Coast I've been to. We're just north of the Bucky's, which is also a great supercharger. We're hard to get in and out of. And then we're super close to the North Carolina border. So I recommend this. I'll give this 9 out of 10. Just a second, Jesse. Hey, everyone. We're in Boulder City, Nevada, next to the Hoover Dam Lodge. And this is a brand new version 4 supercharging station with 16 stalls and one trailer stall. And on the other side of that mountain there is Lake Mead. And across the street is a gas station with a bunch of rocks and mining stuff in the store. It's kind of cool. I would give this one a 10 out of 10 unless you want to take away a star for the spotty south soviet. And now you know. Go! Sorry, sorry. Hi. Zack and Jesse. We're here at the new supercharger south for Disney Street. I'm gonna draw from the first supercharger in Reno. Next to the Atlantis Desert Casino and one of the oldest of all of them in Reno. There's plenty of pain here and there's 16 stalls, 250 hill on charge. I would rate this a nine out of 10. Thank you so much for doing supercharger reviews. We really appreciate it. You can find supercharger reviews on our website and you can upload your own. I encourage you to do so. Also destination chargers. Yes. So go to the website, see what's around you, see if there's anything that you're going on a long trip. If there's any holes, make sure that you film it and upload it so that way people will know what the supercharger looks like. Alright, what do we got for new superchargers in the world? We have an expansion from 14 to 28 stalls, these are version of 3 and 4s in Bustor, Germany. We got number 12 in Malaysia, it's a 4 stall version 4 in George Town, Malaysia. Number 49 in Nevada is the 12 stall version 3 in Reno at Wedge Parkway, Nevada. We got the 8 stall version 4 in San Jose, California. Number 491 in California is the 12 stall version 4 also in San Jose. Number 68 in Washington is the 24 stall version 4 in North Bend, Washington. Number 20 in Montana is the 8 stall version 4 in Cowespell, Montana. Remember when we drove through Montana, I think it was like 1 back in 2016. There were 2 or 3. Yeah. Okay. Number 206 in France, the 20 stall version 4 in Argatan-Sucruce, France. Number 196 in Germany is the 8 stall version 4 in Eastlandian-Feels, Germany. Number 80 in New Jersey is the 8 stall in Saddlebrook. Number 97 in New York is the 8 stall in Glenmont, New York. Number 30 in Tennessee is the 24 stall version 4 in Nashville. Number 170 in Florida is the 12 stall in Titusville. The 8 stall version 4 in North Ridgeville, Ohio. The 3 stall in Nanjing, China. Number 2100 in China is the 3 stall in Beijing. Number 145 in the UK is the 15 stall version 4 in Preston, South, UK. Number 42 in Indiana is the 12 stall in Indianapolis. Number 50 in Ohio is the 12 stall in Dayton. And number 26 in Alabama, number 2390 in the USA and number 6621 in the world is the 16 stall version 4 in Ufala, Alabama. Another big week of new superchargers. And they said, we're going to stop making them. Yeah. But they weren't. This and many things that turned out not to be true. I love going back through Tesla bear ex-accounts and I just, I jumped back a couple years and then they were like, you know, they're going to not have enough chargers and they're broken all the time. The cyber truck isn't going to be a real thing. Elon was kidding when he talked about there being a robot. It will not be bullet proof. Yeah. It's really fun actually because they're all up there and they're all wrong. And we're going to talk a little bit more about it. And they keep doing it. They keep, I mean, even this week, there's more people are like, is that really the robot taxi? It looks like a joke. The only thing is right now, we don't have the hindsight to laugh at them. But I do have the foresight to laugh at them because I know what's coming. And if you watch this show and if you've been watching for a while, I think that you know what's coming and you're not going to be as easily fooled. When people start to tell you things about Elon Musk or they start to tell you things about Tesla. Right. Because you'll have the context. I mean, that's the whole thing. If you take things out of context, I get it. If you showed me that little yellow car this week and you're like, that's going to be the new robot taxi. I'd be like, wow, that's a joke. That's not it. It's a camouflage car. So yeah, put everything in context and you realize these people don't know what the hell they're talking about. Right. And they have a clear incentive to lie to you. And if you want to know more about what you're talking about, head on over to Patreon. Join us for as little as a buck a month. We got a lot more stories every single week for our patrons because they're the ones who keep the show going. These people here are the ones who make this show work. Otherwise, YouTube is not helping us. We wouldn't make enough money to be able to pay our editors to do the show. It's a buck a month and you get a show a week. It's a very, very, very good deal. There's not a lot of things in the world that cost 25 cents anymore. No. Okay. A cup of coffee. Oh. I went to them all the other day. Gumballs. Not 25 cents anymore. What are they? They're 50 cents. You have to put two quarters in the machine to make them more. A piece of sugar for 50 cents. I'm telling you, seriously, it's cheaper than a gumball, folks. And it lasts a whole lot longer than the crappy mall gumball that's been sitting in there for three months. This stuff is fresh. It's probably been in there a little longer. Yeah, exactly. This stuff that you're getting on the Patreon bonus stories is going to be way fresher than that. They should stamp a date on one of them and that way you could find one of them. How about all of them? That's fine. It's just sugar. I'm sure you could come back 800 years later and it would still be just as stale. That's true. How did the zombie apocalypse? That's probably the thing to get. So thank you so much for watching us. Thank you so much for supporting us. We'll see you guys next week.
