Tesla Reveals New Cybertruck Features!

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
On today's episode, cyber trucks havebeen spotted road testing with Starlink mobility equipment.
Tesla's ramp up of their semi trucksproduction is revealed during an interview with
Jay Leno, and a senior managerat the company says that Tesla's lithium factory
will begin production on the very firstday of twenty twenty four. On October

(00:20):
third x user at Jonas Brownie posteda shot of a pair of cyber trucks
wandering the streets with some interesting upgrades. First up the obvious. The lead
cyber truck is sporting both the releasecandidate mark on its bumper and what is
probably the best looking rap we've seenon a cyber truck to date. It's
an updated version of the cyber Truckgraffiti logo from twenty nineteen. The graffiti

(00:43):
style art gives a great splash ofcolor without completely hiding the stainless steel body,
a feature most people would agree isthe defining feature of Tesla's new pickup.
But the real eyecatcher is the devicesitting just above the windshield. It's
flat and wide, with a largeflexible antenna in installed right next to it.
That's right, this appears to bethe Starlink Mobility dish. Starlink Mobility

(01:06):
is more or less what the nameimplies, a version of the Starlink service
that is designed to be used onthe move. Upfront, the Starlink Mobility
service is very impressive. Up totwo hundred and twenty megabytes per second download
speeds and twenty five megabytes per secondupload speeds is pretty comparable to what most
of us have at home. Butwe have to remember that it's working not

(01:26):
just in city limits but out inthe sticks as well, and just like
five G service, Starlink Mobility workswhile the vehicle is in motion and doesn't
have to rely on being near anycell towers to function. Imagine being a
surveyor with one of these Starlink equippedcyber trucks. You're out in an undeveloped
lot somewhere in the countryside, andyou've collected a bunch of data on the

(01:49):
grade, drainage and soil composition ofthe site. Normally, you'd have to
drive all that back to the officeat the end of the day, but
with this setup, you could sendan email with that info to your technicians
to start work on and to analyzeyour data in the field before moving on
to your next site. It's prettyconvenient right now. Picture that sort of
utility with a remote construction site,search and rescue efforts, or a base

(02:13):
camp for disaster relief efforts. Thistech has the potential to be a real
game changer. Now, the priceof this system is a bit much.
At the most basic package, you'regoing to be looking at about two hundred
and fifty US dollars per month.Not many people are going to be needing
more than that, but even so, The next two brackets are at one
thousand dollars per month and a whoppingfive thousand dollars per month, with caps

(02:37):
at fifty gigabytes, one terabyte,and five terabytes respectively. There is an
advantage here for the high price,though, aside from the ability to have
decent Internet in the wilderness. Ofcourse, Starling Mobility customers receive priority use
of the network, so even ifthere is congestion from peak user activity,
mobility customers get their usage handheld first. Testing this sort of util for the

(03:00):
cyber truck is really a no brainer. The truck is made to operate in
rough, remote locations and even hasa forty eight volt system to handle more
high powered gear. Starlingk Mobility itselfwasn't made specifically for the cyber truck either,
but it isn't a stretch to thinkthat the internal cyber Truck accessory team
didn't have a hand in this initiative. The new vehicle is already being hyped

(03:23):
up as the go to electric truckfor people who like to go off roading
or camping. Having the ability torun a solid Internet connection is a very
attractive feature. Meanwhile, cyber Truckitself has yet to be put on the
market. The last few months havebeen filled with testing as Tesla finished their
design efforts and transition to the workof getting all their certifications. It's likely

(03:45):
that we're going to be seeing adelivery event within the next couple of weeks,
but that part is still up tothe regulators. In the meantime,
Tesla can only continue testing new gearfor their stainless steel truck. During a
recent interview on an epilepisode of jayLeno's Garage, Tesla manager Dan Priestley and
chief designer Franz von Holshausen gave agreat breakdown of the work that went into

(04:08):
the creation of Tesla's new Class eighttractor and gave us some pretty interesting details
at the same time. The episodepremiered on October second, and began with
a conversation between the host, JayLeno himself and the two Tesla executives.
The pair talked about the semi's constructionand the systems that make it such a
powerful entry into the Class eight market, including the overall design of the vehicle.

(04:30):
Priestley and von Holshausen quickly brought Lenoup to speed on the vehicle's drive
train with hauling power and regenerative breakingability, making mention of their amazing performance
in the recent run on less Electricitytransport study. The ability to extend battery
charge while driving with this system isa big reason why it performs so well,
as is the ability to recover seventypercent of its charge in under half

(04:55):
an hour. Overall, the discussionstayed primarily on the design philosophy of FAD
the truck, the team's priority onsafety, the aerodynamics especially being a big
part of that. Both Tesla's execsmakes several smaller mentions of things we haven't
heard about yet too. For instance, when Leno asked about the price we
don't get a hard number, butPriestley mentions that the whole point was to

(05:15):
keep the truck at a competitive pricein relation to diesel variance, while still
offering the operating cost savings from beingelectric. He also mentions that Tesla has
plans for releasing a long haul versionof their semi that includes a sleeping area.
Currently, the semis are built onthe daycab design, where the vehicle
is expected to do its deliveries andthen return by day's end. The truck

(05:39):
is clearly capable of operating multi dayhalls, so it makes sense that Tesla
would eventually be producing a long haulversion. But it's here that Priestley makes
a small side that for anyone followingTesla news on the regular is very interesting.
Leno asked how many semis the companyhas built so far, and Priestley
says they've made a couple dozen,somewhere in the sixty to seventy range.

(06:01):
These would be for companies like Pepsi, as well as a bunch for Tesla's
own internal use. But then hesays, we are collecting data, we
are getting a lot of really greatdriver feedback, and then we're going to
take that time to do a bunchof improvements and bring that into a high
volume. Now, that is interesting. Tesla is in the habit of making

(06:21):
constant improvements to their vehicles, soit isn't surprising that they'd be doing the
same thing with the Semi. It'sthe idea that they are doing this before
even getting the vehicle into mass productionthat shows how different the Semi project is
to other vehicles in the company's fleet, and it really has to do with
the use case of the Semi.Back at the beginning of the episode,

(06:43):
there was the usual banter about theusefulness of the truck and how much it
saves on fuel, but very quicklyLeno hit on a topic that was very
important Tesla's strategy for winning over transporttruck operators. It's one thing to convince
large companies to make the switch forthe savings alone. It's definitely another to
convince truckers that your vehicle is legitimatelythe better option. Von Holtzhausen makes repeated

(07:10):
mention of how other trucks have toaccommodate for their massive engines so much that
the interiors can't really be designed forthe driver's comfort. This is their office
and so Tesla has designed the wholerig around what makes a trucker's job easier,
even paying attention to the routine gettinginto and out of the truck,
often leading to things like the rearfacing door handle and the gear storage being

(07:32):
just inside the driver's side door.Even the steps have been lowered slightly to
help, as research showed that thebiggest cause of trucker injuries is falling when
getting into or out of the vehicle. Leno is one hundred percent correct that
truckers tend to be very resistant tochange. They know what they like and
are particular about anything new that shakesup their routine. But in basing their

(07:54):
approach on researching what working truckers need, Tesla has proven that all they need
to do QUO is let the vehiclesspeak for itself and operators will respond.
Honestly, it's a very smart wayto go about this. Tesla knows that
changing an industry like transport trucking wasnever going to be easy, especially with
changing it to electric, which hasa reputation for being unreliable before. Now,

(08:16):
if they continue with this tactic,the full production run will be very
successful. A Tesla manager at thecompany's lithium refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas
has confirmed that the site is expectedto begin operations on the very first day
of twenty twenty four. Senior managerof operations at the refinery, Jason Bevin
is said in a recent interview thatthe site is going to be having a

(08:39):
very busy year, with production beginningon January first, and then continuing a
steep ramp up throughout the rest oftwenty twenty four. The refinery, which
broke ground back on May eighth,is the first of its kind in North
America and will be making use ofan acid free refining technique that will reportedly
make the site clean and safe tooperate in. Byproducts from the process will
even be able to be used inother applications. On top of that,

(09:03):
Tesla was predicting that the site wouldinitially be creating about one thousand jobs and
upwards of two hundred and fifty fulltime positions, and they've already started hiring
people to fill some of those positions, but Bevin's comments seemed to point to
further expansion, and even as earlyas June we saw that Tesla is already
proposing donating three point eight million dollarsto the local county for the use of

(09:26):
improving the roads near their site,which they no doubt expect to be heavily
trafficked, and that definitely lines upwith other projects in the company. Cyber
Truck's production ramp up alone would requireextra support for battery production, so having
the refinery improve at a parallel speedwould take a lot of pressure off of
Tesla's battery production partners. But withthe new versions of their older vehicles like

(09:48):
the Model three Highland and the upcomingProject Juniper Model Y Refresh, not to
mention the twenty five thousand dollars vehicleplatform that was just recently moved to Giga
Texas, the company is going toneed to have a lot of batteries.
It is pretty amazing that they canalready make such solid declarations about the refinery
before it's even built. Hiring isgenerally only done when a company is sure

(10:11):
of the project needs, and bythe looks of things, it's probable that,
if anything, the refinery might growtoo slowly to keep up