Speaker 1: Get in test with technology with text Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff dot com. We're there, we won and welcome to
Speaker 1: text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren foc Obama,
Speaker 1: and we are going to continue our discussion about Tesla Motors,
Speaker 1: the company that strives to bring electric vehicles to everyone
Speaker 1: as long as you have lots of money, lots of
Speaker 1: money right now. They have they had solid plans for
Speaker 1: the future, and it's really impressive for a company that's
Speaker 1: only been around since two thousand three, right, especially for
Speaker 1: a company that went through so much public turmoil. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of moments that we talked about
Speaker 1: in our last episode where you could have looked at
Speaker 1: that at the time and thought, Okay, the writings on
Speaker 1: the wall, this company is not going to last. But
Speaker 1: it lasts. It's still around. I mean, you can you
Speaker 1: can buy Tesla's now, so yeah. Yeah. At the end
Speaker 1: of our previous episode, we were talking specifically about some
Speaker 1: of the financial problems that were happening um and during
Speaker 1: which Elon Musk talked to his brother Kimball and went like,
Speaker 1: I really just need just a little bit more private funding.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that Kimball said to him,
Speaker 1: was like, are you sure, Are you sure that's what
Speaker 1: you need right now? Like, are you sure it's going
Speaker 1: to be worth it? Right? And? Uh, you know, Musk
Speaker 1: is a determined individual. I think you would say, especially
Speaker 1: if you'd listen to our episode that we recorded about
Speaker 1: Elon Musk last year. Uh, he's he's certainly, he's got
Speaker 1: He's got that vision and the determination to follow through
Speaker 1: to achieve that vision. That is pretty important in this
Speaker 1: kind of industry. So August two thousand nines where we're
Speaker 1: picking up, and that is when Tesla Motors relocates its
Speaker 1: headquarters from San Carlos to Palo Alto. Over the course
Speaker 1: of two thousand nine, they would produce about eight hundred
Speaker 1: roadsters um and managed to get the production cost down
Speaker 1: to some thousand dollars a piece, which is a lot
Speaker 1: better than the hundred and forty thousand dollars a piece
Speaker 1: that they were operating at a couple of years previous,
Speaker 1: especially since they were selling them at a hundred nine
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a piece. So now they're selling them at
Speaker 1: a profit profit as opposed to add a loss. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a in general, I mean, I don't know a
Speaker 1: lot about business, but I do know that you generally
Speaker 1: want to sell something for more money than it costs
Speaker 1: you to make it. Uh at least that's I mean,
Speaker 1: I probably a missing something here. But in January, Tesla
Speaker 1: registered for an initial public offering, which is kind of
Speaker 1: interesting because, like we said, they had just you know,
Speaker 1: asked the government for four hundred and sixty plus million
Speaker 1: dollar a loan, but they were getting ready for it,
Speaker 1: so they were registering it. And that's not exactly when
Speaker 1: they held it, but that's when they registered. UM. The
Speaker 1: key to that loan, if you remember from our previous episode,
Speaker 1: was that Tesla had to have a mass production facility
Speaker 1: UM and they did not have that yet. But in
Speaker 1: March of Musk secretly toward Knew Me, which was a
Speaker 1: or is a two acre vehicle production plant in Freeman,
Speaker 1: California that's valued some like one billion dollars UM. It
Speaker 1: belonged at the time to Toyota and General Motors. Well.
Speaker 1: GM had backed out of the plant UM in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine after declaring bankruptcy, and Toyota was planning on
Speaker 1: stopping production the following month and in April, so this
Speaker 1: plant was basically up for grabs, and no one else
Speaker 1: in the auto industry was doing well enough to really
Speaker 1: want to take it over. Yeah, that global financial crisis
Speaker 1: had really hit the auto industry, particularly in the United States,
Speaker 1: really really hard. Akio Toyota, that the president of Toyota
Speaker 1: himself had actually arranged this tour for Elon Musk and
Speaker 1: would develop a friendship with Musk over the next couple
Speaker 1: of months. Uh, they like test drove the roadster together
Speaker 1: and like towards SpaceX and bonded over through you what. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that happened. There, there's journalistic evidence of this thing.
Speaker 1: You mean that maybe one day I too might be
Speaker 1: able to sit across the table from Elon Musket and
Speaker 1: Joyce fro you. I think I think it's possible, especially
Speaker 1: if you become the president of a multinational corporation that
Speaker 1: ask can greatly profit from. Oh it's nothing but a
Speaker 1: gravy train from myro on outfolks. All right, So May
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, Tesla ends up buying that plant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for just forty two million dollars. You just told me
Speaker 1: it was worth a billion. That is exactly what I said.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's it's that thing where really no
Speaker 1: one else was in a position to buy it, and
Speaker 1: they were fro Yo buddies at this point. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing, nothing really greases the wheels, like like Oreo,
Speaker 1: Like an Oreo crumbled Froyo. But yeah, sotwo million dollars.
Speaker 1: This incredible, right, Yeah, Meska had budgeted that amount for
Speaker 1: a much more modest factory and and ended up with
Speaker 1: this massive place, this massive place. Yeah. And and Tesla
Speaker 1: and Toyota also announced an agreement. Oh yeah, they said
Speaker 1: they were going to start developing electric vehicles together at
Speaker 1: Toyota agreed to purchase shares in Teslas. So in June,
Speaker 1: Tesla has its initial public offering and joins the NASDAK
Speaker 1: Stock Exchange. Now, that public offering was very successful, at
Speaker 1: ray more than two twenty six million dollars, and it
Speaker 1: was the first American car company to complete an I
Speaker 1: p O since Ford's way back in Yeah. So at
Speaker 1: that point, right, this is the same wired piece that
Speaker 1: a quote from our previous episode had had been in. Right,
Speaker 1: that's when Elon Musk said, at that point, every day
Speaker 1: was like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.
Speaker 1: I'm not positive that was a dramatic reinterpretation, you guys, um,
Speaker 1: but uh, yeah, that's that. That was a quote from
Speaker 1: two eight or so when things were really not looking
Speaker 1: very good for for for Musk and for Tesla, and
Speaker 1: so things had turned around at this point a whole lot.
Speaker 1: Musk at this point said, I'm not staring into the
Speaker 1: abyss of death anymore. I'm just eating glass now. It's
Speaker 1: like sunshine and puppy dogs. Uh. And And that that
Speaker 1: wired piece, by the way, is how Elon Musk turned
Speaker 1: Tesla into the car company of the future, by one
Speaker 1: Joshua Davis. And it's a really triffic piece. I'll try
Speaker 1: to remember to link it on social so that you
Speaker 1: guys can enjoy it as well. Yeah, it's great. It's
Speaker 1: a great resource for this this whole podcast. In January
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, Tesla reports its financial results and they
Speaker 1: have to do this so publicly traded company has to
Speaker 1: report part of the because you have the responsibility to
Speaker 1: your shareholders as well as the government, and revealed that
Speaker 1: it lost a hundred fifty four point three million dollars
Speaker 1: in twenty ten, not a big not a big surprise.
Speaker 1: I mean again, because the roadster was really the only
Speaker 1: thing they had, uh as to sell. They had received
Speaker 1: some investment money and alone, but they hadn't They didn't
Speaker 1: have any more product to move yet, right, and they
Speaker 1: still weren't producing a whole whole lot of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, roadster eventually, I mean spoiler alert, eventually the
Speaker 1: the full number of roadsters that they produced was somewhere
Speaker 1: just south of two thousand, five hundred, so not that many.
Speaker 1: Now we skip ahead a whole year, so let's all
Speaker 1: go dolululu little in January two twelve now, and Peter Rawlinson,
Speaker 1: who was vice president and chief engineer, and Nick Sampson,
Speaker 1: who was a vehicle and chassis engineering supervisor, both resign
Speaker 1: on the same day. At the as soon as the
Speaker 1: news breaks, shares drop nineteen per cent. So it's part
Speaker 1: of the problem here is that, uh, both of these
Speaker 1: guys were very heavily involved in developing the models, and
Speaker 1: the fear was that this was going to lead to
Speaker 1: some sort of problem with the model lesque production and
Speaker 1: that people lost confidence in tesla Um. And also they
Speaker 1: decided to do something else that was a little radical.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that that is when they in fact ended
Speaker 1: production on the roadster before I could get one. Were
Speaker 1: you planning on getting a roadster? Plan is a strong word,
Speaker 1: dream or hope? Are you planning on getting a driver's license?
Speaker 1: I know I was playing on getting a driver and
Speaker 1: a roadster. The hard part is sitting in the back
Speaker 1: of a car that only has two seats. That that
Speaker 1: part I hadn't figured out yet. But anyway, February two
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve, that's when Tesla unveils a new vehicle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Model X, which is an Suv yep, to go
Speaker 1: on sale in early it's not it's they're they're supposed
Speaker 1: to be delivered sometime this year. But although in another
Speaker 1: spoiler alert here, if you were to put in an
Speaker 1: order right now, it would essentially be a pre order.
Speaker 1: They can't guarantee delivery till two thousand fifteen, so I'm
Speaker 1: telling you guys know. But but they were. They were
Speaker 1: taking five thousand dollar deposits for the vehicle, and it
Speaker 1: has my favorite feature of a vehicle ever. So now, okay,
Speaker 1: if the roadster can't be mine, I'm not a big
Speaker 1: suv guy in general, but this one I would get
Speaker 1: for this one feature. It has freaking goal wing doors,
Speaker 1: you know, like the yea yeah, and hey, hey that
Speaker 1: would have a back seat, so you could have a driver.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's all right. I can have my driver
Speaker 1: driving around in the electric STV. Okay, got a new goal.
Speaker 1: I'm all right, I've recentered myself. So May two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: Tesla announces it will begin delivering Model S cars to
Speaker 1: customers starting on June twelve. And then on June twelve,
Speaker 1: they had an Apple like launch event where they started
Speaker 1: to deliver the first Model S vehicles in person and
Speaker 1: for the first three anyway. Uh I watched the video
Speaker 1: on this and it was definitely very much like an
Speaker 1: Apple event, although I guess it was more of an
Speaker 1: internal company event that press were invited to. I think
Speaker 1: it was mostly Tesla employees and it was more of
Speaker 1: a you guys, we did it. This was something that
Speaker 1: people said was impossible. Everyone kept saying that, uh, it
Speaker 1: was the company was not in good shape, that the
Speaker 1: global crisis had caused us to lose sight of everything.
Speaker 1: That never happened. It out here it is. And at
Speaker 1: that time there were ten owls and reservations for the models,
Speaker 1: and most of those people had never seen one, let
Speaker 1: alone Saturn one let alone driven in one. So that's
Speaker 1: that's a lot of promise. Yeah, and you've got, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got. Some might say it's a little cultish. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of another car company, the Saturn Car Company,
Speaker 1: where people who got Saturn's early on. Did you ever
Speaker 1: meet anyone remember some of the hype surrounding it, But
Speaker 1: I didn't know anyone at the time. Now, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: Tesla they talked about being a community, especially the roadster
Speaker 1: community early on because those very few people, very exclusive, right,
Speaker 1: But same sort of thing, Like it was this idea
Speaker 1: that you're being inducted into this sort of exclusive club.
Speaker 1: But also because you shared this vision of an electric
Speaker 1: car future with zero G emissions. I mean this was
Speaker 1: a big deal for a lot of people. Sure. Speaking
Speaker 1: of cults, has that cult going? The cult of Matt? Oh,
Speaker 1: the Matt one. Yeah. See, I'm not allowed to talk
Speaker 1: about that. I also can't talk to my family anymore.
Speaker 1: But other than that, it's great. This is all Ben,
Speaker 1: Ben and Matt of stuff. They don't want you to
Speaker 1: inducted Jonathan into a call they did. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if Scott bought in. Its kind of a holdout. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Okay, we have people watching his house all the time.
Speaker 1: But if you go to their YouTube channel you can
Speaker 1: check out Jonathan on that. Yeah, it's fantastic. So getting
Speaker 1: back to the model s, it's a four door sedan.
Speaker 1: This is that that luxury sedan that they had been
Speaker 1: talking about years before, right and they here it is
Speaker 1: finally coming out. It has an optional seating for seven.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, there's a lot of extra cargo
Speaker 1: capacity when you remove the need for exhaust systems and
Speaker 1: thermal shieldings so that you don't cook your passengers like
Speaker 1: eggs on an engine block, the catalytic converters and etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's also the body is made mostly of aluminum instead
Speaker 1: of steel to cut down on weight, obviously very important
Speaker 1: so that you can not have to use as much
Speaker 1: power to move the vehicle. Uh And unlike the Roadster,
Speaker 1: it actually had two battery options, so you had one
Speaker 1: that would give you the bigger battery package option would
Speaker 1: give you three hundred six miles of range or about
Speaker 1: four kilometers on a single charge, and the smaller had
Speaker 1: more arrange that was closer to the Roadster, which was
Speaker 1: about two hundred forty four miles or around three kilometers. Now,
Speaker 1: it was also designed to be very aerodynamic to cut
Speaker 1: down on drags, so again to try further reduce the
Speaker 1: load on that battery exactly, and it had regenerative breaking
Speaker 1: to again reduce the load on the battery some more.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, the recharging thing still kind of
Speaker 1: an issue, especially since some people just can't get over
Speaker 1: that idea that oh, I want to be able to
Speaker 1: drive as far as I want, whenever I want, and
Speaker 1: not worry about running out of juice. Well, it has
Speaker 1: a mobile connector that can plug into a hundred ten
Speaker 1: vault or two hundred forty volt outlets. Uh. But you know,
Speaker 1: usually you would just plug it in at night. If
Speaker 1: you were to plug it into one of these outlets,
Speaker 1: you would get only a fract faction of your full range.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you were on the road and you
Speaker 1: wanted to charge your car, Uh, let's say you go
Speaker 1: to a public charging station and you recharge the battery
Speaker 1: at a rate where you get about twenty two miles
Speaker 1: or kilometers for every hour of charge. Some can charge
Speaker 1: a little faster than that. A two forty volt outlet
Speaker 1: will provide thirty one miles or fifty kilometers of range
Speaker 1: per hour of charge. But they're super charger stations, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk more about them in a little bit, but
Speaker 1: they can provide one seventy miles or two hundred seventy
Speaker 1: four kilometers of range for just thirty minutes of charge,
Speaker 1: and that's pretty incredible. Still, it's a half hour, right,
Speaker 1: It's a lot different than it's much more cumbersome than
Speaker 1: pulling up to a gas station and being out in
Speaker 1: under ten minutes. Yeah, So that that's something that some
Speaker 1: people still ball cat, even though I think most of
Speaker 1: us if we were to actually right down how many
Speaker 1: miles we traveled in a typical day, I think for
Speaker 1: most of us it would be significantly below the range
Speaker 1: of the Tesla. Again, some people, obviously are are exceptions,
Speaker 1: but I think the majority of us would be able
Speaker 1: to uh comfortably drive that range and then plug in
Speaker 1: at night and be fine the next day. Of course,
Speaker 1: if you forget to plug in your car, then you're
Speaker 1: you know, up the creek. So the car has a frunk,
Speaker 1: which is a front trunk of that work. I don't
Speaker 1: approve of it, it does. It just sounds dirty, but
Speaker 1: that it's got it's got a frank. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't like the that that version of front
Speaker 1: trunk either. I mean having a front trunk awesome. That's fine.
Speaker 1: By calling calling it a fronk not good. But yes,
Speaker 1: you can store stuff there excellent. Well. And the Roadster
Speaker 1: just like the Roadster, it has an electric motor and
Speaker 1: fixed gear drive, but it has a liquid cool power train.
Speaker 1: Unlike the Roadsters, which, as you recall from the last episode,
Speaker 1: exactly it just brought in air from the vents, this
Speaker 1: one had a liquid cooling system and again it uses
Speaker 1: lithium ion batteries just like the Roadster did. One of
Speaker 1: the big shiny elements of this car was it's or
Speaker 1: is it's seen UM touch screen for all of the
Speaker 1: controls and UM media communication. You can you can do
Speaker 1: everything from controlling the temperature in the cabin or know
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. There's some people who I
Speaker 1: know have said that that was a little scary to
Speaker 1: have a big panel that could be distracting to the
Speaker 1: driver but sor that could electrically short out and stop
Speaker 1: stop giving you, you know, importantality and information UM. But
Speaker 1: chief designer friends von holtz Heusen said, uh, it's like
Speaker 1: the leap of faith Apple took with the iPhone. There's
Speaker 1: a cleanliness to the interior and the screen is the hero.
Speaker 1: We're in the midst of a transition toward a new
Speaker 1: way of thinking. For me, that's an iPhone moment, and
Speaker 1: it is an impressive display. I mean, i've I've I've
Speaker 1: only seen pictures of them, because George is not one
Speaker 1: of those places. We we live in Georgia, and George
Speaker 1: is not one of those places that has a lot
Speaker 1: of the supercharger stations. In fact, we have one, and
Speaker 1: it's in Savannah, which, for those who are not familiar
Speaker 1: with Georgia geography, is way the heck away from Atlanta,
Speaker 1: about five hours travel time by car. Yeah, so you're
Speaker 1: not gonna see a lot of these. Not saying that
Speaker 1: no one has them in Atlanta. I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: a few, but I haven't had a chance to see
Speaker 1: one in person, but I've seen the pictures and they
Speaker 1: are pretty so. When it launched, they had talked about
Speaker 1: the base price of the lower end models without any
Speaker 1: options on it or anything, was around sixty thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and the one with the larger battery pack was around
Speaker 1: eighty thousand. Um, those numbers are different from today's numbers.
Speaker 1: And also they changed year to year and based upon
Speaker 1: all the different options. So that was the idea of
Speaker 1: when it first launched. Um. And also there was this
Speaker 1: optional third row seat that that idea that seventh, it
Speaker 1: wasn't that you would set three people in the front
Speaker 1: and four people in the back or something. You know,
Speaker 1: it's meant just for children. And it meant that they
Speaker 1: also had to put in extra safety features. Sure. Well,
Speaker 1: the this this third row was facing backwards, and uh,
Speaker 1: if customers order the car in this layout, it includes
Speaker 1: a special rear bumper like like double bumper in the back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it meant more there was more crumpled space there in
Speaker 1: case of a rear collision. So if if a collision
Speaker 1: happened at highway speeds, then uh, it would be just
Speaker 1: as safe from the rear as it would be from
Speaker 1: the front. So uh, and we'll talk more about its
Speaker 1: safety record when we get into the second half. In fact,
Speaker 1: this is a good place to take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. All Right, we've worked our way
Speaker 1: up to September two thousand and twelve, the models has
Speaker 1: come out and at this point, Tesla announces that will
Speaker 1: build out that supercharging network that I had talked about.
Speaker 1: So the super charging stations were places that are our
Speaker 1: places rather where people can quickly recharge their Tesla vehicles.
Speaker 1: They use this proprietor arry kind of of connection between
Speaker 1: the supercharger and their vehicle, and for absolutely free of
Speaker 1: charge for any Tesla user, they can start to recharge
Speaker 1: their car and after about half an hour they've got
Speaker 1: you know, a hundred seventy mile range. Like we said
Speaker 1: in the earlier part of this podcast, they would announce
Speaker 1: a year later the the option to have um in
Speaker 1: instead of sitting there for half an hour and charging
Speaker 1: your car, just swapping out the battery pack, which can
Speaker 1: take as little as nine seconds. Yeah, yeah, there was.
Speaker 1: There was one demo where they showed it being done
Speaker 1: in something like thirty seconds. But this was you know,
Speaker 1: in a in a scenario that was specifically engineered to
Speaker 1: be as fast as it possibly could be, all right,
Speaker 1: and that is for a service fee. And I think
Speaker 1: that the formula that they use is is the market
Speaker 1: price of fifteen gallons of gas, which they estimate to
Speaker 1: be somewhere between sixty and eighty dollars. Yeah, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what I've heard as well. So in other words, you
Speaker 1: can if you if you have the time, you can
Speaker 1: sit around for half an hour and let your car recharge,
Speaker 1: or if you're gonna get going, you can dish out
Speaker 1: the sixty to eighty bucks or whatever the equivalent is
Speaker 1: at that given moment and get a new battery switched
Speaker 1: in and it'll be fully charged and does give you
Speaker 1: a full range of travel. Again. So the other thing
Speaker 1: about this proprietary technology is it means that only model
Speaker 1: S vehicles can um plug into this stuff. So it's
Speaker 1: not like there's any kind of uh market sensibility to
Speaker 1: to get these things into as many charging stations as possible.
Speaker 1: It's really just based on Tesla putting them in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you drive any electric vehicle from any other manufacturer,
Speaker 1: you cannot take advantage of these superchargers. Um So it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of uh, it's kind of Tesla guaranteeing that
Speaker 1: they're going to have an invested base because they've they're built,
Speaker 1: they're the ones actually putting the infrastructure out there. They're
Speaker 1: not depending upon other UH entities to do that. So far,
Speaker 1: they have built seventy nine of those supercharger stations in
Speaker 1: the U s um it's a it's a mostly West
Speaker 1: coast trail. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. If you look
Speaker 1: at the map, um, imagine that it starts in Seattle.
Speaker 1: It didn't really start in Seattle, but just think of it.
Speaker 1: It looks like it's looks like it's a snake in
Speaker 1: a way that the one end of it is in Seattle.
Speaker 1: Then goes down the West coast with lots of stations
Speaker 1: in California, starts to loop inward. You guys who are
Speaker 1: not from the United States are going to get a
Speaker 1: really weird sense of geography here. But starts the loop
Speaker 1: inward and goes into Arizona and New Mexico before arches
Speaker 1: northward and goes into the upper Midwest States. Lots of
Speaker 1: stations in Chicago, so once you get to Illinois, there's
Speaker 1: a good cluster there. Then it continues into the northeastern
Speaker 1: part of the United States, then trails down the East coast,
Speaker 1: which is where we get you know, the one in
Speaker 1: station goes down into Florida, and then you have a
Speaker 1: disconnected pocket of supercharged stations in eastern Texas. In fact,
Speaker 1: Bernie Burns of of Rooster teeth has a model s
Speaker 1: Tesla and talks about how it's great. He loves it,
Speaker 1: and he loves the supercharge stations, and he's frustrated about
Speaker 1: a certain law that we will talk about in a
Speaker 1: little bit. But yes, Um, Tesla plans to continue building
Speaker 1: out this network of stations to get better coverage, and
Speaker 1: in fact says that they estimate by the end of
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen they'll have eight percent of the United
Speaker 1: States covered in parts of Canada as well, and by
Speaker 1: the end of two thousand fifte percent of the country
Speaker 1: should be covered, so that you should have a supercharger
Speaker 1: within range of your vehicle and another one within range
Speaker 1: of that one. Meanwhile, Europe does have a few yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: more than a dozen. Yes, that's how many they have
Speaker 1: right now. And I didn't see any indication on the
Speaker 1: website about Tesla's plans to build that infrastructure out very much.
Speaker 1: I would imagine that they do plan on doing it,
Speaker 1: but they didn't have any numbers like the eighty or
Speaker 1: that they had for the United States. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: as sticky as the legal situations here in the States
Speaker 1: are right now, Um, probably they're they're trying to They're
Speaker 1: they're picking which fish they are going to fry at
Speaker 1: which time. Frying fish is a very delicate procedure. It is.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand thirteen, in February, Musk had his
Speaker 1: his little tiff with the New York Times. Oh right,
Speaker 1: that was when John Broder wrote this this kind of
Speaker 1: hypercritical article of the model asque called stalled out on
Speaker 1: Tesla's electric highway. Yeah. He claimed that that he ended
Speaker 1: up losing juice um and that the Tesla vehicle did
Speaker 1: not adequately warn him, and Musk ended up writing an
Speaker 1: extremely detailed blog post where they took lots of metrics
Speaker 1: straight from the car from the car, that right, and
Speaker 1: they said, look, we looked at what you did in
Speaker 1: our car, and it's not the same thing as what
Speaker 1: you said in the article. In fact, you wing two.
Speaker 1: When you were charging it, you said that you need
Speaker 1: to go sixty one miles. The vehicle had indicated that
Speaker 1: you had enough of a charge for thirty two miles,
Speaker 1: and then you stopped charging and started driving away, and
Speaker 1: you still went fifty one miles. And then we're surprised,
Speaker 1: apparently when you didn't go the full sixty sound miles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what Musk was saying, is that you are not
Speaker 1: being honest, You're being disingenuous with this report. And there
Speaker 1: was a lot of back and forth between Broder and
Speaker 1: Mosque and The New York Times in general, and eventually
Speaker 1: Margaret Sullivan, the public editor of the New York Times,
Speaker 1: offered a quasi apology, saying that there was some errors
Speaker 1: in precision, but not in integrity. So it's almost like
Speaker 1: a very double speak kind of apology. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: end of the day didn't hurt Tesla's sales at all.
Speaker 1: People still had interest in the model s So this
Speaker 1: review didn't didn't end up um or this article, I
Speaker 1: guess I should say, didn't end up having a huge impact.
Speaker 1: Though Musk at the time had claimed that because of that,
Speaker 1: from a corporate standpoint, they lost about a hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars in potential potential investment. I I honestly think that
Speaker 1: it was It wound up driving positive hype for the
Speaker 1: company um and at any rate, by Tesla would have
Speaker 1: its first ever profitable quarter. YEP, they made five sixty
Speaker 1: two million dollars in revenue. I have no idea how
Speaker 1: much they made in profit because I don't know what
Speaker 1: their costs were and uh I pulled this information from
Speaker 1: their initial report, so I'm sure there was a more
Speaker 1: specific report that goes into the profit. But consumer reports, Um,
Speaker 1: they had some nice things to say, right Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: unlike unlike the New York Times. They gave the models
Speaker 1: their highest rating for a car ever, which was out
Speaker 1: of there a hundred point scale. Now, meanwhile, there were
Speaker 1: some other competitor companies that were also trying to get
Speaker 1: into this electric car market. Uh. And they included companies
Speaker 1: like Coda and Fisker, and both of these had been
Speaker 1: struggling for a while. Coda would end up going bankrupt
Speaker 1: the week before Tesla announced its profitable quarter, and Fisker
Speaker 1: would eventually follow suit, declaring bankruptcy later on. Uh so
Speaker 1: you know this. This was again another story about how
Speaker 1: Tesla was able to defy the odds and and see
Speaker 1: success while other companies were trying to do the same thing.
Speaker 1: We're failing right right Um. As of Junior or June
Speaker 1: and or July of Tesla paid back that four d
Speaker 1: and sixty five million dollar loan from the Department of
Speaker 1: Energy and simultaneously raised a billion dollars from investors. That's
Speaker 1: pretty impressive that is also the time period that they
Speaker 1: started announcing those battery swapping stations that we were just
Speaker 1: talking about a moment ago. And so then in August
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, Tesla announces that the National Highway Traffic
Speaker 1: Safety Administration awarded the Model S a five star safety
Speaker 1: rating across all categories and sub categories. And according to
Speaker 1: a press release on Tesla's website, they said that the
Speaker 1: combined score technically, like when they would show scores, that
Speaker 1: five was the top, but in reality it could go
Speaker 1: a little higher than five. It's just that they would
Speaker 1: say it's a five star rating. They so that there's
Speaker 1: ended up being a five point four, which was the
Speaker 1: highest that any car had ever received as far as
Speaker 1: safety rating is concerned. And this included I think the
Speaker 1: car that they sent over for testing was one that
Speaker 1: had that seventh additional seat, and so you know, they
Speaker 1: decided they tested this thing by doing lots of crumple zones.
Speaker 1: They said that the but the fact that has a
Speaker 1: frunk means that has a bigger crumple zone because it
Speaker 1: doesn't have that engine block there, so that helps protect
Speaker 1: the driver and passengers from head on collision. They also
Speaker 1: strengthened the car's sides, They strengthened the back. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of the Tesla representatives said, you know, technically there
Speaker 1: are ways you can gain the system because you know
Speaker 1: which ways they're going to test the vehicle. So so
Speaker 1: what we did was we strengthened those parts of the
Speaker 1: vehicles first and then said, okay, how do we make
Speaker 1: the rest of the car as strong as these strong points. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and a few of those other really basic electric
Speaker 1: car um contrivances, uh necessities really mean that the the
Speaker 1: overall strength of the car can can be based on
Speaker 1: the underbelly. It can be completely flat, which can allow
Speaker 1: you to cut down on on a lot of annoying
Speaker 1: stuff like a like road vibration and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and and also make it much more U crash compatible. Right,
Speaker 1: and also it's got a you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: you've got the battery pack down there beneath the floor
Speaker 1: pan means that has a very low center of gravity,
Speaker 1: which actually helps not only in the handling but instability.
Speaker 1: It means it's really hard to flip it over. In fact,
Speaker 1: they said that in the tests where they were you know,
Speaker 1: trying to flip the car, they had to go through
Speaker 1: extreme measures in order to get the car to flip
Speaker 1: because the center gravity was so low. Perhaps in response
Speaker 1: to this innoc hoper m, a bunch of kind of
Speaker 1: sensationalistic news stories began popping up about fires breaking out
Speaker 1: and model SS And to be fair, these these fires
Speaker 1: were popping up in cars that had that had just
Speaker 1: been in a crash. Um and I haven't heard any
Speaker 1: stories of these fires getting past the cars safety firewalls
Speaker 1: into the passenger compartments. It was all just in the
Speaker 1: confined to the battery. And uh uh, some of the
Speaker 1: emergency response teams that showed up didn't know entirely how
Speaker 1: to deal with an electric car fire as opposed to
Speaker 1: a a gasoline engine fire. The method of dealing and
Speaker 1: containing that kind of thing is pretty pretty different. Yet
Speaker 1: um and Uh Musk and True Musk style post a
Speaker 1: really calmly derisive blog response about how driving around with
Speaker 1: large tanks of highly flammable fuel really isn't um more
Speaker 1: safe than his electric batteries. So sends a lot like
Speaker 1: saying that, hey, just because he used bitcoins to launder money,
Speaker 1: you know what else is used to under money? Dollar
Speaker 1: bills way more as it turns out same, SAME's worth
Speaker 1: of thing. It's it's funny that we're recording these episodes
Speaker 1: so close together, and and the themes are so close.
Speaker 1: February two fourteen, Tesla announced a planned five billion dollar
Speaker 1: giga factory factory. Yeah, I can't help but think of quagmire. Uh,
Speaker 1: this giga factory, this is just to produce um there's
Speaker 1: lithium ion batteries four vehicles. Yeah, and in fact, this
Speaker 1: would be an attempt to make them easier to get
Speaker 1: to because as it turns out, Uh, there are several
Speaker 1: large companies that supply lithium ion batteries, but Tesla's pretty
Speaker 1: much beholden to them, right. That's that's where it's the
Speaker 1: only source they can go to to get these. They
Speaker 1: say that they're planned twenty twenty production using this factory
Speaker 1: building these lithium ion batteries, that the the amount they
Speaker 1: produced in that factory would actually be more than the
Speaker 1: global cell supply in two thousand thirteen. So in this
Speaker 1: one factory they would be able to make more cells
Speaker 1: that would be assembled into batteries than they could get
Speaker 1: if they had the the corner on the global market
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, and and this is all part of
Speaker 1: the third step of that plan that we talked about
Speaker 1: in our first episode for for the company to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, first produce a sports car and then produce
Speaker 1: a Family Sedana luxury Family Sedan granted, but then to
Speaker 1: begin producing electric cars for the common person. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so uh they say that this twenty twenty production would
Speaker 1: allow them to create to produce as many as half
Speaker 1: a million vehicles in a year once it goes online.
Speaker 1: So they're looking right now, it's the factory is not built.
Speaker 1: They're looking at different potential sites to build this factory. Uh.
Speaker 1: They first went ahead and discounted California, so it's not
Speaker 1: going to be there. They said that it will probably
Speaker 1: be in either Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, or maybe Texas.
Speaker 1: But although at this point it's looking like maybe not Texas. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So March two thousand fourteen, Texas had already passed this
Speaker 1: law that I'm about to talk about. But this is
Speaker 1: when New Jersey joins Texas, Colorado, Virginia, and Arizona by
Speaker 1: passing legislation that bands Tesla from using direct sales to
Speaker 1: sell cars to customers. Right, as we said earlier, Tesla
Speaker 1: uses direct sales, they don't go through a third party dealership, um.
Speaker 1: And dealerships don't really like that so much. No, And
Speaker 1: in fact, they often have a lot of political sway
Speaker 1: of particularly in certain states like I don't know, Texas.
Speaker 1: So you get into these the states where you have
Speaker 1: politicians who say no, you know, Tesla needs to play
Speaker 1: by the same rules that these automakers are playing. They
Speaker 1: do also claim that it's better for shoppers and owners
Speaker 1: alike to be dealing with third party party sellers um,
Speaker 1: and that that's going to encourage competition. Yeah. I don't know, Lauren.
Speaker 1: Have you ever gone to a dealership where someone told
Speaker 1: you that whatever car you were interested in was not
Speaker 1: the right car for you? I have, Um, I have
Speaker 1: so many opinions about car dealerships and the way that
Speaker 1: they sell cars. I have gone through this process twice
Speaker 1: in my life, and um I I don't genuinely hate
Speaker 1: many things, but car dealerships are something that I have
Speaker 1: that it's like, it's like flames on the side face. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean burning fiery passion. So see, this
Speaker 1: is it's interesting to me because Tesla's approach otherwise is
Speaker 1: very much like apples Now. Now, granted, you can buy
Speaker 1: Apple and other stores, so it's not it's not completely analogous,
Speaker 1: but but it's pretty vertical. I mean, yeah, Apple has
Speaker 1: its own store that you can go to and you
Speaker 1: can buy from Apple. You can either buy it online
Speaker 1: or you can go to the physical store and buy
Speaker 1: it there. Uh, but you can also go to Best
Speaker 1: Buy or whatever and buy Apples. That's some of those.
Speaker 1: But in this case, Tesla is very much like the
Speaker 1: pure Apple experience, saying you come to us, we will
Speaker 1: sell you a car. And these states have said you
Speaker 1: cannot do that, and in fact, uh, at least not
Speaker 1: in our state. So if you want to buy a
Speaker 1: Tesla and you live in one of these states, you
Speaker 1: have to leave the state first to buy it. You
Speaker 1: can bring it back to here, then that's fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not the driving the vehicle in New
Speaker 1: Jersey or Texas is illegal. It's not, but it's illegal
Speaker 1: to purchase it the way Tesla sells it. So people
Speaker 1: like like Bernie Burns that I mentioned, have to leave
Speaker 1: their home state to go and purchase a car that
Speaker 1: they want. I mean, like I said, Texas even has
Speaker 1: some of those supercharger stations available. They have some of
Speaker 1: the infrastructure, but they still have this law that says
Speaker 1: you cannot buy direct from Tesla, which is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why some people think that Tesla may not
Speaker 1: choose Texas to be the home for that gigaf fector
Speaker 1: or perhaps Arizona at that point. Yeah. True, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it may be that Nevada is gonna win out on
Speaker 1: that one. We'll see. But anyway, these days you could
Speaker 1: buy a models if you have the you know, the wherewithal.
Speaker 1: There's also the Model x A, right, you can put
Speaker 1: down a reservation for that, although like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: like Jonathan said earlier, Um, the deliveries of those are
Speaker 1: if if if you preserve today, are not planned to
Speaker 1: be in right, so there should be Model x is
Speaker 1: on the road before the end of this year. I
Speaker 1: don't think any have rolled off the assembly lines yet
Speaker 1: from the customers that I'm personally aware of. And the
Speaker 1: roadster is officially off of the market, so I'm sure
Speaker 1: that a few of them are floating around here, and
Speaker 1: that like a you know, fifty grand or so, you
Speaker 1: might might be able to pick up a used one.
Speaker 1: Uh anyway, So yeah, that's the story. Of Tesla Motors
Speaker 1: so far. It actually, to me is a remarkable story
Speaker 1: on multiple fronts. For one thing, the idea of a
Speaker 1: company that is coming at the electric car problem from
Speaker 1: a totally different direction than other companies do. Write other
Speaker 1: companies coming in from let's let's really target the echo
Speaker 1: environmentally friendly market. Tesla says, let's go with these cars
Speaker 1: can be sexy. Yeah, let's go with a really high
Speaker 1: end user and and and convince them convinced the world
Speaker 1: that this is something that they want. And and you know, therefore,
Speaker 1: by trickle down effect go you know, when when they
Speaker 1: put out something that's cheaper, have the common guy go like,
Speaker 1: oh man, that's that company that makes those incredibly sexy cars.
Speaker 1: I want incredibly sexy cars. Especially since by that time
Speaker 1: they've built out a lot of the infrastructure that you
Speaker 1: would need to charge your vehicle if you ever had
Speaker 1: to do it when you're out on the road. That
Speaker 1: makes it practical. So I think really savvy. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: went about it in a really really interesting way. Obviously
Speaker 1: it wasn't smooth sailing to make the entire time smooth
Speaker 1: road sailing. Yes, yeah, And by the way, we're not
Speaker 1: suggested that Tesla cars are like boats. Um. Anyway, it
Speaker 1: will be really interested to see how this goes. I'm
Speaker 1: very curious to see in the next five or six
Speaker 1: years what kind of of the lower cost cars Tesla
Speaker 1: comes out with, assuming that they do continue on that path. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm excited about that potential Giga factory thing. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would love to be able to to see Tesla dealerships
Speaker 1: or stores what I guess they're technically stores pop up
Speaker 1: in a lot more places to to and uh maybe
Speaker 1: even see competing um companies come out with their own
Speaker 1: electric vehicles that are just as compelling to to the
Speaker 1: average driver as the Tesla has been so um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and plus it also means that we're going to see
Speaker 1: other alternatives as well, like the hydrogen fuel cell cars.
Speaker 1: It's really exciting to me to see this kind of
Speaker 1: development away from the internal combustion engine as we are
Speaker 1: all familiar. So if you guys have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech stuff, here's the thought. Let's know
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Speaker 1: at night. We can't hear that anymore, and I say,
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