Tech Brew Ride Home - (TWTR SPC) All Things Tesla With @TeslaPodcast

Episode Date: February 26, 2022

We check in with Rob Maurer who hosts the Tesla Daily podcast. All things Tesla and Elon on this episode! Check out the Tesla Daily podcast Check out the Tesla Daily YouTube Channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome everybody to the TechMeme Ride Home Experience for February 22nd, 2022. A very special date, I suppose. We have a very special guest day.

We have never gone deep on Tesla. And so we have Rob Maurer of the Tesla podcast. Tesla Daily? Right, Rob? Yeah, Tesla Daily. Tesla Daily podcast, both things. There you go. There you go.

What happened was I combined his Twitter username with the podcast show. So Rob is here. And, you know, it just felt like we hadn't really gone deep on this topic. And who better to teach us about the latest and what's going on and what to expect in 2022 than Rob. Brian, you want to kick us off? I do. I have one Brian's topic. It'll take two seconds.

But I tweeted about this last night that I've been getting tons of free ice cream from Masasan. If you are in a place where joking. or GoPuff or Fridge No More. I can't even name all five or six of the players. These 15-minute grocery delivery startups, I think it was on Friday. We got $30 off, a $50 order from them, and then the very next day it was $15.

And then the very next day, $15. So then on Sunday we did it again. Every day, this is Joker, $15, $15. People, the dream of the 90s, as I said on Twitter last night, is alive. You can get free shit from these grocery delivery apps. Use them because it won't last forever. And you know what's happening is that they know that all five or six of them won't last.

People need to raise another round. So they need to show that the McCullough family has spent $250 in the last week on them to show a revenue increase. So this is my... I see. So this is not an ad. This is basically saying, hey, go take the VC money while it's available and free. It's not an ad. It is. It's not going to last forever. This is my gift to you as a consumer reporter that this stuff is available right now. Take advantage of it, man. That's good advice. That's it. That's it. Okay. That was a public service announcement, I suppose. Yeah, no. And I'll report in again if they stop giving me $15 a day in coupons next week. But for now, it's working.

Okay, so Rob has been on the TechMeme ride home, I think three or four times. Rob, I actually should have looked this up. I think the last time we spoke was maybe so long ago that it was soon after the 420 investment. secured tweet. Wow. That was ages ago. I think that sounds about right. Yeah. Well, look. So, I mean,

I love you because, you know, I like to find out what's going on in Elon Musk land. And you're, I mean, you do a daily podcast like ours. You're deep in this world.

So let me, let me start with this, which is, obviously since it's been still long, I remember talking to you one time being like, how does it feel like to win? When we first were talking,

you were like this huge Tesla bull, and so win was like $420 a share. God only knows. But sorry to say that, but let's start with the fact that because we've been doing on the show a few times so far this year

that like, you know, tech stocks have been getting killed and things like that, Among the stocks that are down from their all-time high from whatever percentage it would be is Tesla. Not being a stock market expert or a Wall Street person or whatever, is it a situation where maybe the stock got ahead of itself and it's sort of like reverting to the mean sort of thing? Yeah, I mean, there's always a lot going on with any individual stock, right? like especially in the tech space right now. Like we've seen a lot of companies drop off, you know, 40 to, in some cases, 80% off their all-time highs.

Tesla, I think, is down, you know, 36-ish, depending on what it was today. That's sort of right in the same sort of ballpark that NVIDIA would be down. Certainly, NVIDIA is doing quite well. They just reported an earnings beat, reported strong guidance. It's just a case where these tech stocks with, in many cases, higher earnings multiple, are really just getting hit harder as more uncertainty from a macro perspective is in the market, whether that's from an interest rate perspective, inflation, or certainly just geopolitical concerns. So with that heightened uncertainty, any stock that is more based off of its future value,

I mean, every stock is based on its future value, but any stock that requires more growth for that future value to be justified, there's more uncertainty there inherently. you just get compounded on when there's macro uncertainty too. So I think what we're saying with everything else also applies to Tesla. It's just being, you know, kind of drawn down by that. From a fundamental perspective, Tesla's doing great. Like, they crush Q4 earnings. They have been crushing deliveries consistently.

The last quarter they reported was over 300,000 deliveries. So, yeah, they're doing really, really well fundamentally, which we can, of course, get into, you know, whatever level of detail. you guys want to get into. Well, I also remember doing an episode with you where we were talking about, you know, the sleeping in the factory days where we actually hit the targets and things like that. And I think maybe we spoke after like the first quarter of profitability or things like that. But, I mean, in terms of actually delivering units and doing sales,

how many quarters of profitability? Is it now like eight or something more than that? Yeah, it's something in that ballpark. It's definitely a few now that I've stopped keeping track, you know. Well, that's the luxury of winning, right? That's the luxury of winning, right? So what would you say in terms of in terms of what we would have spoken about two years ago,

which is the long-term, game plan coming true, it seems like it has. What is beyond that in the sense that, you know, Tesla could, as I always like to say, stand in front of the tidal wave of history, and it seems like the automotive industry is moving all towards EV so you can just sit on your laurels, let the tidal wave wash over you, and wash you up into the mountains and and things. But is there something that Tesla Bulls are excited about going forward in terms of moving

beyond what is the current status quo or the current product lineup? Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question because I think there has been a lot of excitement for Tesla to kind of move into, I guess, that next leg of sort of their company trajectory. You know, move beyond Model 3 and move beyond

Model Y into things. like the cyber truck, the roadster, Tesla semi, 4680 batteries. And I think there's been, I don't know if the right word's probably not disappointment, but I think there's been a little bit of, you know, confusion or what have you about how well Tesla's actually doing with what their current product lined up and how much room there is to still grow on that. Like I said, they did, you know, 300,000 deliveries last quarter. they've already said that they're going to, you know, again, they think they can increase deliveries by 50% year over year.

This year again, that's kind of been their long-term trajectory. So even though Tesla's not necessarily moving as quickly into those new products that, you know, some people might like to see, it's not really any changing anything from the trajectory of a business standpoint. Tesla is still, you know, tracking towards their long-term goals. They're just doing it with fewer products, which is actually much better from an investment standpoint because the less complications you have in that, the stronger your margins are going to be. It's just a much simpler process. You can grow faster.

So the less complexity they need to introduce, actually probably the better for the business. But it seems a little bit disappointing when you see like, oh, cyber truck delayed another year. Right. The cyber truck is I always saying it on the podcast. So what do you, what about the, and I'm sure I asked you this. probably multiple times when you've been on in the past. The idea that now the entire industry is catching up with you, the Ford, what is it, Mach E,

getting the Consumer Reports EV of the year. I know, I know you guys have that background with Consumer Reports, but I can talk about that because, yeah. Well, okay, you can talk about that, but what I want to say is it does seem to be, When I even spoke to you two years ago, it was like, well, what happens when everybody gets religion in the industry? Everybody's got religion now. What was the thing I saw today?

Like, Porsche or somebody is investing $500 million in an EV factory? So now that everybody's coming, everybody has products, not everybody, but people have products on the market now that are competitive. Does that change the strategy for Tesla going forward, or is it just keep executing on whatever? has worked so far. Yeah, so, I mean, starting at the beginning, I think, like you mentioned, it's sort of always been the refrain, right? Like, competition is coming. Every year that is consistent.

It's just the same counterargument that's been made for the last decade. And, yes, certainly there has been progress from other OEMs, and that's exciting to see for those that want to see electric vehicle adoption happen. but as it relates to that being a risk or detrimental to Tesla, you know, we really haven't seen anything that would cause that. What people don't understand is how sheerly large the automotive business is. You know, there's 80 million vehicles delivered each year. Tesla's delivering a million per year right now.

So they have one 80th market share, you know, a couple of percentage points. Not even that. when you stack in all the other electric vehicles, it's still below 5% worldwide on a pure, better electric vehicle basis. So there's 95% of the market that needs to be replaced. About 1% of that, 1 to 2% of that, or, well, let's see, I guess it'd be more like 5%. About 5% of that total automotive fleet turns over each year. And you've only got 1% of that 5%, or a few percentage of that 5%, I'm doing percent on

percent here. It's a little confusing, but the point is that a very, very, very small number of the total vehicles on the road are being converted to electric vehicles each year. So Tesla has so much market share to operate in that any new electric vehicles coming up in are in our market share of EBs right now, isn't it like 70% or something like that? Tesla's market share. Well, yeah, that's what it's been historically in the United States. I think worldwide, it's more like 30-ish percent, but honestly, it's not a number I know at the top of my head because I don't care about their share of electric vehicles because there's no finite electric vehicle market that's, you know, 5% of the total automotive market. It's more like probably 90% of the total

auto market is going to turn over to EVs. So, you know, I care about Tesla's market share from that perspective, the total automotive business, that's their addressable market, rather than trying to bucket into some, you know, small group of EVs right now that are obviously just small market share because that's what production is, right? Like there's not a lot of EVs being produced. So people can't, you know, if the demand was 80 million, there's still only 5 million to buy. So that's why it tend not to care too much about EV market share. As it relates to other competitors coming in, like that market share is available for them too. There's just a ton of space to grow here.

So focusing on like the Ford Mustang market share. versus the Model Y is just the wrong starting point to have the conversation, because those vehicles are competing against, you know, millions of other SUVs in that compact SUV category that sell every year. And that's what they're taking market share from on each other. A couple of things that came across my transom recently. I always keep files of all the different topics that we talk about. One that came across recently is the shift in terms of battery technology.

I think I sent you a link to one of these things offline. It's iron-based batteries versus what would have the original, the nickel base? No, anyway, but it's a cheaper iron-based battery versus the sort of the batteries that Tesla has been using recently. Can you, I only have the article. I didn't do a story on it, so I haven't read it, but is that an important shift to you at all? Is this Tesla moving toward what the rest of the industry is doing, or is this a cost control thing? What do you know about this sort of battery shift? Yeah, so it's a really interesting topic of conversation.

You're right. It's nickel. It's the predominant main chemistry. So lithium-iron phosphate, that's another cell chemistry. Historically, it hasn't really been used or hasn't been as valuable in the automotive space because inherently the energy density is lower. Obviously, for a vehicle, you're looking for very high energy density. That affects how much range you can get out of the car and how much weight there is.

So historically, lithium-myron phosphate hasn't been a great option, just because the energy density hasn't really been there to where you could get a vehicle with over a couple hundred miles of range, which obviously Tesla kind of feels like is the minimum for a, you know, full-purpose electric vehicle. So what's happened over the last few years is that a couple things, energy density of these batteries has improved of that chemistry. And then Tesla has improved the energy efficiency of their vehicles. So whether it's, you know, the motors becoming more efficient, the aerodynamics of the vehicle, the weight coming down, all these little things add up over time and allows Tesla to then use a lower energy density. battery chemistry in lithium-iron phosphate and still actually get an acceptable range for an electric vehicle.

So they're shipping Model 3s right now with lithium-marin-fosate packs. They're getting 270 miles of range out of those. And like you mentioned, it's a much cheaper source of batteries because those raw materials are just a lot cheaper. Like iron is much more plentiful than nickel. So it is actually very important, and it's a very good thing because that should allow Tesla to grow their production. and more rapidly not be as constrained off of, you know, the supply of nickel or something like that. And like you said, there's the cost benefit, too. So it's more than a, you know, a capitulation or something.

It's more of a win-win that, like, is allowing Tesla to move towards this. By the way, Chris is pinning tweets about what we're talking about right now if people want to check their screens to read more about this sort of stuff. two more questions before I kick it over to Chris I got to ask about the the self-driving thing and the robotaxy thing and I believe again two years ago if we had been talking about it which I believe we did

this was right around the corner and as far as I know people aren't in great numbers renting out their Tesla's as as self-driving Uber's yet. Where are we on that? Sure. So the status there is Tesla is basically rolling out the features

that would eventually enable a Robotoxi. So basically, like, your car could do everything that is required. However, it's not going to do it perfectly every single time. Still needs a lot of monitoring. So they're calling that FSD beta. Basically, it'll drive you around, you know, city streets, wherever it'll turn left at stop lights, stop at stop signs, take turns, do roundabouts, like everything you would need to do on a drive, it'll do. But sometimes it's not perfect,

right? So you still need to be highly engaged, be ready to take over. So that is currently rolled out to about 60,000 people in the United States. It's a very small percent of Tesla's fleet in the U.S., but every sort of release, they kind of end up rolling that out to a few more people and their goal is to roll it out by the end of the year and also improve their reliability such that they feel unsupervised driving could, you know, be possible towards the end of this year. Now, like you said, we've heard stuff like that before. Hasn't come to fruition. This is a super hard problem just before we got on this, on this Twitter space, Elon tweeted

about this, saying that, yes, it's definitely been a harder problem than he anticipated it to be. So, you know, on one hand, there's been delays in terms of, what was hoped to be achieved. On the other hand, my car will drive me around, you know, Milwaukee, where I live, without me having to do anything. Not perfectly, but it'll still do it. So you've got the delays, but on the other hand, you have this fundamentally life-changing technology that I can go out and use right now. So we're kind of in this middle space right now. And personally, I really enjoy seeing the progress. It's definitely an open question on how much longer that's going to take.

But it is really exciting to see it unfold. And personally, I continue to believe that Tesla has the best path to eventually accomplishing it. Actually, I don't remember what the third question was. So I'm going to kick it over to Chris, who when I told him about, I was like, let's do Tesla this week. And he was like, ooh, because I am a Tesla owner now. and, you know, Chris is obviously a product guy.

He's worked at Uber. He's worked at Google. He invented the hashtag. So the thing that he was excited about is he's like, I'd like to talk about Tesla as a product. So, you know, from that lens, which is, you know, a different way because I always come from the business angle of it or whatever. But Chris, how do you enjoy your Tesla at the moment? So the reason why I'm laughing is on the one hand, the Tesla that we have is probably the most fun to drive the best car that, you know, and granted, it's my partner's car, so I can't take, you know, complete responsibility for it. However, it's, it's so fun. It's, I will probably never buy a conventional gas powered car ever, ever again.

because why would you? It just doesn't make sense. And so living in that world, living in this world where clearly it's designed technology first, touchscreen first, there's just so many, I don't want to go on and sound like a fanboy in that sense, but from a product perspective, it reset so many expectations of what vehicular transportation can and should feel like that it's hard for me not to, I guess, gush to some degree. I did take the Tesla driving all the way down from Oakland to L.A.

using self-driving most of the time. Can I jump in for a second, Chris? Because I want to poke at that just real quick before Rob jumps in, because I see some of my Detroit friends in the audience here. And I've said before on the show that when I lived in Detroit in 2004, 2005, and I was talking to people about Tesla, So that was still when people were like, fuck that shit. And so when you talk about how it's changed your opinion of it, your experience of a car and driving.

My perception, yeah. I used to say to those folks 15 years ago that I didn't give a shit about cars, I liked laptops and smartphones, right? Yeah. Because I liked gadgets. So I'm curious, is that what you're talking about, is that it activates that. gadget, that sort of technology sort of pleasure center of your brain? Because that's been my experience with Tesla's for sure. I think that's a good way to articulate it to some degree. I think it also sort of shows you how legacy products persist, legacy assumptions about the

market that they're operating in and the problems or jobs to be done, the problems that they're trying to solve for. And I think Tesla clearly is or has envisioned a very different future and a very different relationship that someone has between their vehicle, which they may or may not possess, and their experience of riding around or being driven around, frankly. And that requires you to sort of go back to some original principles in thinking about what that experience should be. And clearly, we are in a transitional era. We are not quite at some, you know, full self-driving future where the cars just drive themselves around, you know, or it's like Knight Rider or something, humans still very much need to be in the loop.

Autonomous driving, you know, as we mentioned, is still a very, very hard problem. And it's hard to say that it'll ever really be fully solved to the satisfaction level that is required for these types of devices or vehicles to be in the road. I mean, the number of crashes that, as I understand it, occur for self-driving vehicles seems to be much lower than those driven by humans. humans, but we don't ban humans from driving cars. So the, I guess the evaluation of performance is just so much higher for machines than humans. And that's something that's going to to some degree, like hold it back or be a headwind for widespread adoption. So it seems. Yes. Well, okay. What's your impression, though, of the UI and U.S. of being behind the wheel of a Tesla? Yeah. So I've got a couple, and I don't want to like overly center on my own

experience. But what I will say is that there's some other aspects of the experience that I think are worth, you know, thinking about. And my primary thought here is about how to frame what Tesla actually is. Like, as a company, as a service provider, as a technology builder, I think the way in which we conceive of car companies needs to radically shift. And, you know, I remember this experience that I had. And this is, this is, I'm trying to sort of draw an analogy. I once went to a vehicle or a car conference or maybe actually it might have been slush. That's the event. And it was in one of the Nordic companies. It was very cold. Anyways, I was on a panel with a guy from BMW and he, I think, led BMW's innovation department. And I was there representing Uber. And we had this

sort of conversation backstage where he just, he didn't really buy the whole Uber thing. He didn't think Uber was interesting. He didn't think that, you know, Uber was going to revolutionize the world. And, you know, maybe there was some truth to some things he said, but what he said was really about how to conceptualize what a car company is. And a car company is essentially kind of like a just-in-time assembly line of lots of different supply chains that come together to build an enormous amount of cars, you know, and to distribute them to customers. That's what a car company is. So when you, when you remove those assumptions of what a car company is and you start to think more what the experience can be that lead you down very, very different paths to articulate very different

opportunities. And so how that the rubber meets the road, so to speak, quite literally, is we've had a number of the roads in Oakland are horrible. And so we've actually had a number of flat tires with the Tesla. And yet the service that we get with the Tesla is actually quite good, where they will come out and they will have a mobile repair unit. And maybe this is, you know, common. I really don't know. I'm not really a car person. But the fact that it is built in into the Tesla app. The Tesla app is, on the whole, pretty well designed. And I can manage my service from that is the type of thing that I would expect from, you know, a cloud service. So that is something I just never, like, would you text your dealer and expect to like get a good quality

response and actually have service scheduled for like the next two days or something? If it's a conventional car company, I wouldn't. At least that wasn't my experience before. And so having that experience with Tesla sort of cements it as a complete experience, like going to Apple, you know, when you have Apple care. So that level of service was new. Now, currently we're, I guess, I think we're having some problem with the control arms or something. And so that's a little concerning. So the car is not that old, but it's already starting to show some wear and tear. And that's a little bit concerning. So that's where that's why I was like, it's, it's kind of overall, it's great. Anyways, back to this broader question. I guess from Rob's perspective,

what I would love to hear him, I guess, articulate is the way in which the world kind of misunderstands Tesla because it often evaluates it through the lens of a conventional car manufacturer. The way that I see Tesla is it's a lot more about power and energy and storage and movement and innovation around, of course, the electric vehicle driving experience itself and all the AI that goes along with that. But it feels like when you're talking about the Machi and you're talking about consumer reports, they're evaluating it and almost reducing what Tesla is to what has come before as to, as opposed to what problems it's trying to solve for. Yeah.

So, I mean, first off, thanks for sharing your experience. That's, I think you, you know, described a lot of the advantages that Tesla has really well. One thing that I covered in the podcast today that I'll just mention because it's kind of on this topic is active, which provides a lot of software to the automotive industry as a whole. their CEO was kind of asked about their pricing power on just software in general and, you know, as it relates to just the current market, a lot of OEMs talking about bringing a lot of that tech in-house and trying to be more vertically integrated, trying to follow sort of Tesla's model. And his direct quote here is he said, I would say with the exception of that automotive OEM, which was Tesla, virtually all the OEMs that we're doing business with are struggling. with software developed. So then you flip over to Tesla and you've got, okay, well, the very apparent user interface advantage, no one's anywhere close on that.

And then you've got all this other software that Tesla layers in, whether it's, you know, in more visible customer-facing points like with the app and managing service, or whether it's in the factories, to be honest. Tesla is doing a lot of things with software that we don't have visibility to, in their factories to that are allowing them to generate, you know, extremely significant, significantly better operating margins on a much smaller economy of scale than their competitors are. Like Tesla's already the leading margin provider vehicles at a million vehicles per year when you've got people like Toyota and Volkswagen doing 10 times that.

So a big part of that is Tesla Software Advantage. The rest comes from huge vertical integration. Tesla is taking you from point of sale. They're acting as the dealership. They're producing the vehicle. They've taken a lot of the supply chain in-house, just like we're talking about here with software. It's just comparing Tesla to how the automotive business has developed

and been run for the last 50 years. There's just so many stark differences. It's almost impossible to sit down and kind of list all of them. So I don't know if that gets around of the, point of the question entirely, but that's... No, I think it does because it sort of is... And, you know, Apple is, of course, the sort of adjacent example here, but it's thinking about, you know, vehicular transportation as a software, you know, problem as opposed to a hardware

problem. And it's not that it's not either or. It is actually how the two work together to create a complete experience. And I feel like that, you know, BMW exec that was talking to me kind of, you know, showed his hand in saying that, well, you know, we, are able to control this vast supply chain of things that makes all this stuff happen. And I was like, but that made sense when the world was very disconnected and isolated and it was like pre-internet. We live in a world. Now, granted, of course, we've seen some of the kings in the supply chain during the pandemic. But nonetheless, the fact that now Tesla is focused on being vertically integrated and controlling the entire experience and having more, moreover,

a consistent experience from one vehicle to the next. And maybe maybe the, maybe this is something you can speak to. And I also just posted a link to some about suggestions and critique about the recent UI update, which I am still getting used to and I think is a bit of a regression, is that going from, you know, let's say you're a person who has purchased two Teslas, you know, on Model S and a Model Y, the user experience between those is more similar than different. You know, whereas if you buy, let's say, you know, like a Ford and an Audi, you know, the UI and those things are going to actually be quite different and you're not going to be able to learn and transfer your learnings from one to the next. And so, or actually maybe between two forwards,

I don't know. So can you speak a little bit more maybe to the software side inside the car and what that experience is like and all about and maybe where you see that going? Because it certainly is an entertainment hub. You've got Netflix. You've got games. You know, it's it also has elements of the Peloton thing. And I don't want to go too far that path because that's maybe not such a good example, but in the way in which you've got a screen and by starting from the screen and then building a bunch of stuff around it, that gives you a license to try new things and to experiment on what the actual experience should be. Yeah, I think you put it well when you kind of described how Tesla has, you know, from sort of day one thought about things a little bit differently.

And, you know, for quite some time now they've been driving towards this robo-taxie vision, right? which if you think about how you would ideally like your robot taxi to work, it knows who you are when you get in the vehicle. All the settings are customized towards you, and you're getting in a lot of these different vehicles all the time. But it should still ultimately feel like it's your ride, your vehicle with a robot taxi. So I think that's how Tesla has built it up. And I think that reflects in the user experience even before we get to that stage.

you know Tesla I don't know exactly where this they're at on this because I only myself I only have one Tesla but I think they're at least working on putting people's user profiles making those cloud-based so that if you were to use somebody else's Tesla like they give you access to it you could just you know select your driver profile it would know from your phone that you're driving the car and it would reload all your settings like your seat position and all that good stuff that you would customize with your vehicle. So they're definitely working in that direction. I think as you mentioned, it definitely is a different user experience.

It makes it difficult to imagine ever going back from something that's not like that. It may seem like a collection of really small things. But when you have those and you're starting to use them in your day-to-day life, and then you, let's say you have to rent a car, an older vehicle, internal combustion engine vehicle, it's just you realize very, very quickly how many things Tesla is kind of built in that you've become accustomed to over time. I mean, I had this experience in January when I went out to Mexico and I rented a manual transmission vehicle and like every time I would get out, I'd have to like adjust a seat,

the mirrors and all the rest. Whereas like now, you know, the car actually recognizes my phone from my partner's phone. And based on who gets in, you know, the right Spotify playlist will load. The seat will actually move. It's things like that that are quite small. and yet there are friction that if, you know, you had to adjust every time you got in the vehicle, you probably just would let it go and it's not that big a deal. So increasingly, like, the car does become a personal expression of yourself because it does carry or have those elements of personalization. And I think what you said is very important. It's not based on the vehicle. It's based on you. It's based on the driver. It's based on the identity that you have

that is hosted more or less by Tesla in the cloud and should allow you to use any Tesla. and get that level of quote-unquote service or customization. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure in a situation with shared vehicle, like what you guys are already doing a little bit, it's just me driving my car, so I don't really notice it quite as much. I'm sure if you're flipping back and forth. That's like, literally like it can tell which driver is actually in the seat. And, you know, it's really magical stuff.

It's the way the stuff, you know, you'd hope it would work. And more often than not, never does on other cars. You know, like, there's, what was the Microsoft, you know, version of carplay that's just like, oh, crap. It's an abomination, you know? I know someone in the audience that knows this answer. I can't remember, though. Yeah, anyways, whenever I get that with, like, you know, rental cars, I'm just like, oh, God, it's going to, like, suck in all my contacts and it's not, and it's going to, it's going to, it's the worst. Well, you know what?

That was literally going to be my question, Chris, because, and by the way, let me take this opportunity, folks in the audience that want to ask questions to Rob, um, please. please go ahead and raise your hand and we'll get to that in about five or ten minutes or so. But based on your experiences with various UXUI stuff in vehicles, Chris, like is Tesla above carplay, above whatever the Microsoft thing was and everything else that's out there? What are the things that you're seeing in Tesla that impress you or they still have ways to go? You know, it's hard because I haven't tried Android Auto, honestly. And I just saw that Spotify's car thing today is coming out in general release. And so anybody can buy that.

And so it is interesting to see the battle for the entertainment center, which becomes kind of like the nervous center for a car, which includes personalization, media, and the rest. But overall, I've been very impressed by, you know, what Tesla has offered. I mean, like I said, their current. And maybe this is actually something to, I don't know. just point to, which is different. And I don't know exactly how I feel about this. But there is kind of an implicit assumption that if you have a Tesla, you trust Tesla to maintain and update the software.

And I suppose it's a little bit similar if you turn on automatic updates for your phone or for your laptop. I'm not someone who does that. I like to have control, you know, between major operating system upgrades. But that is not the case with Tesla. I mean, if you upgrade, it's really roll the dice. You're not quite sure what you're going to get. You know, you might like what you're going to get.

had before and now it's going to be different and that's just living in the future, I suppose. And so that is something that I don't know how I feel about because they're willing to take big leaps between like, I don't want to call like incremental versions of the software, but without really giving you a big warning. And that can be a little bit jarring. And I'm not quite sure how customers like feel about that, you know, specifically in the most recent example, now doing common tasks like defrosting or turning on the windshield wipers now take several taps, whereas before there were some dedicated buttons for those things. I'm hoping that that'll change and, you know, maybe some more customization will come, but like it just changed without any real explanation.

And I wasn't quite, as a, as a UI or product designer, I couldn't relate to the motivations for those things, you know, whether it's about a new vehicle, different vehicles or something. So that leaves me a little bit, you know, in the lurch. But the entertainment experiences are quite good. I haven't used voice quite enough, but I probably should use voice a little bit more. And just generally, like the screen is very large, very easy to see. And overall, it's just very slick. Yeah, so I was just going to say the voice thing, Chris,

like I know a lot of the stuff that takes an extra tap or two now with the new user interface can be activated with voice. Personally, that's not something I really enjoy doing. Yeah. but I prefer just like clicking on it. But yeah, that's kind of some of the feedback. I would agree in general, though. I think there's some areas of progression. I think you're probably more attuned to it than most, including myself.

What has been your kind of experience personally, like going through that process, having the software update? I don't know if you're a Mac PC user or whatever, but like... Yeah, I was going to say it's almost like if you have your favorite version of iOS, like, you know, and there's a whole industry of people that like obsess over these things in the software fields where it's like, oh my God, you know, Windows has gone backwards on this thing and that thing. Do you feel that way about how Tesla, you know, evolves over different iterations? I'll answer first. I don't know if that was for Chris, but I think for...

That was for you. That was for you. For me, honestly, it's not something that I cared a whole lot about. Like, I know a lot of people on Twitter kind of, you know, were upset at some of their regressions. I don't really mind too much if it takes me in a couple extra taps. Like there's nothing in there's nothing in there that I'm trying to do so constantly that it has annoyed me. I think the only thing for me has kind of been like the seat heater. But then, you know, Elon's feedback is like, oh, you know, any input is error. Everything should just be automatic. They adjusted the seat eaters to be automatic.

And I was like, well, I don't want to do that because, you know, who knows how well it will work. But then I gave it a shot, put it on auto. and, well, I've left it on auto. Yeah, so let me actually explain this one, because this one's actually a little bit controversial. It's like the most mundane thing, but we've got two kids. And the two, like, you know, it's been pretty chilly here in Oakland. Obviously, it's much colder in New York and elsewhere. But the kids will go in the back seat, and they love the heat warmers back there.

But because of the way in which now the controls have been moved, it actually took us like, I got to say, like 10, 15 minutes to find it the first time. that we went through it. And even still, every time I get in the car, I will agree with you, Rob, that it's the way in which they've approached it. I think conceptually is, again, innovative and interesting. The idea is you as a driver want to have a certain kind of environmental feel, like, you know, for warmth or coolness. And so if you turn on the heat, then the heat warmers go on. And the idea is that you make sort of a, you know, choice about what is the atmospheric experience you want. And both the error service and the heat warmer will work towards that effect.

But when it came to specifically turning on heat warmers for the backseat, suddenly you're like, oh, well, it doesn't really work so well in that case because the backseat isn't quite as well accommodated when it comes to these controls and preferences. So that seemed to be a tradeoff to the design. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think where I was kind of heading with that is that like automation is great when it works, right? But then there's, you're never going to be able to automate for everything. And I think your example is perfect, right?

Like, who knows what temperature your kids are going to want to be? Like, they probably don't even know a little of Tesla. They're the ones who are going to complain the most. You know, like we can kind of like put up with it. Like if they aren't happy and we don't have the controls, like,

uh, so maybe the message is don't have kids. I don't know. That sounds like a terrible message. In conclusion. No, I think it's a good point though. And if,

you know, hopefully Tesla's looking at some of that feedback. And I think sometimes, you know, they aspire to do things with one intent in mind. And I think we can only hope that if that intent doesn't come through, then they make adjustments, right? Yeah.

It does kind of, you know, it is a little bit unfortunate if one of those changes is significantly impactful to you. But, you know, overall, I'm a fan of what Tesla's done. I'm a fan of the direction they've gone with things. And even if there are some minor aggressions, like I think, it's pretty hard to argue that they're not head and shoulders above, you know, what anyone else is offering. even with some of those things.

Yep, totally. The other thing that I wanted to ask you about, and I don't know if this is an area that you get into too much, but in general, I'm actually pretty fascinated by the app experience, you know, like on my phone.

There are a number of things that I've noticed that have been showing up in there, and I'll give you a list of them, and I think two are more interesting than others. You know, there has recently been the addition of a store. So you can buy merch, you can buy, you know, I think you can buy the Tesla tequila. I don't know.

But the two that were more interesting that stood out was, one that you can actually apply to get a loan from Tesla directly through the app without going to the website or whatever. And so as a, I guess, distribution channel, they are using the app store. And that's interesting. The other is about the power brick and the general, I guess, like, energy part of Tesla's business. I feel like this is like woefully misunderstood or not well enough understood. And I guess I want to tie it to the market penetration comment that you made earlier where I think you said something that, you know, Tesla has maybe 5% market penetration

or something globally. Like, there seems to be pretty good supercharger penetration in the U.S., but what is the likelihood that that will actually expand elsewhere? And, you know, what do you see in terms of either, you know, headwinds or things supporting Tesla rolling out more worldwide? Yeah, so a good reminder. I think we kind of like brought the subject up earlier but didn't really get into it then. So just like Tesla is very vertically integrated in the automotive space, there are various other elements of Tesla's business that they're playing in and trying to grow and hoping to become significant over time.

One of those being energy storage. So last year, Tesla, you know, they delivered four gigawatt hours of energy storage. So that's for anyone that knows anything about batteries. That's a lot of batteries. Can you give us a way to, I guess, balance that? Like, this number of iPhones? I was sort of anticipating getting into this conversation. I don't think I came up with a good way to explain it, but I was looking at like state's energy consumption.

And for example, Rhode Island, so state of a million people, I think that's the smallest, I don't know, but Rhode Island, they use seven and a half terawatt hours of energy per year. So on a daily basis, let me just bust out the calculator again here. That would be 21 gigawatt hours of energy per day. There's been some research done that indicates that if an economy or whatever the United States were to go to 80% renewable energy, so solar and wind primarily, they would need about 12 hours worth of energy storage to accommodate that level of renewables. And the reason for that is because, like, you know, the wind is always blowing. The sun isn't always shining. So there needs to be some energy stored when those renewable energy sources aren't generating. So getting back to the numbers then in terms of

conceptually, if you're at 21 gigawatt hours a day of energy consumption, then to go 80% in that locale, say you need like 10 gigawatt hours of energy storage. So last year, Tesla has shipped four. So if Rhode Island's a million people, then basically, Tesla would have shipped enough energy storage to cover half a million people's energy needs if they were to go to 80% renewable energy. So I don't know if that helps. And it might seem like a small number, but that is significant. And it's growing extremely quickly.

Tesla's working right now on a factory that should be able to do 40 gigawatt hours a year. So then, oh, all of a sudden, Rhode Island's covered, right? And then you just move on from there and you continue to scale. Tesla hopes to grow it even more quickly than the automotive business. So even though today it's a relatively small thing, you know, four gigawatt hours of storage, that does already generate like $3 billion in revenue. So it is starting to become a sizable business, not necessarily in relation to Tesla's market cap, but a $3 billion business is significant, again, with a huge growth rate.

So it's exciting. There's definitely going to be a need for this as the economy needs to convert over. that's going to happen. And there's going to be energy storage, and Tesla's going to fill a huge, huge chunk of that for a lot of money. So it's exciting. I guess the thing that I think is so, I don't know, interesting about the energy story is...

Yes. Did we lose Chris? Oh. For me. Okay. Brian. Or did you just lose me? Yes, we lost you, Brian.

We may have lost you, Brian. This happens sometimes. This is Twitter spaces. Go for. for it. Let him know. He can join and then come back. Quit and rejoin.

Okay, sorry. We're very professional about this. He can't hear anything right now. He's like in a black box. He's like Schrodinger's cat. Anyways. Trotinger's Brian. Yes.

I'm going to make this, you know, points last question. And then we will go to a listener question. Okay. So my question, again, is about the energy side of Tesla's business. Specifically when it comes to their, they have consumer-grade solutions, whether it's the power brick or the solar tiles

or solar panels all the way up to, I would say probably industrial, commercial, like lots of stuff. This, I mean, it feels, I don't, and this is where I have hard time conceiving of what Tesla is or who to compare it to. Like, I don't think of any other car company, doing the things that Tesla is doing from an energy perspective.

And that's because, again, the problem that it's trying to solve for are very different. Yet these things are completely complementary. So, for example, if you use the Tesla app, then you have the ability to manage your power brick or to actually capture energy from your solar panels and then sell them back into the grid. And this is in the same experience. So if you are like a full-on Tesla, you know, kind of, you know, you're living the Tesla life. you're doing all of those things and you're almost like joining this circular economy. So I don't want to go down that path too far.

But how do you, I guess, think about that side of Tesla's business and, you know, given how much attention or inattention it's given. Yeah, no, you're totally right on that. I wish I could have Tesla energy products. I live in an apartment so I can't. But what Tesla does is they're like you brought up Apple earlier. Yeah. Tesla is very strategically building out sort of this ecosystem.

where you can manage all of these different products in the Tesla app. So you've got your energy generation from your Tesla solar panels or your Tesla solar roof. That's going to be stored in your Tesla power wall on site. That's going to be a few kilowatt hours of energy storage to get you through, like I said, when the energy isn't being generated. And then you've got your vehicle, which is obviously going to be consuming energy from the energy generation with the solar. So it's all very cohesive.

from an end user perspective, and it's also very cohesive from a business perspective of a lot of these products have overlap. So, you know, economies of scale with battery production that benefits Tesla on the automotive side and very clearly on the energy side as well. So it is very cohesive. And I think there's a lot to be excited about from that perspective. It even goes a little bit further. A lot of people have asked Tesla over the years, you know, would you be more interested in sort of owning the whole H-FAC, you know, sort of set up within a home because there are a lot of inefficiencies there, certainly with older systems too. Could there be a turnkey Tesla HVAC system that you just install in your house with your energy generation and your energy storage and kind of manage all that through the app?

And then I think there's definitely layers in there that Tesla could pretty easily optimize if all that stuff starts to be connected. And Tesla said, yes, that's something we want to do. We'd love to do. we just don't really have the bandwidth for it right now, but hopefully someday would fit on the roadmap. So all of a sudden you're talking about Tesla as like this connected smart home company versus like an electric vehicle manufacturer, and then you bring your robot taxis.

And yeah, there's a lot to be excited about with the potential there for sure. A couple more real quick, bringing it back to the... Oh, and I did say we were going to bring up a guess. So, Brian, go for it. Oh, yes, yes. Okay, then one real quick. Sorry, because I dropped out. I apologize.

Where are we on the $25,000 car? Is that sort of been put on the back burner? I think it was going to be made in China or something. That was the master plan part due. Is that delayed? Or where are we on that? Yeah, so it's a good question. It kind of brings us back around to part of where we started with future products.

So Tesla in the last earnings call, Elon on the last turning his call said that really they're not working on the $25,000 car right now because, I mean, his short answer was because Robotaxies. Like, if Tesla solves that, then there's really, you know, not too much of a difference in a $25,000 car and a $50,000 car. You know, Robotaxies are planned to go a million miles. So the difference there is only two cents per mile, I think, if I'm doing my math correctly. So it's pretty insignificant what that starting base price of the vehicle ends up being. and I think that's kind of the point that Elon is making but to the point that I made earlier

about just demand for Model 3 and Model Y being so robust as well as the combination of Tesla's gross margins being so high, they don't really need a $25,000 car for quite some time because there's so much demand for these vehicles they can't meet it already at these higher price points so there's no point to introduce a much cheaper car that okay they still can't sell so it's a few years out

if ever you know if they solve FSD then it doesn't really matter too much. But I think Tesla right now taking a smart approach of just like leaning all the way into the products that they're already making, which, you know, from a profitability standpoint is definitely the right call. Wall Street, I don't think really like that because Elon was justifying it with the robo taxi. But the only reason he's saying that is because he knows that the Model 3 and the Model Y are robust enough to meet Tesla's, you know, growth outlook. So I think it's part of the confusion that we, you know, spoke to a little bit at the start.

Got it. Okay, I have brought up Texas Tech Championship. If you have a, please introduce yourself, and then if you got a question, please make it quick. Hey, Rob. Hey, I just wanted to see if you give you general your opinions on the Berlin factory. And, you know, long term, do you think Tesla regrets picking Berlin and why don't they just ramps Shanghai and export to Germany or Europe? or just help me understand this whole Berlin saga. Yeah, it's a great question.

I mean, I wish I had a better understanding too, but obviously we're just waiting for permitting there. Tesla has produced hundreds of test production vehicles. It seems like they're fully ready to go and start production for anyone that's sort of unaware on that. As for Shanghai, that is what they're doing. Tesla's ramping up production as fast as they can from Shanghai. the longer that Germany delays Gigabrelin starting, the more of these vehicles are going to come in from China.

They're just losing huge chunks of revenue, huge employment opportunities. I don't know the exact tariff situation from China to Germany. I'm sure there are some. So I think that will help lower costs when Tesla actually does start in Gigabrelin. But I don't think that has anything to do with final approval or anything like that. So as for if Tesla regrets it, I don't know, possibly. I think ultimately it's a good move to have a factory in Germany. Like it's a very big automotive market. There's tons of engineering talent, which is very important for Tesla to be able to continue growing at the rate that they have.

So even though this has been delayed, you'll look at it in the bigger picture too of, okay, it's only been six months now. Ultimately, yeah, it's disappointing. but as long as it doesn't turn into some multi-year delay, it's not all that material in the grand scheme of things. I do think that it probably presents some questions to Tesla of if they want to continue to expand into Germany. I don't think they probably regret building there, but certainly you have to look at this situation and say like, okay, do we want to continue to make investments if regulations are going to be so restrictive in terms of the speed of growth? because I guess the reason I ask it, Rob, is like, you know, the ultimate goal is to get to 20 million cars a year, right? And I see the path, but I'm getting more and more nervous as a long-term investor. And like, how do you get to the 20 million with this factory situation, not as fast as I'd expect?

And do you expect them just to keep adding to Austin? Or it's hard to tell right now? Yeah, so I think, I think, again, it's worth, like, considering that even though Tesla has had this Berlin delay, and even if that persists this entire year, Tesla is still on track for their 50% growth rate that they've, you know, that's been what they've communicated. So even with some of those challenges, like Tesla's still executing to their targets, anything here is just kind of above and beyond that. How long that can persist without Berlin? That's obviously a question mark. But yeah, I think, you know, we've seen from Shanghai, it's certainly expanded above what initial projections were. It's getting pretty close now to being at a million vehicle per year run rate.

I think they'll easily hit that at some point this year. Originally, it was expected to be half a million. So Austin's kind of the same situation. Gigotex is kind of the same. People think right now it's going to be half a million. It's definitely not. It's going to be way, way larger than that. My expectation is that at some point, that'll ramp up to about 2 million vehicles per year.

So if you start worrying about, like, okay, how many factories do we need for 20 million? and well, maybe you need like six or seven more if they're each going to be doing two million per year. So I know people I'll always ask on the earnings call, like, when's the next factory coming and things like that? But I'm not too worried about it. Berlin's maybe a little bit of a wrench in that for, I don't know, a year or two, but again, ultimately not super consequential.

And Tesla has said that they'll probably be announcing new locations for their next factories sometime this year. So we'll have that look forward to too. has Elon been on your on your pod or any of your videos? No, so I just put out episode a thousand last week, two weeks ago, and I tweeted at Elon. That's awesome. Yeah, thank you. I tweeted at Elon and just said like, hey, this is what I've been doing.

I love to have you on for an interview. He replied and he said, well, that's a lot of podcasts. And he said he would do one, maybe me and a couple others. So we'll see. I haven't heard anything on that. Who knows? but hopefully at some point that will happen. I think we're going to bring on one more person.

Yeah, I got Gail up here. Okay, go ahead. Wow, thank you so much for letting me ask Rob a question. So thank you, Rob, for your just exceptional work on your podcast. My question is kind of related to the last comment. So can you give us an update on when you have Elon on? My question is, you're going to do it in person with Elon? or like in the Zoom format, who are the other people who will be on and what will be kind of your way that you'll direct that podcast?

And because I know that Elon's been interviewed so many times. And you're so exceptional. Do you have like kind of some thoughts about what you're going to ask him? Yeah. Yeah, good to speak to you. So, I mean, I don't have any more information ultimately. And if you could design the perfect interview, how might you approach it? Yeah, so that's probably a great way of framing it.

Like, I would love to do it in person. Ultimately, it's up to whatever Elon wants. I'll accommodate. In person, I would love to do that. Obviously, I've listened to most things that Elon has said, most interviews that he's done. So for me, it would be trying to get to a little bit deeper of a level in terms of things that that haven't been discussed yet. And anytime I think of something like that,

I've got a giant note that has all my possible questions in it. And yeah, like I said, hopefully we'll get an opportunity to cover those. Given how much you've consumed about, you know, Alon and how much you follow his company and companies, is there something that you specifically think that he is most misunderstood about? Hmm. It depends, like, what segment I think you're talking about. But like the general public, I think his intentions are the most misunderstood.

Like I think, like personally, I believe that he's very well-intentioned and actually like wants to solve problems that humanity has. That's certainly not the narrative out there. So, you know, if I was going general population, I would definitely go with that. If you're talking about people that actually follow the space and follow Elon very closely, that's a little bit tougher to answer. I'd probably have to think a little bit more on that. To that end, again,

thinking about the almost four years that you and I have been talking. And this is related to my question from a few years ago where it's like, what does it feel like to win? Do you feel like that the general public's perception of Elon has changed? And some people would say it's because of his own behavior, but also just because of like the fact that he is the richest person in the world now? like, you know, again, thinking back to my time in Detroit where it's like Elon was this dreamer that was going to, you know, completely revolutionize the 100-year-old automotive industry. And now, you know, there's a certain segment of the public that's like, well, no, he's the richest man in the world. He's just this bad billionaire that, you know, is childish and does silly things. Like, when you think of Elon as an investor and as a long-time fan of his, Do you feel that he's the same person and it's just people's perceptions of him have changed?

Or has he changed and maybe even a good way, like evolved? Yes, I think you describe it well. Like certainly Elon has given plenty of ammunition over the years. Like there's no shortage of that. But I think sort of the perception in terms of Tesla being a little bit of an underdog revolutionary company has flipped as Tesla's become more successful. And I think it's a lot easier to be, you know, critical of Elon and his wealth as that has happened. You know, to me, it felt like a lot of the narrative changed, like, almost instantaneously when we started seeing all those articles about,

oh, Elon Musk now the wealthiest person in the world. Certainly there's been a lot of conversations this year about, like, you know, wealth inequality and tax and all that sort of stuff. obviously we don't need to go down that path. But I think it's just been a hot topic of conversation. And Elon obviously gets put up there as a target by people that want to work things in a different direction politically, whether that's Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders. Like Elon is a very clear target. And again, he gives them plenty of ammunition. So I think that's contributed to it.

As far as he himself, I don't think I've really thought too much about if he has changed. But my initial reaction is like not really all that much, which I think is probably a good thing. I mean, you can go back like years and look at Elon's Twitter and he was posting some ridiculous stuff back in the day too, but he didn't have, you know, 80 million followers at that point or whatever. And not every single media article was trying to pull Tesla into their headlines at that point. So it was just a lot more under the radar. I think, you know, Elon's kind of always, always been a little bit edgy on Twitter. and that for a large, you know, that has been very beneficial too. You know, there's good there for sure that that comes along with some of the, you know,

more easy to take out of context or mistakes that certainly, I think Elon himself has definitely admitted that he's made on Twitter too. Well, Rob, I want to thank you for coming on the show. You and I started this dumb idea of doing daily podcasts around the same time. You've been supportive of me. I've always been a fan of what you're doing. And I just looked up, like, you know, your YouTube channel, which is something that everyone tells me forever that I should invest in as well.

But you've got 200,000 subscribers on your YouTube channel. So the podcast, Tesla Daily, the YouTube channel Tesla Daily. What else do you want to tell people about, Rob? Yeah, no, that's a good question. And thanks for, yeah, thanks. It's been fun being here. And obviously, the back and forth of years has been really solid. So what I'm working on right now, some people have heard this in the episode of 1,000 announcement is a website slash community called Shareloft.

And really what I hope to do there is just kind of bring that audience together, bring people that are really interested in disruptive technology and business and kind of how that all overlaps into the same place and try to set aside some of the stuff that's inherent with journalism and media today, whether it's all very attention. attention-based. I, from the start, have seek to provide value for my audience. You know, still today, like, I don't have a single ad on the audio podcast, just because it's not something I ever wanted to introduce. Obviously, you kind of have to have ads on YouTube, but, yeah, I don't know. I'm just trying to do something a little bit different. So, that's what I hope to eventually build with Shareloft, and it's going to take a long time, but if people want to check that out, it's like a closed beta right now. Is there a website for Shareloft?

Yeah, so at shareloft.com. There's not too much to check out right now. But if you're interested in what I'm saying there, if that sounds at all interesting, you can go there and get on the waitlist and we'll send you more information when the time comes. Cool, man. We'll put that in the show notes as well.

Thank you, Rob, and thank you, Chris. And thank you, everybody for joining in. Thanks, everybody. Yeah, thanks, guys. That's great. Sweet. Absolutely. Anytime.

Great. We'll have you back, no problem. All right, everybody, that was the show. Thanks.