Ep. 192 - Tesla Semi Watching Through Nevada! - Tailosive EV Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Welcome back to the Tailo Evy podcast, Ladies and gentlemen.
I have kidnapped Mike from his home. He's not going back.
I'm going to leave him in the woods. I mean,
I'm gonna bury you in the desert. What because we're
no longer in California.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
No, we're not.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
We're in the most yellow desert state I can think of.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
I guess New Mexico's kind of up there, Nevada. In Nevada,
there's not a tree in sight.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, Fortunately Randy cannot make it for this podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Maybe the next one, Maybe the next one. Maybe we'll see,
we'll see if he's there. Yeah, but yeah, this is
a first for us. I think we just figured I
barely had time to do an ev podcast this week,
but now we're road tripping all day, kind of stuck
in here with you. You can't get away, there's no
possible way. So we figured we're gonna be in the

(01:16):
middle of you know, flat desolate desert for another ninety minutes,
is what the round planner is saying, before we have
to plug in.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
One hundred and eight miles toe winn in Muka Or.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
We've been everywhere, man, everywhere, have we California. But all right,
when it's a song, all right, okay, all right, okay, anyways, we.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Just finished watching Marquez's id buzz review on auto Focus.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Did not change your mind at all? No, but the design,
of course, is still good.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
I may have been a little bit too harsh in
the last podcast even still.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Okay, Well to compensate, I'll say I wasn't harsh enough.
Oh is pretty bad at that person. See, I think
we were both animated. But I agree with a point
Marquez made, which is that when you think of the
classic BW bus, you're often thinking of road tripping. Picture

(02:20):
the hippes that go across the country to go to
the beach and stuff. So the fact that the range
is pretty low and the price is fairly high, and
you know, I could maybe forgiven if it had really
good and charging characteristics, but it really doesn't. It's still
still four hundred old architecture, right, Yeah, it's still in
ninety four at the end of the day. For the

(02:41):
battery pack, which means it rarely goes above one hundred
and fifty kilo lots, which if you're limited to two
and a half miles per kilo hour, that's not great,
that's not a lot of speed.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
It's not likely the miron phosphate battery either, so you
can't really top charge it all the time. So even
that it's what is it max range of two thirty one,
two thirty four or stuff like.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
That, pretty low, you're not even getting close to that.
But to be fair, I mean we're road tripping right
now by ev is one of the lowest ranged tesla's
there is. Yeah, what's your max range when you first
spotted though, Uh? To seventy two? And what's the battery
pack underneath us right now? Uh?

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Sixty something kilo hours lithiumiron phosphate and yeah, which lets
me charge to full.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
So that helps.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
So that's what I'm trying to get at is maybe
if VW adopted lithiumaron phosphate, Yeah, the range is gonna
be hit a little bit more, but at least you
can top charge it. It's gonna last long. Like what
we've seen with a lot of buses, they've been able
to carry.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
On for a long time.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
True, you think that they'd all be rusted on and
kind of just be a figment of our imagination from
the past, But no, there's still some around Yeah, so
I'd still think, Okay, if you want to embody some
of that, why not carry over what is going to
be the longest lasting battery that we see on the
market today that we can feasibly mass produce, being a

(04:10):
like the Amerin phosphate battery.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, I could think of a few reasons.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
I'm pretty sure they don't make them in America, but
if they do ever plan on building them in the US,
there's some tax credits they wouldn't qualify for if they
relied on LFP, And like you already mentioned, the range
is not great in the first place, and we know
LFP is only going to take it harder.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yep. I'd have a hard time justifying an LFP like
with a.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Sub two hundred mile range, which is probably what it
would be depending on the energy density. But I guess
you could make the argument if it's really just intended
for around town driving, that's probably plenty.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
But that's kind of the awkward position it's in.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
It's like, even with the nickel based batteries, it's not
a great range, but you really can't go much lower,
so it's not great at road tripping, and two hundred
and thirty miles is probably a bit overkill for around
town driving too, so it's this little weird mid step,
you know.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
But yeah, we're not ready for long range evs that
go five hundred plus miles able to have the energy
density along with that.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
It's unless it's a Lucid. Unless it's a Lucidy, You're right.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
I think the key is definitely extreme efficiency, which means
a lot of paying attention to drag and you know,
wind resistance, and then also having a really efficient powertrain.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
So we've been.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Watching some videos with the new Have you caught up
much with the twenty twenty five Lucid airs.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
I've not.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
They've made some pretty please inform me. Okay, so now
every model has a heat pump. Okay for those who
don't know.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
It's our in efficient vehicles, so that just makes it
even more more efficient.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Before are the only way to get a heat pump
on a Lucid was the Sapphire. I don't know why
that was just on the high end, super expensive performance model,
but now you can even get it on the pure
rereal Drive. The cheapest Lucid has a heat pump now,
so that allowed them to shrink the size of the
battery on the pure I think it's now like eighty

(06:22):
some kiloe hour's flat or pretty close to eighty, whereas
before it was.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Like eighty four eighty five.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
And even with the new EPA test cycle, which is
more strict, sure, it still gets four hundred and twenty
miles of range thanks to the heat pump and some
of the engineering efficiencies they've improved upon.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
So five miles per kilo an hour on a pretty.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Strict APA test cycle on something that doesn't look super
arrow efficient. No, yeah, I still think I look gorgeous. Yeah,
I really liked the look of the lucids. I saw
a lot of them back when we started less out here,
which is funny because this is where you think they'd be.
Yeah around they of course, So all you're seeing is

(07:06):
salt flats. Kind sure, this is like an armored tank
we just passed. Yeah, probably something like that. They've got
like it all blacked out. Well, the's like government plates.
There's probably a nuclear bomb or something. Well, it's surrounded
by trailers, so I think we should be all right, Yeah,
we'll take it a brune.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
The Grand Touring also got all of those efficiency upgrades,
which is impressive. Because now they have real world tests
where both reviewers and people from the company took it
out and pegged the speed at seventy miles per hour
and it went over.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Five hundred miles. That's very impressive.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
It's no longer just a well five hundred on paper,
but about.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Forty five to fifty miles per hour. That's what the
That's what the first lucid Airs were.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
They did range tests on those, and they never hit
five hundred, like at highway speed. It was always like
four twenty four to thirty, which is still good. But
the fact that they've made them even better is like
it's impressive, but also kind of necessary for the company
because the resale value on those original twenty twenty two

(08:14):
lucid Airs is terrible. I mean, it's kind of the
situation with all of these, yeah, but in particular, like
I think I was mentioning to you that I found
a twenty twenty two Grand Touring that recently sold on
marketplace for like sixty eight thousand dollars, and to buy

(08:34):
that same car new it would be one hundred and
twenty thousand double pretty much. Yeah, probably more than double.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
It was a lot so in order for the company
to justify people buying new Lucids, they really have to
improve on them. That's that's kind of the challenging part
of this EV community or for the EV industry, is
that you can't just stay still.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
You have to be constantly iterating.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Otherwise that used inventory becomes too compelling, right, It's like,
why would I buy.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
A new one?

Speaker 1 (09:06):
So, yeah, that's great news, though. I'm glad to see
that they're improving. Oh. The other big change I liked
because a lot of people in the early days were
complaining about the infotainment being kind of laggy. Yeah, big bummer, right,
so that you couldn't handle anything. And even Apple Car
Play was a little bit buggy. I oh yeah, the
navigation was awful, very terribly optimized. Apparently I haven't tried

(09:29):
the new ones out yet, but apparently they've upgraded the
chip powering the whole infotainment. I'm not sure exactly which
chip it is. If it's like a m hip. Hey,
if there was a company to license, you know, Apple's silicon,
I feel like Lucid would be the one to do.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
It, sure, but they haven't. I doubt it's Apple.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
But there's supposedly much more responsive, and it's a faster infotainment,
And even if you have an older LUCID, you can
pay I forget the exact price. I think it's a
thousand dollars or fifteen hundred dollars or something like that
to upgrade the infotainment. So even on your old LUCID,
just take it to a service center and they'll upgrade
the chip.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
So that's nice. I'm all in favor of that.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
I feel like a little bit of goodwill might be
necessary there because you came in early, right, it dealt
with all the back breaking issues with the system.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
There were a lot of software problems. Would be nice
for those that boiled on to it this whole entire time.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
They can prove that they're the first person or in
the first I don't know, five thousand to buy it
or ever.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
Oh yeah, first ten thousand. I don't know how many
they've made at this point. Oh you're saying for some
of the early adopters, they should just do it yeah free.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
And just show that, hey, I've owned this this whole time,
I've been dealing with it.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Can I get at least maybe some discount? I do agree,
especially if you bought a Dream Edition.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, I feel like that would be an easy cutoff
to just say you're definitely one of the early adopters,
right because they only delivered those at first, and we
know everybody who paid for a Dream Edition was paying
how much was it like one hundred and fifty grand
thing around there, So they deserve a free chip up grade.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
If not free, at least some discount just to show that, hey,
like I didn't buy this on Facebook, Marketplace or something.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Like that, Like you paid a lot, you know, yeah,
and I held on to it, right, that's fair.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
Give me a little bit of love for sticking around, sure,
sticking my neck out for you guys.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
It's possible they are doing that. I don't know to
find detail. Let's hope they are. Because Lucid's burning so
much money towards their customer base, what difference does it
make to burn another grand? Like That's why I've been
advocating for a while now, Like I think Lucid should
make their own chargers because.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Well, they make destination chargers. Yeah, and they look great.
By the way, I've been to.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
A Lucid showroom that had their own custom little wall
connector and they're very stylish, but the Lucid engineers are
incredible with just like everything that goes into an EV,
like the high voltage architecture, the powertrains are super fancy,
super lightweight and super powerful, the low voltage system, everything

(12:04):
as far as engineering goes, Like you can tell they're
big into cars, but they like went full out with
all of the EV tech. But to me, like the
missing piece of that puzzle is, Yeah, but you're relying
on third party chargers to do all the work for you,
to like make the road trip experience consistent and reliable.

(12:24):
And I'm like, hey, you're getting all this Saudi money anyway,
why not just burn a few more billions because you're
you're already like nowhere close to profitability. But they seem
to be okay with that. Yeah, I know how I
feel about that Lucid chargers.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
You don't want them?

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Well, like, yeah, like V three or Level three type
of chargers were gaining decent speeds wherever.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
Something that could take advantage of the Lucid charging curve.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Yeah, I think I said this on a previous podcast,
maybe partnering with another company would be a great way
to do it. Such a way they can even offset
more cost on what they are getting from the Southeast.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
True.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
And so then that way one you kind of associate
the brand with another brand and you know where they're
gonna be, and you know it's going to be very
fast luxurious charging. They want to lean more into that,
into luxury. That's how you do it. You find a
partner that is all into luxury, has a whole bunch
of money, ray to maybe get some tax credits or

(13:24):
at least cut their name out there as hey, we're
helping propel.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
The Navy funding. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
My only pushback with that is I don't see much
evidence that DC fast charging is a very profitable business
on his own, which is why I'm more in favor
of automakers doing it as a way to try to
sell vehicles. Like sure, that's why Tesla put in all
those chargers, just because they were like, this will help

(13:53):
us sell more cars. And I think Rivian has a
similar mindset, and I'm very thankful that they're building out
their own network. It really pays off with things like
the referral program which just launched.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
Where you're going, you totally just hit every single turn.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
For the record, I don't have a referral code, So
I'm not trying to I'm not being selfish.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Like I am with what we're talking about is the program.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah, the Rivian referral program just launched like yesterday at
the time of recording this, and I think that's one
of the best perks about it is that if you
use a code, or if someone uses your code, you
both get six months of free Adventure Network charging. That's
a really sweet offer because you could you could use up.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
A ton of electricity and vivia in six months.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
It's a great They they use like two miles, I
mean two miles.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
They get two miles per kilo an hour.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
They're not the most efficient vehicles, but the fact that
you could get a free charge out of them, and
Rivian's I think been pretty aggressive with the woman you know,
of the station, So I feel like there's a lot
of advantages to building out your own system. Also, if
you want to lead into the luxury aspect like Lucid does,

(15:13):
routing people to Walmart parking lots is not the way
to do it.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Yeah, which is why I said partnering with some other
company that is associated with the luxury or at least
I don't know like Westfield is a chain of.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Malls in California.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
Westfield that is associated with the type of luxury shopping. Sure,
and so you could say, oh, at every Westfield, in
which I think that many Westfields, there is some type
of electric vehicle charging.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
You need something that's kind of classy.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
But I would also say, like it, it's got to
be bigger than Westfield, because it's not enough for.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
The anything like Gucci or something like that. No, no,
like or it comes across classy, but.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
There's lots of them, so that you have lots of options,
Like Okay, I'll just say it.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
Okay, Starbucks, they're very busy with h Mercedes right now.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
I think there'd be a good collaboration there, like a
Mercedes and Lucid partnership with Starbucks that says, like, we
want to create a really premium charging experience. And I
think what I like about that idea is that, like
I mentioned, you can't really make much money off of

(16:27):
just selling electricity because of the uptime and the cost
of maintaining the chargers and the cabinets and the dispensers
and all that. But a company like Starbucks might be
able to justify it. By saying like this will bring
high income customers to our locations.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
They're coming for pumpkin spice, right, they come for pumpkin spice.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
So if we put a bunch of I don't know
what you want to call them, Lucid Slash Mercedes fast
chargers that support really high voltages, lots of good amps.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
But they could even be like, at least.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Right now, they could be kind of limited to the
higher end vehicles, like it's not open to Chevy Bolts,
because I feel like that's been a huge problem with EA,
is that there's only a couple of dispensers that support
three hundred and fifty kilowatts, and then the bolt park's
there and the Lucid is forced to use the slow charger,

(17:23):
and it's this big mess. I acknowledge it's a complicated
problem and there's not a one great solution.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
But sure, or they just invest in Ionity. Yeah, it's
a great idea. I just.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
It's gotta happen before I have an opinion on it.
I said, at this point, Ionity is a website. It's
I think player this year. Well, so they could be
building them right now. I mean, we don't know, we
have to do a little bit more research. Right while
we're on the Lucid topic, what I think is the
far or practical solution would be upgrading their battery management

(18:03):
system so that they can't achieve high charging speed by
splitting the pack in half, kind of like the cyber
truck does, or how the hummer does. Ye split the
pack so you can charge at four hundred volts and
then adopt knacks. Just take advantage of the charging infrastructure
that's already there and build that in on the vehicle

(18:24):
level rather than build out in your own chargers. That's
probably a quicker, easier path. But it sounds like they
didn't do that.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
So my.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Response to your Mercedes Lucid partnership, that just sounds like
Ford and Chevy trying to partner up for something.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
And that's a moment time, so trying to put those
two together.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
You know, pumpkin spice chargers, the popus does it change
through the seasons it becomes peppermintmoca. I could even see
it big where it's like, hey, you know how a
lot of charging companies have memberships to load the price
per killing get some Starbucks points.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
You get Starbucks points with that membership.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
I'm just spitballing here.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
You're pretty much telling people, Hey, come charge right next
to the Starbucks and get a discounted drink that or
build up over time and then you get a free
drink after so many charges here.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, I was just thinking, like a partnership with another
widespread like business and brand that's all across the country.
There's not many classy options you got like McDonald's, Taco, Bell, Canes,
Dollar General.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
There's no really good partnerships.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
But I was like, you know, you can find the
Starbucks in the middle of nowhere, and usually it's pretty classy.
It's something that a Lucid, you know, a Lucid owner
might be like, yeah, I'll get a sandwichouldn't have drink?

Speaker 2 (19:50):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
That's that's maybe the audience can inform us on the brand.
What's the best way for Lucid to fix their I
guess how they fix their charging. Probably it's just have
a craptun of range. Yeah, you don't have to stop,
you just drive all day.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Pretty much a thousand miles one charge. You're good. That
would be cool. Well, I guess you have to charge
again at the end. I needn't have two for a
thousand minles. But getting back to the Rivian, Uh, yeah,
what's it called. I'm glad that refer program. I think that.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yeah, I agree, But of course a lot of these
benefits are gonna stay around for too long.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
I doubt it. It's gonna morph and change over time.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
We're not gonna I can only imagine, like, oh, refer
so many people you get the Rivian R three for.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
Free or whatever. See, that's that's what I was gonna
ask you. Maybe not the R three because that's many
years out, so much could change by day.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
Yeah, but it's like the same story as the roadster.
For so many people you get a roadster. Look where
we are now, we're in twenty twenty four.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
I love asking those side by side questions with the roadster,
like do you think the R three will come out
before the roadster.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
At this point? That's a tough question, actually, because they
can next year.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Right, Well, that's what the Techno King is saying, So
who knows.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
It's been next year for five years? Something? Same with it.
I think that they're trying to tout.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
What I was gonna ask. It's a hypothetical. No one
obviously knows, So this is a guess you're making. But
do you think they will I actually might disagree with you,
But do you think they will change the referral program
before the launch of R two.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Let's not talk about R three, but.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
Like change it so that it's not possible to use
your your points towards an R two, or they put
a cap on the number of referrals, that kind of thing,
because in case you're not aware right now, there's zero
cap you can refer no cap as, Yeah, they can refer. Again,

(21:54):
context is important. Rivians are all much more expensive vehicles,
So ring a bunch of people to buy a Model
three and why like I do, is much easier because
there are thirty forty thousand dollars cars, Whereas referring someone
to buy an ARM one T or an R one
F that's an easily eighty ninety thousand dollars car, maybe

(22:15):
more if you go the dry motor quad motor. So
I don't think there's gonna be even a lot of
content creators. Even a big one like Marquez would probably
still have a hard time getting forty fifty referrals. Possibly,
but that's technically how many you would need to be
able to get like a free R two.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
So I haven't looked up too much about this since
it just dropped.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
I think yesterday ask away, I don't can you refer
enough to where you can?

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Well, I guess, can you gain enough points to buy
a vehicle with that many points?

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Like that's an option?

Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah, nothing in the terms and conditions says yeah, you
can use any amount of points on a vehicle. So
for example, you just refer one person, you get seven
hundred and fifty points, which counts as seven hundred and
fifty dollar. Okay, so I don't even know why they
call it point said that, but so seven hundred and
fifty bucks. If you buy another Rivian, you can reduce

(23:08):
the price by seven hundred and fifty dollars.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
So that means if you referred ten.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
People, you could knock seventy five hundred dollars off okay,
the price of a Rivian. So hypothetically it's not capped,
and there's no cap, so if you refer to one
hundred people, you could knock seventy five grand dollars.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
That's what they're saying. That's how it works.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Again, Like I said, it's going to be incredibly difficult
to refer that many people. Sure, because it's such an
expensive purchase, they're not you know, you don't get points
for referring people to an R two, And and I
doubt when the R two comes out it will even
be included before.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
Well, we still can't refer people to buy a cyber
truck right now.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
Right, it's not included. Yeah, that's true. So I guess
that's my question. Do you think that they're gonna end
the program or change the program by the time R
two launches to disallow the infinite cap pretty much or anything?

Speaker 2 (24:00):
And they could just say it will change over time.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
They're gonna be adding and subtracting certain things, certain accessories
or premiums that you can allocate your points to. Right,
I think that'll happen the next couple of years, probably
a year and a half until our two comes out,
I think, feasibly for mass production from normal. I guess,
so whatever that looks like in terms of mass production

(24:24):
from normal, but.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
I really hope it's next year. I know they keep saying.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
My idea is probably the beginning of twenty twenty six
is when we start seeing a lot more R twos
on them.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Well, that's what they are saying. The timeline is.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
I'm just kind of surprised it takes that long because
they said they're going to build it in normal YEP,
which is already well build the expansion, right.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
So once they build the expansion and they build in
all the wiring, all of the cranes, all of the
assembly and production machinery that they need there, then they
have to buy the metal, make the deals with whoever
they're making the deals with to get all the material,
make sure that all the engineering drawings are up to
what they need, and then they start printing a lot

(25:09):
of these parts pretty much not printing, but producing a
lot of these parts, and then they have to test
and see whether it's up to what they need for
that product. Sure, for a lot more.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Time is necessary to tune.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
So I guess I believe it's gonna be twenty twenty
six when we start seeing them.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
You're probably right. I'm just saying, I hope they're sandbagging.
It'd be really cool, like a Model line moment.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yeah, the mottel I was early, and I did think
they kind of unveiled the R two pretty early.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
You know, it was a while back that they unveiled it,
and then it was like, yeah, it's gonna be another.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Two years before this is out, and I was like.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
Really, even though originally they said they were only gonna
build the R one in normal and they were gonna
need the Georgia plant for the R two, but then
they changed and said no, actually, to expedite production, we're
gonna start building the R two at normal And I
was like, oh, so, why doesn't that move.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Up the timeline at all?

Speaker 1 (26:04):
But you're right, there's a lot of processes and things
that need to be validated. I don't know if we
talked about this on the podcast, but while we're on
the subject of the R two, I'm kind of this
bothers me more than you, I think, but I'm kind
of bothered by the fact that they've removed from the
website and they've said now through their Rivian support channels

(26:28):
and stuff, that they're not going to have the front
row seats full flat anymore. Okay, that was a real
Well maybe not on the R two because that's still
a decent size so you could still car camp pretty easily.
But like my desktop on my MacBook is still the
R three. Still I love that car, and the design

(26:51):
is gorgeous. I love Rivian software. I love how they
have this little off roading emphasis, a little huge off
roading emphasis. But something about the shape and styling of
the R three to me is so nostalgic. And in
an industry where there's so much design approaches going towards,

(27:14):
how do we make it more futuristic and more moderate?

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Light bars everywhere? Right, which it still does have.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Light bars, but the general the light bars isn't what
I love about it.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
I'd be fine if it didn't.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
But what I love is just that slanted slope on
the back making it feel very you know. As soon
as people saw it, they thought of five cars that
it reminded them of. Yeah, like, this reminds me of
this car. This reminds me of that car. And in
a good way, you know, because.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
It's not like, oh, Grace the PT Cruiser again. No,
it was like, oh, I used to have a car
like that. I love cars like that.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah, sure, I mean not to toot my own horn,
but no, I won't do it. But what is he doing? Sorry,
audience can't see what's going. You can't seem promise.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
There's a giant there's a semi.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Truck that has a bed and it looks like as
a cabinet or at least a big block of wood.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
And he's trying to pass another semi truck.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
He also has a car on the end of his trailer.
To the old camera's line, it's good.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
I just don't want it to drop.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah, I guess for those that are listening, we also
have a video portion of this podcast as well. Yeah,
the car's movie. This is the first I think. I
don't know if we've ever done eight We haven't done.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
A podcast in the car as far as I can
with both of us.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
I think in the past you've tried to do podcasts
where one of us was driving and the other was
at home. This is the first time we're both in
the car. Oh while it's in movie? Yeah, yeah, so
was it when we did the Vision Pro. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, that's a tested semi right there. Oh what what
the heck?

Speaker 1 (28:51):
And it's a short one. Why is it way out here?
We're not even going towards Freemont. God, they must be
testing it or something.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
Yeah, it on it.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
It's got a bunch of cinder blocks on it. It
didn't have the the sleeper camp thing, even though paying
attention to the in front of us totally. I wonder
if it caught it in the window, maybe you could
barely see out there.

Speaker 3 (29:15):
I believe we passed there right before it. Yeah, deferred off.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
So that's hilarious.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
That was That's funny because we were looking the entire
time we were pass So, yeah, we passed both Tesla factories.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Yeah, Fremont and the Giga factory. And we didn't see
a single semi whatever.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
And we see one way out in Nevada going towards Winnemucca.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
There's nothing out here. I don't know what they're doing,
well only tie away. If y'all still don't know where
we are, they must have been. They must have been
range testing.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, I had cool have breaks on all that. Anyway,
what were we talking about? There are three?

Speaker 3 (29:51):
There are three very nostalgic. Look it's nostalgic but modern.
And what your deal breaker is. I'm a big family.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Yeah, I'm a big fan of car camping and I
really love small cars, which usually don't go together. But
that's something that when the Ribban vehicles came out. You know,
even on the podcast, I think I said things like
the R two is okay, I would love it a
lot more if it had a third row option, but

(30:21):
the R three is amazing. Like, I love the R
three because of the utility and the form factor in
the shape, but not having the seats on the front
fold flat might be a deal breaker for me if
I were you know, whenever it comes out, we'll see
what I'm my lifestyle and budget is at that time.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
But I really, yeah, what our needs are.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
But I really liked the idea of getting by with,
you know, a smaller vehicle that can be.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
More efficient but still really practical.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
So when they announced that the front seats would fold flat,
that was like my favorite.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
I was like, yes, sure.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
And now that they've removed it and I've since her
from Chris Hilbert online and stuff that it's probably something
to do with safety regulations. There's something to do with
crash worthiness that prevents it from folding.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
I don't know why. I can't imagine what depends.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
To look more into the laws and regulations around what
the front seat can and cannot do.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Right, I don't see what they do because at least.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
With like if you think about the RAM fifteen hundred
or at least many big trucks that have six seats
in them. Right, that middle seat can fold down all
the way oh, center console? Oh yeah, and so it
does pretty much exactly what you want it very But
for the two front seats in R three oh being
able to fold down, I'd love it, honestly.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
Any car I would love if my Model three could
do that. I would probably rather buy a Model three
if it did have the front row seats full down,
just to give you that much more space when you're camping.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
I guess what are you gaining from that?

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Is maybe my question, because we've had this conversation before,
I would really dug into you can already car camp
in this car. I can't, And you can car camp
in a Model can car camp and that's true any.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Toaster box looking thing.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
But why do you need that much more space in
front of you in the car when you've already got
a good enough space to sleep in in the middle
and back of it?

Speaker 1 (32:18):
Yeah, thank you for asking. I'll tell you exactly why,
because that's what I was hoping with your.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Car camping.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Ps. Maybe we should say I did Trevor built. Not
only do you typically bring, you know, clothes, and a
mattress and blankets and stuff. But you also want to
bring supplies. You know, you want to bring firewood if you.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
Want to have a campfire and cook stuff or a stove.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
And in a vehicle like this, I could utilize a
lot more of my sub trunk if I could move
the mattress a little further up.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Also, if we're wanting to car camp and watch stuff
on the screen, it's much harder to do when you're
laying back there.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
You two seats you have to peek through.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
So usually when we car camp and we want to
watch a TV show or something, I'll put my laptop
up on that shelf. It's above the second row, which
is okay, it wouldn't be as great as if.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
I could just play it keboard and lighting it up.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
And also Rivian's not not my favorite part about them,
but they do have pretty big hoods because they're fairly
passionate about having a decent sized frunk. Even on the
R three, they want to have a lot of space
up there. So I think for more camping experiences, the
R three would still probably beat out the Model three

(33:46):
just for the better ground clearance and off roading and
more storage capacity. I like that you can pop out
just the glass, have something stick out if it's a
little longer. So I'm a fan of smaller vehicles. The
R three is much short ear than the Model three.
So I was a big fan of the idea of
car camping. But now knowing that those front row seats

(34:06):
probably won't fold flat because Rivian removed it from the website,
so it's pretty much confirmed, it's like, oh, I don't
know if I can camp back there now, which is
a little bit smaller. But on the positive side of things,
I guess it makes me more interested in the R two. Yeah,
because I'm like, Okay, if we're going for a car

(34:28):
camping experience, the R two might be the winner here
because it's got more space. So well, it's pretty much
just a Model Y squared off, right, so you do.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
Have a little bit more room. You don't have the
shelf anymore like in the Model three.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
But yeah, I don't understand why they have to have that. Personally,
I don't understand why they couldn't just leave it an
open back.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
There like a Model Y.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Is noise probably really yeah, it is the wide noise here,
you think, yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
Probably you got a little bit more echo going on
because it's a little bit bigger space. Along with that,
you got more bodywork that's kind of moving around, and
that thing is acting as a bridge between the bodywork
and it's ensuring that any vibrations that are occurring.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yeah, because it's.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
Connected, there's those joints that might rattle, assuming that you
don't have that occurrent well, of course you assume you
don't have that curry, you're not gonna hear right noise,
but pretty much it's there. So that way, there's less
vibration and movement occurring on both sides of the vehicle
causing interesting a lot more noise, vibration and whatever. The

(35:31):
last one is h h h.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
And also it's great for privacy. I think that's the
main for stuff in the trunk. Yeah, yeah, in the
trunk of the cards.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Why they started adding parcel shelves to the model y,
I think because of that.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
They didn't want you see that in many I mean
even I think the was it the Blazer that way
test drove, Yeah, I think that's one of those.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yeah, and the poll Star as well.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
They've got a little hanging cover right that way.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
No one can pear in.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
Which it is nice at least in mind, because if
I do have anything back there, yeah, people will see it,
but at least if they're going to break in, at
least they can see what's in there.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
Before they break in. They don't see anything.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
I would almost rather leave it open so that people
could see there's nothing back there, because right now when
it is constantly covered up, I mean, the common thing
people do with Tesla's is that back little career they
break down class so that they can lower the second
row and get into the trunk.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
It's a treasure box. They don't know what's in it.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
Right I would rather than know there's nothing back there,
because most of the time there is nothing back there.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, like you said, I would cover it up if
there was something, but just hope for the best. We're
just put in the front of that point.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah, So the R three may not be the car
for me. I'm a poet, so I didn't know it,
which is a shame though, because I really love the look.
I really love that style, and I'm all in favor
of small are more compact cars, and I would even
though this is basically the smallest Tesla, I would I

(37:05):
still think it's pretty big, Like I would like a
smaller car than this, and I just.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
You enjoy that. I like my model size vehicle.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
And I speak for myself, by the way, my wife
disagrees with me heavily.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
She she would much rather have a larger vehicle with
more along like Model Y size.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Then yeah, she loves the Model Y. I mean that's
this car was the compromise. She really wanted the why,
and I was like why She was like because the storage.
And I'm like, we've lived with the Sedana for like
years and we've never run out of space. Sure, And
I'm more of the efficiency guy and I like smaller cars,
so I was all in favor of let's just get.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
The Model three. And we couldn't wait anymore.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
So when we bought, you know, it was getting a
Y versus a three was going to be an extra twenty.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Grand, so it just wasn't really an option.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Now, knowing what happened with the prices, I definitely am
grateful we didn't get the why, because then we'd be
out even more than we are already out.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
But yeah, it all things work out.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Yet, sure the future and you have an LP pack
now that's true, which with them all the way, that's
a good point. It never brought that to the US.
That's only available in other countries, I think, yep. But
especially with all the free supercharging I do thanks to
you guys using the codes.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
I've been brutal to this battery pack a lot of cycles.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
It probably wouldn't be good for me to be super
charging as often as I am if it was a
nickel based pack.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Fifty two miles, Wow, we're gonna hit fifty three four
probably on this trip.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Right, Yeah, for the distance that we're going, we're putting
a lot of miles on. But it's what, how's your
experience been so far? This is probably the longest you've
ever been in my car. This is the longest I've
been in the Model three oh period period.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
I haven't signed them all three for this long hour.

Speaker 3 (38:57):
Yeah, And which is nice because the Model three was
the original car I kind of fell in love with with.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Tesla r A s an Ex for Gray and all,
but once.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
They were always out of reach to be oh yeah,
I was always I'm never gonna be able to afford that.
But the three was the first car I remember I
watched the unveiling live and I was like, that's that's
what I like.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
I didn't watch bailing, but I watched the deliveries, the
first deliveries that were pretty much to Tesla employees, right right,
And so how does it compare to your WHY? When
I don't like the hype? We poked fun of that
and one of the we're taking videos at superchargers just
to mark off.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Hey, there will be a vlog, there will be a blog.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
But pretty much, I think in one of those, I
was like, I don't like the height, Like that's all
I have to really crawl. Compared to my WHY, it
feels like I'm crawling into this thing every single time,
which is it's fine for now. I've gotten used to it,
but yeah, I agree. Whatever I get in your car,
I'm I was like, wow, I just.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Step in, you just pivot in. That's it. It's great.
I love it.

Speaker 3 (40:02):
So with this it's it feels not like a roadster.
Of course, doesn't feel like a sports car. I've been
like a loadus e lease and all that, and that
is really down deep next to the ground.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
It's it's comfy, I'd say it, even though you kind
of have to step into it all that. It's not bad.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
I've been pretty much living with Louise's seat set up here.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
Yeah, you get no lumbar support. Oh yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
Want to go to the lumbars because mine has lumbar
support on both sides. This one doesn't on the passenger side.
I don't know if it has it on your side either.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
No, the driver always has okay, good, Yeah mine doesn't,
so I went to him.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
And touch that.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Ironically, I never use it, but people are saying to
use it all the time, just as they have the data.
If the data shows that the users are using it,
then they'll leave it. So even if you don't need it,
just move it back and forth a lot. So they go, oh,
well people are using it, right, But.

Speaker 3 (40:58):
Yeah, this one just has a plastic what feels like
a button, but it doesn't depress. Yeah, so anyways, I'm
missing that, but it's been great. The white interior is
something to get used to for me because I've got
the black interearer and I like dashboard. The white is
a bit glaring. It's ruining a lot of my photos
trying to take phones. It's just big white glare from

(41:21):
the reflection. But otherwise well, yeah, you're driving.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Luis takes pictures all the time, but she's always complaining
about the boot guts.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yeah, it's been a little bit.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
I guess, well, because the cameras always want to focus
on the window right.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
There, right or even not.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
It's just a blurry filter pretty much. You're like, oh,
look at them up, but there's gut blur.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
Yeah, it's always dirty.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
Anyways, what's it called something that could be cleaned off?

Speaker 2 (41:49):
The car's been great.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
It holds everything that we need to put in here
with extra space, I would say leaning more towards your
idea of downsizing the carl little bit more to something
a little bit more compact, we could still do this
road trip with what we've brought.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah, because we have enough room technically fit one or
two more people. Oh easily.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yeah, we're going to we're gonna pick up not today
but tomorrow. We're gonna pick up Louise at the airport.
So sure she was up for flight, that's why she's
not with us today. But then I had some time off,
so I figured it's also a work trip. I should preface.
So they're covering her flight, but they weren't covering our
flights because we don't work that flight, it don't work

(42:31):
at the same place.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
So we were like, well, we'll.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
Have a fun road trip and you can have a
quick covered flight, so sure it'll work out.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
But yeah, we have room for more.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
Yeah, I'm always like, you know, most people don't realize
how much stuff you can fit into.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
A pretty small sedan.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
A lot of people assume like, oh, I'm putting luggage
in the bag, I need a big hatch back, and
it's like, eh, I mean maybe, but you can get by, Like,
we fit a lot of stuff in this car years
and I've yet to run into a situation where it
was like, oh, shoot, we can't, we can't do it. Yeah,
so it makes sense for your use cases, Yeah, why
do I need something bigger? But yeah, Otherwise, the speaker

(43:12):
system I compared to my was it premium. You've got
the whole, You've got the subwoofer, and uh, these speakers
are active in your car, sure, whereas I have the
pointless little grill yep, but they don't do anything but
the whole speaker shops there.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
I'm used to it. It sounds good to be but oh,
I mean I've gotten used to it over time.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
But Initially we turned on some music, I'm like, why
is it sound weird? And we found that the sound
is biased.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
A little bit more.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
And then we were listening to some music that my
little sister didn't want to listen to in the back.
So oftentimes we move the balance of the car to
the front shirt so that she doesn't have to.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
Hear it and we can't hear it. But we had
left it that like that for a month.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
So it just goes to show you how little audio
file you know, how little I can tell. I had
the sound all on the front. I didn't even realize
the back the peakers.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
Rob I did notice at the beginning when it was
more forward, I can hear you better because what it's
doing is just pumping the sound through the front.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
Yeah, how I would compare it, having listened to your
sound system as well, is that the partial premium sound system?

Speaker 2 (44:20):
I mean, if you're asking me, it's still great.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
I still think you can jam out and blast music
and it sounds fantastic.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
That's why I usually.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Don't bring it up in the shopping comparisons because I'm like,
it's there, but I don't know if it's worth considering
a whole different tier over.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
I mean's something that you pay attention to. Yeah, some people,
I guess.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
But the partial premium is like having sound in front
of you and behind you.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
But the full premium, like your.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
Car is like front and back and sided, it's all around. Yeah,
you get sound that you can hear coming from this
side and this whereas in my car it's just.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
Front and back. But I mean a lot of people
don't have surrounds sound on their.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
TVs sure, and some people don't care at all. Right
in general, No.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
I've I've never really found this to be like a problem.
I would know.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
I'm not say it's a deal breaker, or I would say,
if you're going for a long range, you should go
for it because of you know, you need the range,
or you want all wheel drive or an acceleration. Sure,
go to the utility slash normal aspects of it.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Where the sound you could.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Just yeah, like if you're not, if you're not sitting
in two cars that have the different I don't think
you'll notice.

Speaker 3 (45:37):
If you're really into that surrounds down stuff, just put
some headphones on then I mean it's dangerous, but like, yeah,
I don't know if that's legal it's.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Not illegal, but if you're really really into it, okay,
I don't know. Well, I see people within, I mean
driving all the time, truckers. We've passed nicy AirPods all years.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
I'm like, yeah, it's very common. But I was going
to ask you if you've noticed a different to the suspension. Well,
mine's very noisy right now. Not that but yeah, right,
you've got my cars.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
That is not good. But I don't know. Maybe it's
a vaccine thing.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
When I ride in your car, it definitely I can
tell that the wheels are much bigger and supportier. Yeah,
it's a bit stiffer, Like there's a stiffer ride compared
to what I'm in this car.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
It feels a lot more uh what do you call it? Squishy? Sure,
like it pads a lot of the pumps.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
We'll more dampening going on, they tell versus the stiffer, right,
But I.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
Think that that really comes down to the wheels more
than anything.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
I think.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
So, I don't think our suspensions are that different between
the three and the Y.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
Yeah, I don't know from our years at least I
know they improve the model YE suspension in.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
A few years.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
Yeah, I don't think you will have the same promise
me with the upper control arm, but I hope not.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
But I've talked to people that have claimed that they
they said they had I think it was a twenty
nineteen model three. Sure, and after fifty thousand miles they
needed a new one. Yep, And Tesla said, we found
the problem and we fixed it. And this was in
twenty two and they got the new control arms and

(47:15):
they said this should fix the control arm problem.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
It should last longer.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
And then he did another one hundred thousand miles, so
he's had one hundred and fifty thousand miles, and then
this year they went out again. OK So even though
Tesla claimed they fixed it.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
Could be a different issue going on.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
He said, they pretty much just put some ceiling on
top of it so that when the water drains it,
it doesn't touch the bar metal, which might extend it
to one hundred thousand miles instead of fifty but still
not really a solution.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
But the good news from your.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
Story, I guess, is that it doesn't sound like the
most expensive thing in the world.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
No, it's a couple hundred bucks.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
It is annoying, though, it is, especially when it happens
right after the basic warrant he's gone.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
It does feel shady, doesn't it.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
Yes, when they make up part that's designed to last
right up until the warranty and then break.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
Well, that's what's happened over time with the products.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
It's like, well, we can sell this old nineteen nineties
or eighties Toyota helix.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Yeah, but it's gonna last forever. We can't have that.
We're gonna have it last forever.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
It's even more crazy when I know it's easy to
dog on elon these days, but no, it's.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
Even easier when easier to dog on it.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
When back at Autonomy Day, they were claiming, we're designing
all of our cars to last a million miles because
they're all going to become robotaxis. So all of our
cars are supposed to last a million miles. And I
was like, when those control arms, I don't I don't think.
So maybe your power train is supposed to go a

(48:52):
million miles, but I don't know. I've even seen some
you know, battery pack servicing that it's not an indication
and they last to a million.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
But it's hard to know because we're gonna have to
wait a couple more years.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Yeah, the first model threes with the twenty one seventy
cells that was the first time test that started using
twenty one seventies are still only seven years old, so
it's hard to hit.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Them a ton of miles in seven years.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
Sure, and even with that, the ones that are hitting
it have been accelerated to that point, right, they haven't
really had that true lifespan they've that's.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
True, they've been hammered.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Yeah, they're definitely more of a outlier in the day
raids that we're looking for, and that bell, that bell
curve of them is slowly being filled out.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
It's just we need a little bit more time.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
And that's kind of the tough thing, right is you
can accelerate the testing, but there are those latent effects
of going now introducing a new factor that wouldn't be
in there true being accelerated fatigue or something else going on,
which may introduce micro cracks which will then be accelerated
by the amount of dry fush. Is that they're experiencing

(50:01):
over a shorter period.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
Of time, staring it a larger stress or failure modes
that you're not gonna see typically for the average consumer.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
So we'll see.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
I'm hoping that it's gonna be decent results because it's
going to pave the way for Tesla's next, next, next
gen vehicles.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
I'm excited.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
I think that for both good reasons and bad, Tesla's
trying to be the McDonald's of evs. Ye. And I've
said that many times because I think it's a perfect
analogy of both. Yeah, there's a lot of them billions
and billions served, but it's not known for being of

(50:42):
the utmost top quality like Tesla really, I think is
not trying to be a premium luxury brand. Their whole
mission statement is surrounding becoming like a cheap, affordable mass
market like they basically want to become Toyota FREEBS can.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
Try to accelerate hybrids. Yeah, Tesla's accelerating evs right, and I.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
Think the vast majority of Tesla sales in the future
is probably gonna be really cheap models.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
I don't think their their brand is gonna be built
all around. I mean, they want it to be.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
About robotaxis, but I don't think it's gonna be as
widespread as they do. But whereas a brand like Lucid,
for example, would be more. We want to have a
premium emphasis. And sure they'll make more affordable models like
the midside they're talking about, but I don't know. I
don't think they're gonna go much cheaper than you know,

(51:35):
forty ish grand range, and they're definitely gonna try to
up the quality.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
I think a bit.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
They're not going for like twenty dollars card at least
I don't think they are, but they could change their
mind out.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
That's tough to say.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
I mean, it'd be nice to see a more cost
effective Lucid enough to where it's like, oh, I can
cross shop this with like a Corvette or something like.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Oh, I would have loved that. Yeah, like sporty, smaller car,
small battery. Sure, that's my one issue. One complaint like
with Lucid is that they've got all this amazing efficiency,
but they still want to stuff, in my opinion, pretty
big battery blacks in all their cars, even their cheapest cars.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Eighty killowen hours. That's that's quite a bit.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
I mean, so it's tough to say, Oh, if Lucid
makes a thirty thousand dollars vehicle or something like that,
it's like, I can't even imagine that like, we're so early,
at least in their lifetime as a company, who knows
what they're.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Going to make, Whether they're going to stay more in.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
Like the Mercedes level of pricing and luxury and all that,
or if they will dip down more into like the
Audi slash.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Oh, what's another I guess maybe GM. I guess I
think they want to is my guest.

Speaker 1 (52:52):
I think they want to get lower than the errors are,
but I don't know about how much lower, But I yeah,
I think having a kind of premium, which from what
I've heard, is supposed to be a notch below luxury.
Not a luxurious interior, but a premium interior, something kind
of like a Corvette, maybe a little more practical than

(53:13):
a Corvette, but something fast with a smaller battery pack
that sits, you know, maybe a little south of fifty grand,
hopefully still qualifies for tax credits and that kind of thing,
but just gives you a very sporty but lightweight feel
because they're good at that with their tiny power trains.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
It could be real drive and it could have like
a you know, if it's really low to the ground
and stuff, it could be fifty kilo hour pack smaller
than this car, but with their efficiency you could get
three hundred miles of range out of it.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
Sure, they just probably more would get the weight down
and get the frontal area down, and it could be
it could be a convertible.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
You know. There's all kinds of whoa, that tesla's giving
us some heart attacks right now. They don't like how
much we're talking about. Okay, phantom break.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
It didn't turn off, by the way, No, I think
it just freaked out because of the semi truck coming a.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Little over the way. It didn't even go over the line.
I was watching the track. That's it's doing it. Should
I turn off autopilot? Turn off for now?

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Sorry, guys, I tried. We'll do first control. I wonder
if it's the the jeep the mirage. There's a toilet
mirage ahead when there's like you see that where the
sun and the heat creates a.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
Yeah, you're talking about the thermal, Yeah, what's it called it?

Speaker 1 (54:41):
Kind of I've had that cause phantom breaking in the past,
where it thinks there's an obstruction in the road or it's.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Just a cliff. It thinks like, oh, I gotta stop,
But in reality it's just lighting.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
But is that something that you think Lucid could probably
do better than Tesla on what's happ dream drive or
wherever they call it. Oh, well, the one testrove didn't have.
But they they definitely seem to be in favor of
having all the hardware. Sure, like Lucid's one of the

(55:13):
few companies that hasn't given up on light ar yet.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Now there's a lot of companies that.

Speaker 3 (55:17):
Have Volvo's putting in there, Bole Stars also putting in
theres too.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
That's true. I'm not convinced it's what's needed.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
You know, I have my doubts and skepticisms around robotaxi,
but I do still think you could get very very good,
reliable self driving with just cameras personally, Like.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
You say that, but then we just had that occurrence happen.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
We do. But again, I don't think it's a problem
with the hardware. I think it's a software interpretation problem. Yeah,
but that's the tough part, right is if it's interpreting wrong,
it's interpreting off of data that's coming from the hardware
as well, and so begs the question, do you need
better hardware, better pixel dense cameras I've heard promising things

(56:10):
about HD radar, which is just more high fidelity, and
I wouldn't be opposed to that because it could see
better than humans, which I think if you want to
make a system safer than a human, it should be
able to see better than we can. Yeah, which is
my biggest issue with FSD. It's usually not situations like this.
I mean, the phantom breaking gets annoying, but my biggest

(56:31):
issues with FSD are usually at stop signs and a
blind corners, because I could see a car coming before
it can't sure, So I'm like, how is this supposed
to get safer than me? If I can see better
than it can Because of these pillar cameras here, they
can't look down a blind corner.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
As well as I can. No, and that's the only
view that they have.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Right, there's no alternative camera to pull from. So I
still think you can do it safely and reliably with
just cameras. And I also think that light R is
pricey from what I've understood, So if Lucid was trying
to do a cheaper car, I would advise, let's see
what you can do just with cameras and maybe some

(57:12):
HD radar.

Speaker 3 (57:13):
But that would be very conclusive proof though, if they're
showing that they're getting very consistent, safe, relaxing drives. You
have dream drive like no intervention, you don't have to
have your hands that would be touching, you'd barely even
have to look at the road, maybe like once every

(57:33):
minute or so, yeah, at first, and then moving on
to once every thirty minutes, right like that, to where
like you don't really need to and then comparing that
to a system where it's pretty much working on the
same logic, but now you're getting the what's it called
the light r out of the system. Yeah, you have

(57:54):
to figure out, okay, is it going to be able
to do? And if it shows that there's a lot
more difficult, that might just be proof that the technology
of our time is very limiting.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
It could be in the reverse way that Howard starts us,
for sure.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
But you know another great company that ditched light AR
that was originally gonna have it was riviw Yeah, and
they realized, I think wisely, that it probably complicates too much.
And you know, there's parts of what Tesla has said
that I agree with that what do you do when
the hardware disagrees? Now, you've got a new problem to

(58:31):
figure out. Do you fall back on the light R
do you fall back on the cameras well? If you're
always falling back on the cameras, then what's the point,
you know, if there's if there's a disagreement, then like
why have it? So there's a few Chinese brands that
are also they have a lot of robotaxis there that
have also started dropping light ar that they used to

(58:51):
have it and then realized that they could get the same.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
Performance with cameras. Interesting.

Speaker 1 (58:58):
I think if if there's those number of brands that
can figure out like basically the reward of figuring out
how to do good level two or level three driving,
If you can figure out how to do it without
light ar, you save yourself a bunch of money.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Oh yeah on the manufacturing end. But if you figure
out that you can only do.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
It with light art, that's kind of a sad realization
because it means that to have that feature is much
more expensive now, and then you've put in a whole
bunch of money into trying to make it work without
light art, right, and you found oh we've hit the ceiling.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
Yeah, but I was also camera placement, like you said,
is the definitive factor for a lot of these circumstances.
That's probably my biggest gripe with a sexy lineup process.
I agree, the camera locations just aren't optimal for a
Robotaxi like or autonomy like product.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
I wouldn't be shocked at all if the robotaxi change
is the camera positioning. Please on the front right.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
I would put two cameras as far up as possible,
facing left and right, sure, so that when you're creeping,
the car could actually see another car company before you could.
And if that started happening, I'd be like, Okay, I
could visualize how this might be safer than a human
but yeah, Like, as an example for the consequence of

(01:00:25):
deciding that light R is necessary or needed, is that
you don't even get basic highway assists like autopilot just
keeping you between the lines on the eighty thousand dollars Lucids.
You have to spend extra money to get Dream Drive Pro,
which then includes the light R but can't do basic

(01:00:52):
lane keep for a pretty expensive vehicle, which in my
opinion is like, I mean, autopilot has its flaws, but
it's still cool that on the cheapest possible, Tesla, you
still have highway assist for free.

Speaker 3 (01:01:06):
Yeah, it's it's measuring that off of one company is
probably not the best practice.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Which it's a data point showing that this is.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
A big knive in a Dodge Ram truck, it's a
silver blast, it's got a huge.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
Muffler and all that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Yeah, or saying I know out here in the middle
of nowhere.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
That you're saying using Lucid as the sole example isn't
a good idea?

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
Yes, okay, I.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
Would say be careful of that, because one, they're trying
to focus on luxury or whatever it is, higher price
echelon vehicles. Also their first vehicle that they've made about
five different ways, that's true. And so trying to say, oh,
because this is the way it's happening is Lucid, that's
what's gonna happen with others, I would say, wait to

(01:01:55):
see others also try to do this right, in which,
of course many are what Tesla's doing, like, oh, well,
if Tesla can do it, then Ford can attempt to
do it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Yeah, it's like all right, why he's like light r right,
So I get that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
I think it's more of a we don't have enough
data points to feasibly say definitively that light ar equals
very expensive and unreliable, or maybe not unreliable, but at least.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
A grim future for a time. Well, and I'm sure
the cost of light ar has probably gone down a
lot over the years. Wema's probably helped it back. Yeah,
there's been people buying it in bulk, which is good.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
That's what I want, I want, I guess That's what
I mean is like light ar has to be more
the important thing is and this probably changes depending on
what kind of car you're making. It has to be
an asset, not a liability.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Yes, And I think when you start trying to make
really really affordable cars in the forty thirty thousand dollars range,
I think it starts to become more of a of
ability because like, oh, now we have to make sure
this is working.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Now we have to route wiring for this, How does
it perform in the rain? Sure?

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
Whereas if you're making an eighty ninety thousand dollars vehicle,
it's like the way Volva is incorporating it, that's probably
utilizing it more as an asset, like this helps us
be safer yep, and it's not adding too much to
the overall cost.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):
Possibly the first shipments of X ninety or at least
the first production US are being built right now.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Yeah, but it's a it's a pretty high end vehicle, right,
it's high end vehicle.

Speaker 3 (01:03:33):
But I guess what's trying to get is they're not
shipping the light ar with it for the first months.

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:40):
They've got problems with it on the either supply chain
side or figuring out the engineering hookups for a right
feasibly or at.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
Least again, you can only build the car as fast
as it's lowest part, so the more complexity. Yeah, I'm
just I get why Tesla Go's cheap.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
On things, No, and I applaud them.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
Yeah, I guess what I'm also trying to communicate is
I want multiple branches or multiple ways to get a
solution rather than one. Because once you're stuck on the
dirt road going in one direction for twenty miles an hour,
and you're stuck doing that for like two hours, and
there's no there's no other way, rather than oh, this

(01:04:18):
guy figured out if you pretty much build a bridge
from this peak to this other peak, you can get
it there in half the time.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Yeah, So like being able to find the shortcuts or
at least find some innovations by utilizing what we have
on the ground level of technology or what tricks we
can make in software or in hardware to make the
parts cost effective or make the logic less illogical.

Speaker 3 (01:04:47):
Sure and less complicated. Yeah, it's the best press forward
for making an autonomous future.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Well, I mean to your credit, Waveboat is doing more
robotaxis at least in the US. China is a different story.
But Weaimo's doing more robotaxis than anybody. It's a smart
car that just went the other way out here, in
the middle of their way out here. I have no
clue how that smart cars.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
They are not that efficient at highway speed.

Speaker 3 (01:05:12):
No, but just like I don't think the range, there
must be some gas stations that anyways, so go ahead.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
But yeah, Weaimo has been expanding the robotaxi operation. Sure,
and I'll admit I'm impressed. Like I was the same
guy a few years ago saying, well, are they really
in the lead, because they're only in a few select
locations and Tesla's trying to come up with a system
that will work anywhere but here we are years later

(01:05:40):
and they're still around. Waymos reported they've done like one
hundred million autonomous miles now with riders.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Yeah. Like, granted a lot of those have probably had
a follow vehicle.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
Just to make sure things are all right, they could,
but that's still one hundred million more miles than Tesla's done.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
Well, I'm sure maybe Tesla has some internal testing going
on where there's not a driver, but that's that's not
the same as a paid.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
Nice circles around the Tesla Texas or something.

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
Right, I'm like that, Well, I'm sure Waymo is probably
not counting. They're they're testing either, They're they're talking millions
of miles with uh customers, not employees. Sure like actual
people that are utilizing the service, and they're expanding it
in more and more regions.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
Or even owners. It's not owners. These are people that
are using the service. Whether they have to pay or not.
I'd have to look more into that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
I'm sure a lot of them do have to pay
some Yeah, so far I think it's been paid. But yeah,
which is great for them because they're actually getting some kickback.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
They do need some because those cars are not cheap.
I don't think they're profitable. No, and they can't rely
on Google's money at the time. Well, that at least
cut a lot. That's the ideals there. Or I want
to make it profitable, making it a profitable romo taxi fleet, Right,
it's the goal.

Speaker 1 (01:07:01):
But that's that's the beauty of Google, right, they can,
they can burn lots of money Google money, right. So,
I mean, to their credit, I was the same guy
doubting it and saying, oh, this won't scale, Oh this
won't go anywhere, Tesla's gonna leapfrog them. And here we are,
and we're still waiting on Tesla to do any autonomous

(01:07:21):
rides that don't require supervision, sir, And we're still out there.
And I'm like, you know, the more and more WAYMO expands,
the less and less sense that argument makes that Tesla
can leap.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Frog everybody by making a generalized approach. It's like, I
get it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
I get that using neural net training and making it
work anywhere without HD mapping. I understand in theory why
that should be able to scale better.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
But so far it isn't. You know, so far it
has they haven't proven that they can deploy it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
Because you can't take a Tesla robodexy yet anywhere whereas
you can take ways at Moore and more places.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
So yeah, and they used slidars, So there you go.
You might have a point. You have the point.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
I think my only point is don't just focus on
one technology. Let's sure, let's expand it out. And that's
been again another great phantom breaking on goose control. Now
I'm not even using autopilot, but we need a weymo. Well,
I was gonna say the beauty of Well, I will
say another downside of waymos is they're not very arrow,

(01:08:29):
so they're very much optimized for Have you seen the
new van.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
I don't think I've seen the new one.

Speaker 3 (01:08:35):
That's a custom built chassis from what I can tell, okay,
in which they pivoted away from that originally, Yeah, because
they wanted to do these little what looked like little
pot cars if you recalled. I remember the podcast. Yeah,
I got to sit in want at the Computer Museum
in Mountain View. That's cool and that was awesome and
seeing them drive around. Yeah, when I was in the area,

(01:08:55):
it was like, Wow, this is the future.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
That's great.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
Yeah, and then they did away with them, like ah,
and they replace him with Chrysler Pacifica's and Jaguar eye basins,
and I'm like, I guess they'd be perfect for around town. Yeah,
they would be terrible if you were doing any kind
of freeway driving. Yeah, because you've been on some of
the freeways in the Bay Area and like trusting away
one of those. I mean, it was basically a very

(01:09:19):
futuristic looking smart car and those are those are cool,
but at highway speed it is not aerodynamic at all.
It's it's much less efficient. Stable is definitely the concern. Sure,
aerodynamic is one thing, but stables.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
I'm all the efficiency guy. I'm like, how much energy
is that could was thinking of the safety of any
winding and a tiny light pod. It's like jeeps, right,
Jeeps look cool, but they can get tall.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
If you get tall, your moment of inertia climbs up
more and more, and well climbs down more and more
for depending about the wide direction and all that. Well,
I was going to say that the beauty of the
EV market that makes it so fun to talk about
is that you have all these different companies and they're
all trying different things. So it's cool that even though

(01:10:11):
Tesla may be ditching light Ar it currently shows no
plans of adopting it. At Rivian you still have Volvo,
or you still have Lucid that are pursuing it, or
way Mow that are like, no, let's let's see what
this could do.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
Let's see the advantages. So you can.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
Because really, engineering and vehicle design is just a series
of compromises.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
It's like every advantage comes at another disadvantage. Sure, so
it's a it's a debate of which advantages do you
want to lead into and which disadvantages do you want
to accept and just say, Okay, we're not going to
be the best at such and such a.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
Thing, absolutely put Yeah, I agree. So that's makes it
so fun.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
There's so many different approaches and attempts, and they're all
kind of interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
And that's what I'm looking forward to.

Speaker 3 (01:11:01):
Even though kind of wrapping this whole podcast around back
to what we started with with id buzz, even though
I'm very much not a fan of it, I applaud
them for at least bringing it to the markets in America. Finally,
I'm not happy with the specs. I'm not happy with
a lot of the functions inside of it. The signs

(01:11:22):
all right, but.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
At least someone is trying to make a minivan that's electric, sure,
and I feel like someone puts some thought into it. Yeah,
they may not have prioritized the things you were hoping for,
but I do think that they They probably did their
research and figured out what they could do with the
current batteries they have, and they were like, sure, it
may not be this road trip machine, but for a

(01:11:49):
family looking for lots of interior.

Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
Space and seats that could drive around town.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
Is it a pretty pretty good financial situation that they
could be happy with it? Definitely, But you're right, I
don't think it'll be mass market. It's definitely not gonna
eat into the sales of a Model Y or R two.

Speaker 3 (01:12:09):
I can see it definitely following the same path as
like a cyber truck, like great curb appeal. Sure, but
it's not gonna be the breadwinner like.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
The Model Y. I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
I think they'll sell more ID fours, honestly, because that's
just the that's just the market segment that does so
well these days. Sure, which is why, honestly, in some
ways I was sad about the you know, front seats
not fullding flat, but in other ways it gets me
more pumped for R two.

Speaker 2 (01:12:36):
I'm like, this is this is really the vehicle that's
gonna kind of make the brand I told you from
the beginning. Yeah, R two is underrated. It is.

Speaker 3 (01:12:45):
Yeah, it's bringing a lot for something that is very
similar to what in its out exterior looks as the
R one S and in terms of dimensions very similar
to the Model Y. Right, but it does bring a
lot to the table in what it has as utilities
on the outside and inside. Yeah, that will be just

(01:13:07):
maybe not game changing, but at least a better daily
car that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
You would expect to be on the market right now.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
Well, it's very wise of them to just be like
everyone is buying the R one S, sure, so let's
just take the R one S and make it more affordable.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
Yeah, yeah, that's genius. Keep it simple. But especially those
dials that apparently are really the happening, see the happy change. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:37):
I think that the strongest competitor will be just how
cheaper Model Y is going to be at that time. Sure,
that's going to be the debate, like cheap Model Y
or Rivian and I think a lot of people are
going to.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
Pick the rivan. It's going to be a very interesting
market at that point.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
And I'm so glad to hear that they are relocating
the charge port to the driver's side rear. Oh yeah,
that's going to make doing exactly what we're doing right
now possible.

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):
The R two is it shouldn't it shouldn't be that complicated.

Speaker 1 (01:14:12):
We're drick in to do a road trip like this
and ev and we're doing it right now and we
haven't had any problems so far.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
A little update. We've not had to wait, Well, we.

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
Waited a little bit the last one and firmly after
we passed the Pega factory.

Speaker 2 (01:14:28):
But what we we ate some food?

Speaker 1 (01:14:30):
Really Like there wasn't a line, oh okay, which is
very common at EA stations.

Speaker 2 (01:14:35):
Gotcha.

Speaker 1 (01:14:36):
It's like you get there and one stall is down
and there's a line and you have to get in line. No, Like,
we pulled in and there were stalls available. You could
plug right in and get peak speeds and you didn't
have to worry about, you know, parking in a weird way,
which now that they're really relocating the charge port.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
On the R too, you shouldn't have to worry about that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:57):
You'll just be able to utilize the existing super chargers
and the cable will reach and you'll probably get great speeds.
And if it works the way it's worked with the
R one vehicles with the adapter, like sure, you have
to set up your Tesla account to charge once.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
Sure, but then after that one time, you're done. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
Now you just pull in, plug in and it starts,
and that's exactly how it should work. So yeah, that
that R two is gonna be got your brain turn
in it just because I don't know. I you know,
I know the bottle Y is the best seller, but
I don't know your experience with bottle Y and how

(01:15:38):
bad Tesla service has been definitely puts a bad taste
in my mouth. Yeah, we'll talk more about that in
the next episode. Okay, how crazy it's been with messaging them,
miscommunications and all that. Right, And granted they're slammed. There
are people on the other end as well. It's just
it's not the individual's fault at the service center there.

(01:16:00):
Last time I went to the service center as well,
they were swamped.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
At Yeah. I mean to be honest, though, a ribban, Wow,
that door is flying open.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
Someone's someone's RV has, like you know, the storage panels
at the bottom, it's just like wide open.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
It's just an exposed generator and tank out there. Like
there's stuff gonna the.

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
Doors playing in my garden. Wow, that's not good fun
times on the road here. Yeah, we're only five minutes
away from the Winnemucca charger.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
Now we're gonna jinx it. Now we're gonna have a
terrible charging experience. After all the things we've said, do
you have any last man thoughts? True, let's see.

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
Uh, I guess I'm very happy about the Rivian referral program. Sure, uh,
I'm sad about the folding seats, but I guess it
makes they are two more interesting now for me. And
it's not a good sign for the stock though. I'll
say that much. If a company starts offering really aggressive referrals,

(01:17:07):
it's usually because they need more demand. So they're getting
to the point where they need more sales. But maybe
final question for you, Okay, so it'll be my last one.
There was recent talk on the march on RJ's podcast,
that J's podcast, I mean the podcast RJ showed up on.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
I think it was Mooter trend or something. And he
said that the R three X is of course definitely
coming out before the regular R three.

Speaker 1 (01:17:38):
Possibly, depending on how engineering goes, the R three X
might come out before.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
The R two. That's perplexing.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
And I'm curious what you think it will cost, because
I think that's kind of the answer as to why
they might want to release the R three X first,
is because the margins on it might be really good.
Where does the R one tea start at, like for
the cheapest possible model. Yeah, I think it's like seventy
nine or seventy eight thousand something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
Okay, I think maybe sixty sixty grand, sixty grand for
the R that's pretty good. R three X.

Speaker 1 (01:18:15):
I mean that's that's in the tear that's gonna be
in the territory of ionic five and yeah, that's around
five cost three.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
Yeah, I think that's around there right, well, or is
that fifty?

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
If you spec it up you can get it below
fifty five with the tax credit, it becomes like forty six, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
So it's definitely more of a souped up Sedan.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
Yep, whereas, of course the R three X is gonna
be all about that like hot hatch life sure, but
stuffing a tri motor in that little thing.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
Is gonna be It's gonna be crazy beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
Yeah, I'm excited for that. It's gonna have probably more
worse power than the Ionic five in.

Speaker 3 (01:18:57):
Yeah, it won't have the driving characteristics like the five
N or at least the uh oh, the charisma.

Speaker 1 (01:19:05):
Yes, well, I just I'd like that it's smaller. That'd
be my only issue with five in is it's kind
of big for it. Yeah, it's it's a quote unquote
hot hatch. Yeah, it looks a lot smaller in pictures. Yes,
once you're actually next die we've driven it, right, it's like,
oh this is this is like a Model Wye size.
It's kind of big, yeah, which heats into your performance

(01:19:27):
the handling a little bit. But anyway, I think that's
a good answer.

Speaker 2 (01:19:31):
I think I agree with you.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
I think Rivian could secure margins a lot earlier on
a more expensive model, right, and the.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
R three X would be sick. That would be fun.
Can't hopefully that comes out in the not too distant future. AnyWho.
Thank you all for tuning in. Sorry for the road noise.
We couldn't avoid that. This was pretty much our only
time to record today. So hey, we found time. We
found time.

Speaker 3 (01:19:59):
We're gonna talk about some exciting stuff, and we got
more stuff to come.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
So hopefully Randy can make the next episode. That'd be nice.
We'll see, all right, we'll see how he does. We'll
catch you later.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
Al right, Okay, we got to stop because I'm gonna
turn really hard and all this our stuff is gonna
fly off.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
Hey thirteen not bad, alright, catch you later. Bye bye.

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Ep. 192 - Tesla Semi Watching Through Nevada!

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 192 - Tesla Semi Watching Through Nevada!