Louis: 0:00

Hey there. Welcome to another Tesla Motors Club podcast. My name is Lewis.

Doug: 0:03

I'm Doug.

Mike: 0:04

And I'm Mike.

Louis: 0:05

Today's episode will cover,, Tesla laying off their entire supercharging team, , maybe sort of, and then bringing some back. I don't know. We'll see. supercharger vandalism is on the rise, possibly connected, , some crazy new low interest rate financing and more. Episode 64 starts now. Oh man, we're back.

Doug: 0:27

we're back.

Louis: 0:28

Hello gentlemen.

Doug: 0:29

Hey,

Louis: 0:29

Here we are doing it again. And it's too warm outside. I don't know about where you guys are, it's getting hot in Austin.

Doug: 0:34

it's perfect in the Bay Area per usual.

Louis: 0:37

always,

Mike: 0:39

It is 70 degrees and sunny here in Southern California.

Louis: 0:43

it's in the nineties here. I was miserable going outside.

Mike: 0:45

you can keep it.

Louis: 0:47

yeah, no good. So supercharging team, there's been a lot going on , they laid them off and then maybe they hired some back and there's all this drama with an executive. And Doug, why don't you, break this down for us?

, Doug: 0:58

okay, so there have been several reports, actually, Electrek had relatively early report about this and it got later reported as new news from, , more mainstream, outlets, it's the kind of thing that, Elon would call fake news, and actually, if you look at it, the reports are, a little bit sketchy because it's like, , unnamed sources inside or former employees still unnamed. But the thing there are enough of them that it seems to corroborate. That, basically, , this,, female executive. Rebecca Tannucci had, , already done her 10 percent layoff of staff that, , Elon had demanded, the week or two prior., and he wanted more and she, , pushed back, , as, you would, in that you're running this team and, well, these are the people we need to have. And dude, Tesla's supercharging is a rock star,

Mike: 1:49

That's the golden goose right there.

Louis: 1:51

It's a competitive advantage for sure.

, Doug: 1:54

and then recently , you would think that supercharging would be really, Accelerating what they're doing , to be ready for different vehicles coming up, having more version four, , superchargers,, expanding existing supercharger locations because of, , other EVs , coming to use that space so it made sense to be, , putting more resources in the supercharging, especially at this time, right now, as people are transitioning to the Tesla connector and some people, , doing it now with adapters., so it was a little bit surprising. The timing, , but yeah, , she pushed back for seems like logical reasons to me and Elon's response is to fire the entire team., you would think that if she's not doing what he wants, then she would be the one fired, but he fired everybody.

Louis: 2:41

Scorched earth.

, Doug: 2:42

which, is an Elon kind of thing to do., now the Elon fanboys that, , think he's doing some four dimensional chess you know, you've never run a. multi billion dollar company, you know, what do you know? yeah, that's true. I don't know anything,

Louis: 2:56

See the engineers built and designed the superchargers. Once they've done that, they don't need engineers anymore. They just, already built it. So they just installed 'em places. Right. Like that. I saw a lot of those threads and I was like, oh, okay.

Mike: 3:08

they're a bunch of Legos.

Doug: 3:10

I mean, what was left was a lot of people, , that were like, Oh, but we were in the middle of a project,

Mike: 3:17

Who do we talk to? Where do we get paid?

Doug: 3:19

all my emails are bouncing now, what are we doing? Cause it's not just Tesla, right? It's, , the location, , the businesses around it, the, people that actually own the space, there's local utility stuff. It's a pretty complex tapestry of, different, organizations involved. it's not like Tesla can just roll up and do it anywhere. There are negotiations that , have to happen , at many different levels for these things. And that's what Tesla really had. They had , , a team to do this. And it's not just being an engineer or some book knowledge. There's, , a lot of institutional knowledge, , that, , was basically just, scorched. Right., so yeah, I'm sure those people will be fine. Other people will try to pick them up, I guess.

Mike: 3:59

no, they are. over the weekend. People were saying that they had already picked up new jobs that they had offers in their inbox as soon as the scorched earth was publicized. People had offers. So even if Elon wanted to hire some of them back, he may have missed the boat on that, that you can't rehire somebody that doesn't want to be there anymore.

, , Doug: 4:19

layoffs in general, typically the way to do it, if you need to do it. You do more than you need and you hire back, you don't want layoffs to be a prolonged, painful thing of people wondering, , for a month on end, you want to rip off the bandaid., so , that's typically the smart business way to do. It's not necessarily the most compassionate way, but in some ways it might be more compassionate, right? Is that you rip off the bandaid and then you see where your deficiencies are and you hire back. but specifically supercharging. It just didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense here.

Louis: 4:49

Yeah, I feel like, layoffs. Are not necessarily a bad thing, ? It makes a lot of sense at times companies tend to build up this cruft they get bigger and bigger and bigger and they don't really prune down. Most companies don't. And so layoffs are kind of a way to keep the organization healthy. they definitely are not good when you do a layoff every other week this team specifically, they laid off, , 10, 15 percent of folks, and then they came back and ended up all getting laid off., , Tesla's on a few, I think this year, like you're doing layoffs every few months, it's sends a lot of bad signals and it really hurts morale. For example, I will protect the names of the innocent, but I was, hanging out with some Tesla engineers, this week, , we didn't talk about anything to get them fired, don't worry. But the, but the overall, vibe that they conveyed to me was that, the morale was super low. And to be clear, we were not talking on behalf of the podcast. They didn't know necessarily that I was doing Tesla stuff., I'm just an engineer. I was meeting with other engineers but they basically were asking me about career advice. And what they should do and looking at other roles because they're kind of like, I may not have a job tomorrow., , they feel things changing and the ground coming out from under them, seeing these types of moves. So it's not great., the way in which Tesla has necessarily been going about this kind of stuff. Lately, I should say, , you add that with the timing of, the vote on , the pay package and all the other kinds of stuff, and it makes it really question, what are the motivations here and what are reasons behind why this stuff's happening?

Doug: 6:16

Yeah, I feel like the morale thing is a big deal. A lot of what Tesla does, at least it seems, is for the purpose of recruiting, right? all this Optimus stuff, the AI days, given what's happened recently, I still think Tesla is the place you want on your resume, I guess, but is everybody just gonna look at it as a stepping stone, or here's a place to build a career. And, , if people are. Looking how, , like Elon's not going to treat his employees. Well, would you really want to come to Tesla?

Mike: 6:46

you need that stepping stone and you need the name, but you still have to support your family and you still have to pay your bills.

Doug: 6:53

Yeah. I I guess the other thing is given the current. Trajectory of the stock, , if you think,, that the stock options are going to have a lot of value, then, then that's another reason to sign on beyond salary. And I think the salary is below market at Tesla.

Louis: 7:08

years ago, that was okay because of how well the stock did.

Mike: 7:11

not today,

Doug: 7:12

maybe not today. And I've, talked with people who've, gone through the Tesla recruiting process., that might be slightly dated because maybe this was like five or so years ago, but, it was like, you really need to believe in the mission, and checking out how much of a true believer you are in EVs or , in what Elon's goals are or whatever., , , okay, maybe just your skills and you're able to do stuff, but really believing in the mission to me sounded like an excuse to be paid less, and to put in,, more hours than, you would normally,., Louis: Apple was similar Apple had a similar, culture, certainly years ago. I don't know how it is today,

Mike: 7:49

but. even that didn't save Tesla people. I mean, there was a Tesla engineer that lived in his car and showered at the gym and they still whacked him., , he was obviously mixing and drinking the Kool Aid

Louis: 7:59

I feel like the majority of folks at those companies, definitely you're drinking the Kool Aid and it's part of the culture, right? Google was like that for years. Meta you kind of have to be that way when you're in those types of environments., I've worked in startups it's part of the culture, it's just one of those things where I feel like most rational people, you kind of feel that way for the first 10 employees, maybe the first 20 employees, when you're getting to like. Five to six digit employees, like, come on. Right. At that

Mike: 8:26

little harder.

Louis: 8:27

harder to do. And then also you're a cog in the machine, man. When you've got a hundred thousand people working on this thing, how much impact do you personally have? Sure. There are individuals that Tesla that have amazing impact. Elon has phenomenal impact,

Mike: 8:40

that's the minority.

Louis: 8:41

but engineer number three, that designs a screw for a thing, right? it's hard to live and breathe the company at that point.

Doug: 8:49

then when you're a part of a team, that's extremely successful, doing really good things and being recognized, outside the company so much. And then, yeah, just getting whacked for no fault of your own,

Mike: 9:02

Yeah. Talk about whiplash.

Doug: 9:03

that's, gotta hurt.

Louis: 9:05

that's unfortunate. it reminded me, Doug, how they, work with other external organizations, cause they have to install these things. There's all these contracts and deals. It honestly reminded me of my whole solar power wall debacle with Tesla. I bought Tesla solar and power wall for my house. And they said, well, we can't do that all at once. We got to split the order because the batteries are backed up. I said, fine. In the middle of this, I don't know if he quit or he got fired, but the person that was in charge of my order wasn't there. The email started bouncing back. Next thing I know, I don't have power wall. I only have solar panels. They never put in the other order. They wouldn't let me buy them. There's all this drama around it and now they will happily sell them to me, but I'm over it. I'm already like, you know what, why would I buy Tesla Powerwall there was good alternatives out there, right? it's possible they may have screwed up deals where there would have been superchargers that now there won't be a Tesla supercharger there. There might be a different company or they might not do it at all. It might impact., Evie adoption. So it's never good when you have those types of, things that come up that are unexpected when you're in the middle of working on a project or a deal. to lack of transition, the lack of handoff is just unprofessional. So hopefully this doesn't come to bite them longterm. supercharging is one of. The, competitive factors in Tesla being so successful that network, Elon was the visionary behind. We really need this network years ago. And you have it, but you need to expand it to really grow the market how you want. And now you've got all these other automakers all coming on board to like use your supercharging network, you're supposed to be growing this network, right? They had concrete goals of we're going to double and triple, and we're going to do all this stuff

Mike: 10:45

plus, all the federal tax dollars he was going

Louis: 10:47

and the tax dollars you're going to get. And it's like, man, I hope you didn't jeopardize all this with these types of shenanigans.

Doug: 10:53

supercharging in particular, if you think of all the sort of different Tesla moves, that one particularly is a stroke of genius. One that I thought was nuts when they first started doing it. At the time and, for years afterwards, every, charging, network. For the most part was a failing business. And I was like, why do you need to be in this business too? Except that, Oh, really it's the business of selling their cars. and so that was really well done. I mean, you think of other things like the shift to., autonomous driving, , that wasn't an original Tesla thought, Elon saw , the little Waymo cars and, he,

Louis: 11:30

man. We've all seen it.

Doug: 11:32

well, it's, that, like we were talking about, with, XAI. That's, uh, what about me sort of thing, Tesla moving to autonomy that was after Google had , these little cat cars going around if you remember back in the day and, I think, either Larry or Sergei had, said something, about it and Elon basically, Oh, that's the new hotness, , I want a piece of that. And that was a major shift for the company. And of course, now he's, for the most part, putting all the eggs in that basket., but, that wasn't an original idea, right? but the superchargers that really was, as far as I could tell now, no other company was thinking to do that. To, take that on , and that really was a stroke of genius and that has set Tesla apart, Immensely.

Mike: 12:12

It's not just a, supercharger, it's the execution. you just drive your car up and plug in no card, no app. Just plug it in.

Doug: 12:23

the, beauty of the vertical integration, yeah, I give them a lot of credit for that. So anyway. Of course the network is still there, but to destroy the team, while they're in the middle of, going gangbusters, that's kind of tough.

Louis: 12:34

They're supposed to be expanding right so, yeah, it's kind of crazy and it kind of leads into our next, discussion point on it vandalism at superchargers, is apparently on the rise.

Mike: 12:43

Apparently.

Louis: 12:43

Mike, you can give us a little bit of the details on this,

Mike: 12:46

so what's happened lately, and it is kind of made the mainstream news, is people are going in and cutting the charging cord from the top of the charger and . The common thought is they're cutting it for the copper. They're trying to steal the copper wiring and get a few bucks. some of the more, conspiracy thinking the people that want to ice our stations and they've decided they can just cut the cord and not have to deal with their truck park there., it's a payback as it were, but regardless of who's right on that? It's certainly increasing. They're seeing more and more incidents like this taking place. Either the cords are getting cut or the stations are getting run over. It's not helping that Tesla's removed some of the, bollards , to keep people from hitting them. And now people are hitting them.

Doug: 13:30

I have to say, I was, somewhat surprised that wasn't more of an issue in the past, but.

Mike: 13:34

There's no cameras or anybody looking at them.

Doug: 13:37

well, I mean, that's 1 of the possible deterrence. But, we've seen vandalized level 2, stations for years for as long as they've been there.

Mike: 13:44

Sure.

Doug: 13:44

The European model is that. Their level two charging stations don't even have cables. You supply your own cable. you keep that in your car and you plug in with the Meninke's, connector on both ends. And that's mainly to prevent, cable theft, and vandalism., so I was sort of surprised since there's been news about it now, though, the rate, at least the reports that I'm seeing are increasing And when you see the news reports, they mentioned, Oh, and you can remove this and you don't even get electrocuted.

Mike: 14:12

for that inside information.

Doug: 14:14

that info. Yeah. I've seen videos of wHere somebody cut the thing while it's mid charge and sparks fly. And the guy steps out of his car, like what happened? And that's cause the dude just stole the cable mid charge., so it's troubling and it's troubling now, especially, okay. If that whole supercharging team gone.

Mike: 14:31

Right. Who's going to fix it?

Doug: 14:32

The maintenance, right? Uptime of Tesla superchargers far. Better than any other charging network. I think in part is a lot of those charging networks were essentially in the business of getting federal subsidies to build the chargers instead of,

Mike: 14:46

necessarily run them. Yeah,

Doug: 14:48

instead of maintaining them.

Louis: 14:49

yeah, the government was their customer, not the end user being their customer,

Doug: 14:53

yeah, exactly.

Louis: 14:54

That's the problem.

Doug: 14:55

so obviously there are things that can do, there should be cameras. I suppose you could have a more complicated pedestal. Top men, top men are on this job.

Louis: 15:07

They had some top men and women, top people working on this full time. Yeah. Every time I hear, Mike talk about horror stories at other, , non Tesla stations. It's just , makes me not even imagine buying a car that can't charge at the Tesla supercharging state, right? The Tesla supercharging network is the. Network, there's nothing close and then to go, Oh, now we're going to have vandalism problems, so it's quality is going to go down combined with the people that were working on it are no longer there. That really makes me concerned for how things are going to be maintained.

Mike: 15:44

on the Rivian Reddit, I'm on the Chevy bolt Reddit and a few others. And people are just now getting their adapters. Rivian's just started shipping them in quantity and Chevy people are getting their adapters and they're all going, what the hell?

Doug: 15:56

Yeah.

Mike: 15:58

Are we even going to have a supercharger that works or are we going to go around like EA or other unkind words?

Doug: 16:03

Mike, did you say that , they're getting hit more?, cause part of the reason to remove those bollards is to make access easier for those other brands of vehicle.

Mike: 16:11

There are folks that track this sort of thing and they're saying that, the reported incidents are on the rise. Now they didn't give any hard numbers to it. It's just gossip at this point,

Doug: 16:19

Yeah.

Mike: 16:20

but yeah, if you make access easier, then shit's going to happen.

Louis: 16:22

Yeah, well, hopefully they get things under control. we already know they rehired some of the folks that were laid off and I'm sure they'll end up hiring more people in the future.

Doug: 16:30

Would you be that eager to go back after,, being treated that way?

Louis: 16:33

I mean, no.

Mike: 16:34

no. Hell no.

Louis: 16:36

My, advice at least on the engineering side I've been, in industry in a number of different industries for about 20 years, my advice is never go back to a company you left, whether you chose to leave or you didn't choose to

Mike: 16:47

Yeah. Don't go back.

Louis: 16:49

times I've done it. It's never worth it.

Doug: 16:52

So why not? What happens? Yeah.

Louis: 16:53

one of our producers said same advice for a bad relationship breakup. Yes.

Mike: 16:57

Yeah. Yes.

Doug: 16:58

true.

Louis: 16:59

whenever you leave, whatever it is, a relationship of work or personal going back, it's never the same. It's always different. And it's usually different in a weird way. So. I don't recommend it.

Doug: 17:10

personal relations aside, if they offered you, okay, yeah, take me back, but, double my salary or something.

Mike: 17:16

Yeah. But that's not realistic.

Louis: 17:18

I actually had that. I worked at a company and left voluntarily. They doubled my pay to get me to work for them from home. This is, , 15 plus years ago. I got to work from home, double the pay. And I lasted maybe three months before I just couldn't do it anymore. it was just so weird. I had a couple of weeks off between this happening and then even just going back to the office sometimes and just working with these people, I was like, I can't do this. I don't care. And I just got a different job for double the pay.

Doug: 17:47

What makes it weird?

Mike: 17:48

it's a lack of trust.

Louis: 17:49

well, it just loses its luster. You work somewhere for a few years and you leave and then you go back. It's different, but it's also the same. It's like going to your childhood home. It's like, there's weird memories or things that you connect with stuff, but it doesn't look the same anymore. So it was just like a weird, perspective. And I wasn't even working with the same people, which is the other crazy thing. I thought it was going to be great. Just didn't like it. I didn't want to do that work anymore. I just, Oh, it's just awful.

Mike: 18:12

Well, can you imagine, , let's say you're in Tesla, you're working in a supercharger team, you guys are getting awards, you're getting accolades, the whole world loves you, , you're working your butt off, trying to, spread the wealth, your reviews come in, you get good reviews. And then Elon has a, , man, child, hissy fit, chucks you. for no good reason. And then kind of says, Oh yeah, well, maybe we should let you back.

Doug: 18:37

I mean, it's tough, I, feel like a lot of people, if you believe in the

Mike: 18:42

but I can do my mission, of charging the world somewhere

Doug: 18:44

maybe,

Mike: 18:46

I'm charging EVs

Louis: 18:47

You may not have the same impact though. Right?

Mike: 18:49

maybe I can have a better impact. Maybe I can take EA and raise it out of the gutter. that might be a little harsh.

Louis: 19:04

anyway,

Doug: 19:05

Well, but maybe if you came back in a, better position, I don't know. I don't have any personal experience with it, but it, seems, pretty rough, which is why I asked the question. Cause I honestly don't know. but it's an interesting position to be in.

Mike: 19:18

I'm like Lewis. I've done the same thing a couple of times and it hasn't worked out. Well. The few times I've gone back,

Louis: 19:24

I've had friends do it too, where they work somewhere, they leave, they go somewhere else for a year and they go back and it's never the same , cause you , have all of this historical knowledge and perspective and it's different it's just weird

Doug: 19:36

You'd almost think that was an asset though, , the things you mentioned, , knowing the system, having the historical knowledge and,

Mike: 19:43

can, be an asset,

Doug: 19:45

and especially you're able to come back at a position of slightly higher status or power, maybe you have a better chance of navigating things.

Mike: 19:52

but if they, chopped everybody else,

Louis: 19:54

I don't know, man. I don't know if it's a psychology thing. I'm not sure what it is, but it just never feels the same. but yeah, so hopefully things work out there. Hopefully they improve. Cause it is one of our favorite things about Tesla is the supercharge network. so this next topic is pretty interesting. In fact, I've had multiple friends of mine contact me over it specifically that they've been marketed this and they're actually interested. started promoting 0. 99 percent financing, which is insane.

Mike: 20:24

absolutely insane.

Louis: 20:25

right now, if, you, haven't been living under a rock. And you've been paying attention to interest rates and loans and mortgages and all this stuff for the past two years. under 1 percent or just say 1 percent is cuckoo bananas right now. In fact, I'm not even sure they, there's no bank that's going to underwrite this. Like it's gotta be Tesla financing doing it themselves.

, Mike: 20:45

you can't buy money at that rate. I, I,

Louis: 20:48

I think this is crazy. Mike, you actually are trying to leverage this now, right?, you're buying in.

, Mike: 20:56

but, , as we all know, that's one and a half to two years out from today, assuming it all goes well, but I have been kind of poking around and kind of wishing I could upgrade. I've got a model three and I've got a Pacifica hybrid , this showed up in my inbox and the day after I went ahead and bought a, Model Y. I ordered a rear wheel drive model Y , on this deal, but then I thought about it for a week and in fact, just today, I went ahead and canceled that and I upgraded to an all wheel drive model Y with this rate that I can actually pick up locally, so I don't have to wait for them to produce these, , new long range rear wheel drives., but yeah, , I went to the Tesla store. That's in our local mall . And the place was just crazy. It was like an Apple store. Everybody and the brother was in this place, were three salesmen and a whole lot of people talking about Tesla., you couldn't get a reply from email. You couldn't call in. It was pretty much, you're on hold, come down to see us and hang up.

Louis: 21:58

so it sounds like this is a brilliant tactic to boost sales and to make the quarterly numbers look good, right?

Mike: 22:06

Yeah. If you wanna pump sales and you can afford to carry the 0.99%, then yeah. Elon, is genius. It's genius. I'm

Doug: 22:14

explain how they can carry that? Are they financing it themselves or do they have some other financial institution underwriting these loans or how does it work?

Mike: 22:23

not clear. I've been told that Tesla's carrying the paper on this. I've been also told that if you're upright and breathing, you can probably get it., they seem to be kind of loose on the qualifying. to move the car, you have to make a personal judgment where you can actually afford it or not,

Doug: 22:39

I , I've always thought that Tesla should be in this financing game since most,, manufacturers make lot of

Mike: 22:44

they do have their own finance company. you can read the fine print and they'll tell you who's underwriting their various. Loans. And there is, was it Tesla finance Lewis? We were looking at it

Louis: 22:54

Yeah. so when I financed mine, it went through Wells Fargo, , who's underwrote the loan and actually carried it., which I didn't mind because they were my mortgage. So it was like, yeah, everything's all the same, but I didn't expect that , because, all the paperwork just said Tesla up until everything went through. but yeah, they do actually have Tesla financing as one of their loan servicing. Yeah. organizations. my understanding is they're basically subsidizing the loans to some degree. So I don't know if they're working with other partners and they're just paying the difference in interest or they're doing something along those lines, moving money around some kind of tax, something to make it happen. Or if they're carrying the loans themselves, I would think they don't want to carry the loans because they like to use their capital on hand in various ways. And that's probably not the way that Tesla wants to leverage their capital. but , yeah, I don't know. There's probably a, accountant out there, CFO somewhere that knows way more about this than me The financial tricks, but they're doing something to where , it's not like they found a bank willing to do this, cause that's not going to

Mike: 23:48

no bank, no banks willing to do that.

Louis: 23:50

rates are too high. The banks aren't going to

Mike: 23:52

In fact,, there's some very tight restrictions on this. Elizabeth, had a comment, will they decrease people's current rate that was actually asked when I was standing in the store and the sales rep says, no,

Doug: 24:03

they've already made that sale.

Mike: 24:05

we have documentation that came from Tesla. It was very explicit. This is for Model Y, this is for, now, started on the 10th, ends on the 30th, it's a very tight window. Everything pre existing, no can do, , no Model 3, no Cybertruck, sorry. Just the Model Y.

Louis: 24:23

Yeah. There's the boost sales numbers for the quarter. Cause it's this, month.. You have to buy it by the end of this month, I believe.

Mike: 24:28

yes, you have to order. You don't have to take delivery. But you do have to order.

Doug: 24:31

The Y that's a very popular vehicle. Right. But, people know that there's a refresh, Just over the hill and,

Mike: 24:38

Juniper,

Louis: 24:39

Well, I would argue most people don't know.

Doug: 24:41

okay, it may be, but, then also, in terms of their manufacturing., they're geared up to make a bunch of Ys

Mike: 24:47

they are,

Doug: 24:48

has been a slowdown. So these are the things that they need to move

Louis: 24:51

Mm

Mike: 24:51

Now, I would say this. When I was in the store, they had a Highland and they had a Model Y, you get in the Highland, you look around. You can feel and see how much upgraded the Highland is over the old model three. When you shut the door, it's got a very BMW Mercedes thunk to the door. Now it just has a very nice feel to it. You go to the Y and it kind of feels like a high end Chevy. it just doesn't have the same feel, touch. that the Highwind has got.

Doug: 25:23

Yeah, there's a lot more carpeting in places that used to just be plastic. So it's, designed to absorb a lot of noise. It has , the double pane glass, that the current model Y should have,

Mike: 25:35

supposed to have that. I'll find out.

Doug: 25:37

but, it's all the other little things., there's that little tab under the door that seats it just right, , as it comes in. So, it definitely feels more of a solid vehicle.

Mike: 25:47

I will say this. And Louis, you're going to laugh at me for this. so the 0. 99 kind of pushed me over the edge, but you know what really pushed me over the edge? The Model Y has stalks. Juniper, by all accounts, Juniper won't.

Louis: 26:00

Sure, they will not.

Mike: 26:01

am not interested in that. So I view this as kind of like my last chance to get a relatively new Tesla with stalks.

Louis: 26:08

fair

Doug: 26:09

is your last chance.

Louis: 26:10

with a

Doug: 26:10

probably

Louis: 26:11

interest rate.

Mike: 26:12

That was a great interest rate.

Louis: 26:13

Yeah, that's fair.

Doug: 26:14

I've said before, they should offer them as an option. Cause it's just plain ridiculous.

Louis: 26:19

probably won't.

Mike: 26:20

Who knows, maybe, I mean Juniper's been paused from everything I've heard, so. I've been looking at so much information the last couple of days about this whole thing. I don't remember the source, but there is a user out there. I think it was in Reddit, but I think he pulled it from somewhere else. They actually did the calculation of 0. 99 percent interest of what you'd pay over the life of a loan of 72 months. And they referenced it to a current credit union loan of like 6. 5 and then a high risk loan of, 10 plus. And over the life of the loan, you're talking eight, nine, 10, 000 in savings. this is real money. So if you have any way of pulling this off and you want a Y,

Louis: 27:02

What's funny is I feel like this is almost a gimmick to try to not upset the owners. So for example, if you think about in the grand scheme of things, Tesla has a few knobs they can turn for sales and what they've done in the last two years,

Doug: 27:16

dropped the price. Yeah.

Louis: 27:19

And what's funny is, it pissed all of us off. Like everybody that owns a car is mad about that, but there were other dealerships for years and years over, you know, Toyota would do it. I think I did it with my Jeep 0 percent financing. Right. So they, I think they may be having realized , this is a way to drop the price of the car, a few thousand dollars to get more sales without people being upset that already own the car. Cause the cost is the same. It's just. You better interest rates. So people don't see it the same, even though it is., so I think this might just be Tesla realizing, Oh wait, here's a knob here. We haven't turned yet. That doesn't piss everybody off.

Mike: 27:54

So brand new car qualifies for the 7, the model Y does. Yeah. So you get 0. 99%. You get the 7, 500 discount up front. It's a killer deal. It is absolutely a killer deal. And some States offer. incentives on top of that.

Louis: 28:10

it'll be interesting to see how long they do this for. If come back again. You know, they did multiple rounds of this will be the only time ever we let somebody transfer FSD and then they did it again or, supercharging.

Mike: 28:21

bought my Y, but the little voice in my head was kind of wishing they did this for the X. I might've considered an X. They

Louis: 28:30

I'd probably buy one. I, anyway, I think it's smart on Tesla's side. It's definitely should juice sales. I'm interested to see where the numbers land. They seem to be really focused on this quarter and that leads into our next topic, which I think is somewhat potentially connected to the layoffs they did and all the other stuff is this investor voting, Elon

Mike: 28:53

man.

Louis: 28:54

package thing. There's a shareholder wrote coming up.

Mike: 28:57

Yeah. There's

Doug: 28:58

hmm.

Louis: 28:59

Yeah. lots of drama there

Doug: 29:01

If any of you guys invest in, , any companies, , you might get an email or a little letter in the mail about proxy vote for, a shareholder vote coming up They have these various things that they're voting on and what the board suggests you vote on. you know, I've gotten those same before most of the time I ignore them., I'm not that significant enough of a shareholder for it to really matter anyway., but I've never seen it where. the board is actually putting out ads to try to get you to vote the way they want you to vote, that to me is, sort of new, especially Tesla, that Tesla that doesn't do normal ads, yet you see their, chair,, putting out an ad telling them to vote The way Elon wants you to vote. so that's, pretty interesting., there are several things, worth chatting about on it. the main two are reaffirming, Elon's pay package from a few years back

Louis: 29:53

Is it like 2018 or something?, it was a while ago.

, Doug: 29:55

there's a lawsuit about it and the judge, , said , , basically that the board wasn't acting independently enough when they approved it., so that has been pushed back and then the other one is that Tesla wants to reincorporate in Texas, , which, , can only be seen as, Elon being pissed at Delaware., And if you look at Twitter, it's amazing., I've never seen this before. it just feels really culty, You have all these people this is how I'm voting and they literally show screenshots of their votes. And this is what I'm, doing. And I support Elon.

Louis: 30:25

like a political election.

Mike: 30:27

Yeah,

Doug: 30:28

what it feels like., and then you have some people that are just like, no, I'm not voting for this. a perfectly rational person could say, , why would I vote to reincorporate in Texas? It's such an unknown. whereas Delaware is basically set up to be friendly to corporations., so it really is just as far as I can, armchair psychologist, it's just, you know, I'm pissed at Delaware.. Yeah. I mean, Elon has made these tweets. No one should ever incorporate their company in Delaware. Come on. that's ridiculous.

Louis: 30:55

Texas is pretty corporate friendly, but yes, you're right. For legal precedent, Delaware is the de facto standard. I would argue though, that probably most people don't know that or think of it to that degree, most people probably hear Delaware's where things are incorporated, but they don't realize why it matters. It's interesting point though of like,, yeah, clearly it's Elon decided they're moving their incorporation. I highly doubt this came from the CFO's office, this is probably, Elon deciding this,

Doug: 31:22

And the board trying to show that they're independent, uh, that ain't working then, you know?

Louis: 31:26

yeah. I'm thinking back on it. I'm pretty sure there have been ads in the past for votes at certain companies years and years ago. but they've been very targeted ads. maybe it's just cause Tesla's so mainstream and into the public eye. But, , yeah, crazy. It's like a political ad campaign, Of , vote this, do this. And I almost feel like the timing is terrible because it's like, this is based on how the company would be doing and how their performance would be. And in 2018, there was a lot of like, holy crap, the company was about to go under and things weren't working and they pulled it through and became super valuable and everything's amazing. So in that point of time, yeah. Give the guy the biggest pay package ever. We did it., Let's go kind of thing. And now it's like, well, where's the stock price now? Where's the room for growth. Now sales have been slipping. There's more pressure industry wide, and it's kind of like, Should we be giving him the largest pay package ever In all the Twitter stuff. So there's a lot of Tesla shareholders that are. Not as on board with, , some of Elon's decisions. So I think the timing, , again, it made more sense in 2018, it makes less sense now, but because of the judge it's almost like they have to do it again., so yeah, I'm, interested to see , where this goes., but the cult of is strong. There's a lot of folks that are. Very in favor of, , giving him this pay package. If you think about it, he wouldn't need the pay package if it wasn't for the Twitter buy, his argument of, I lost too much control of the company. I need more control of the company. It's like, yeah, you sold all that stock. Cause you bought another company for 40 billion, so you want another 50 billion in Tesla.

Doug: 33:04

And you could argue that him selling that stock, , obviously negatively affected the, , stock price.

Louis: 33:09

and it did, for example, I think Tesla today would be better off if he never bought Twitter for so many different factors, it would be better off. And so it's kind of funny that it's like now , he wants to get a big payout additionally from Tesla to get more control. That he only needs because he bought Twitter.

Doug: 33:24

and it's not even just the stock he sold. It's the stock that's up as collateral,

Louis: 33:29

He's leveraged it.

Doug: 33:30

Earlier , you were connecting, this shareholder vote to, , the other things, the layoffs, , the 0. 99, , financing, could you elaborate on that?

Louis: 33:40

I just feel like, whenever you're worried about shareholders, you're generally focused on the stock price. And what are the factors or the things that they're doing to try to help the stock price? Oftentimes investors like layoffs. Because that means the company is being more lean, more efficient, which means they're being more profitable. So when you talk about things like,, doing layoffs to cut costs, that means their profitability goes up. That means their stock price goes up. When you talk about the interest rates, as Mike described, probably Tesla's, sales numbers are going to rebound, right? They were down last quarter. They're probably going to be doing much better this quarter in a big part because of this deal. And if the numbers look really good, that's something they can point you to go, Hey, look. The numbers are fantastic. He clearly deserves this pay package, right?, it's a standard executive short term thinking thing of, let me just do this thing. That's going to hurt the company long term, but looks really good right now. So the stock price goes up. So I get my bonus payout, right? Like, Executives have been doing that since, the nineties or whatever it was. So, , yeah, in my mind, they're all connected. I feel like this is all because of this pay package. Now, would they have done some of these things without the pay package? Sure. But I feel like they're more important to them. And I don't think we get the advertisements and all the other kind of stuff going on. I think that's why they're so hot for doing this is they really want this to happen, right?, Elon really wants it., and the Elon bubble he has around him on the board and, , certain investors, they really want Elon to be happy. So that's why they're pushing for this. So that's my feeling. I maybe it's a conspiracy. I'm being too, conspiracy nut, but.

Doug: 35:13

has also positioned it as. Give me what I want, or I might walk, not even just this package. I mean, he's basically said he wants another package after this that ensures that he has at least, , 1 4th of all shares in terms of voting power, , so that, he can guide things the way he wants it. into that., Would Elon really walk if,

Louis: 35:36

I don't think so.

Mike: 35:37

Well,

Louis: 35:38

do you think, Mike?

Mike: 35:39

I think he would, I don't think he's rational enough to sit there and decide unemotionally emotions rule. Him and I, I think this would probably turn the burner up to high and he'd probably do it just because it seems like something to do

Doug: 35:53

But Tesla is where he gets the most attention., before he was as big on Twitter I mean, if we had this conversation back in 2015, say, SpaceX really should have been his main thing, right?

Louis: 36:04

Yeah. I wish it was

Doug: 36:05

but,

Mike: 36:06

it might be after all this

Doug: 36:07

but, cars a little more literally down to earth , and that was something that was getting more attention. So in terms of him building his public clout, , it was really Tesla and then of course Tesla's where he's made his real money, at least on paper, in terms of Tesla shares, right.

Louis: 36:23

of his money.

Doug: 36:23

Oh, the vast majority,

Mike: 36:25

But he's made a lot of noise. He wants to get into, AI, , he wants to really play in that sandbox.

Doug: 36:31

yeah.

Mike: 36:31

he may view this as a way to stop spreading himself so thin

Doug: 36:35

I doubt it.

Mike: 36:36

go focus on something shiny and new.

Doug: 36:38

I don't believe that.

Louis: 36:40

I mean, AI is AI, right? He's going to be doing AI with Twitter. He's going to be doing AI with Tesla. at some point they'll be doing AI with space. AI is going to be equivalent to just saying software at some point in the future, right? It's just going to be another thing that every company does.

Mike: 36:54

but we're not there

Louis: 36:55

Sure.

Mike: 36:55

think he wants to be at the front of it,

Louis: 36:57

He does for sure., yeah, I agree with that, , here's the thing. AI is still more of a research project than a product okay, I'll caveat and say that open AI has done a phenomenal job of productizing AI. Because if you look at all the things they had with chat GPT before that, all that stuff existed, they did not invent a lot of that stuff, but they figured out how to productize it really

Mike: 37:24

but there's a point here, Lewis. Elon, doesn't want to sell cars. That's not what he wants to do.

Louis: 37:31

to sell the future. You're

Mike: 37:32

He wants to sell the future,

Louis: 37:33

Sure.

Mike: 37:34

to be seen as the smartest kid in the block about selling the future moving over to AI or something like that is an easy way to do it.

Louis: 37:42

That's fair. The point still stands. I still don't think he's going to leave Tesla, because Tesla is almost kind of his baby at this point, right? One. It made him a lot of money. Sure. But I agree with Doug. It got him a lot of publicity. It got him a lot of attention. He loves that., and , whenever you have somebody like Elon, and this is true for all of them, anybody that's executive with multiple companies, then there's not a lot, but For example, Steve Jobs is the same way, Gates is the same way when you start going into a bunch of different companies or you own chunks of it, you start interplaying between them

Mike: 38:13

sure,

Louis: 38:13

Jobs did it a lot, right? With, , next and then Apple buying next to use the hardware so. It's a common thing that, executives will do , when they're these multiple companies. And I don't see Elon getting away from that, right? Like SpaceX uses Tesla vehicles for things and they share engineering , XAI is technically a company that is developing AI and they're all using XAI stuff and. They're maybe going to use Tesla's chip design. And, , I think the ecosystem is there. I can't see him cutting out a big part of his ecosystem. Maybe if he decides to retire at some point, but I don't think he'll ever retire.

Doug: 38:44

SpaceX is, using Model S motors to, actuate, the grid fins, for example, you know.

Louis: 38:49

Exactly. So there's this tight integration between the company. So I don't think he'll walk., I think he will, , definitely threaten to for sure., which, he's sort of done already. Now what I would say is you do want Elon to be happy. if he's upset, it may cause things to happen at the company that make all of us unhappy,

Mike: 39:06

Yeah. Look at the supercharger network.

Louis: 39:08

exactly supercharger network, , they have great products. as a customer, I love Tesla's products. I want them to continue to innovate and expand and grow. And what concerns me is like I said, I spent time with several Tesla engineers this week. And they were talking about morale's really low. They're thinking about looking for other jobs. They're not sure if they're going to be employed. And that's the thing you don't want. You want Tesla to be a bastion of innovation and excitement for young engineers to go work there.

Mike: 39:35

please come work for us and see the future. Yeah.

Louis: 39:38

And so where get nervous about this kind of stuff. So , I want him to be happy. Do I think he deserves that payout? Probably not. I don't think anybody deserves that payout. I don't care who you are, but

Doug: 39:48

want to live in a world Where someone makes the world a better place, better than we do.

Louis: 39:52

There. was a Silicon Valley episode, right? Where they did a spoof on that. Where the guy basically said, what, he's like, if I'm not the one making it a better

Doug: 40:00

Yeah. Gavin Belson.

Louis: 40:02

Belson. or whatever in Silicon Valley. Fantastic show. If you haven't seen it,

Doug: 40:05

Well, it, tracks. I mean, that's what Sam Altman said about Elon, right?

Louis: 40:08

yes,

Doug: 40:09

He wants to save the world as long as he the one doing it.

Louis: 40:12

correct. So it is what it is. But, , anyway,, we'll give you updates when this happens., the shareholder vote coming up, Related to some of the things we talked about today. There's also a fun FSD class action lawsuit. the class action lawsuits are never fun. I'm, being. Facetious,

Doug: 40:27

the problem with class action, is, you never get anything out of it. the lawyers get everything.

Mike: 40:32

the lawyers get it.

Louis: 40:33

ever makes anything except the lawyers. Yeah. Yeah.

Doug: 40:36

I mean, I think I was owed, like, two bucks from something. And then you got to go through all the trouble of getting it back. And it's like, why even bother?

Louis: 40:43

Right. You spent more on the stamp to send me the letter than I'm going to actually make out of this.

Mike: 40:48

I think my battery gate class action suit with Apple was like a dollar, dollar and a half. I mean, something ridiculous.

Louis: 40:54

They just give it to you in Apple store credit. That's,

Doug: 40:57

in an original, iPod Nano and getting the latest versions of the iPod Nano, and that was kind of nice, but, that was best ever got on one of those things.

Mike: 41:05

cool. Nano is a nice one.

Louis: 41:07

It's true. So the class action lawsuit, I find somewhat amusing because we've talked about FSD tons of times on the show, obviously, but I found most amusing is something that was said earlier before we started today's episode is Mike, you were talking about your recent usage of FSD.

Mike: 41:24

yeah. yeah.

Louis: 41:25

and you're probably the biggest

Doug: 41:26

critic

Louis: 41:27

critic and skeptic of FSD of the three of us.

Mike: 41:30

Absolutely.

Louis: 41:31

tell the people what you said, because I was blown

Mike: 41:33

Alright, alright., so I have a little route that I, use my FSD on when I come home. And it's got, Unprotected left turn. It's got unmarked wide streets in a housing track. It's got a roundabout. It's got all these interesting little things. And FSD has just been a hot mess trying to get to my house. So a couple of days ago, as I was coming up to my unprotected left, I took my iPhone, I set it up and I recorded this. I was stunned. That it was smooth, it made the turn, it read the signs right, stayed in the center of the lane, it didn't have the digital meltdown when it was trying to make the roundabout like it always does, and I was very impressed actually, , given some of the other adventures I've had with FSD. I'll admit it worked now. I want to repeat this to see if it's repeatable or if hell froze over for the day

Louis: 42:29

it's funny to me because you were giving this anecdote of like, oh my God, FSD worked better than it's ever worked. And I was super impressed with it

Mike: 42:36

true and then

Louis: 42:38

but this lawsuit that's going on right now is basically claiming some level of fraud on Tesla's part. saying that they are advertising this capability or they're selling it as it has this capability or will

Mike: 42:51

Okay, so let's parse this out a little bit so one disclaimer a retired lawyer filed this lawsuit

Louis: 42:59

I think the disclaimer is none of us are lawyers, so don't take anything we say it's being legalized.

Doug: 43:03

seriously,

Mike: 43:04

I don't play one on TV, but he was making the point that he bought it on his 2017, model S. And most of us know by now that the hardware on those, there's no way in hell it's ever going to run the FSD in its current state. Nor is there any upgrade.

Louis: 43:23

is not Tesla's opinion, but sure, that's Mike's

Mike: 43:26

Well, yeah, well, okay. Suit yourself.

Louis: 43:29

They still claim hardware 3 will work

Mike: 43:32

Oh, right.

Louis: 43:33

have been upgraded to hardware 3. So anyway, keep going.

Mike: 43:36

could have been and wouldn't. Could have been had not been upgraded. I think they stopped at 2. 5.

Louis: 43:42

Oh, okay.

Mike: 43:43

And I really think that's the crux of it. I think the newer Tesla's like we own, there's a chance. But I think the older folks on 2. 5 or earlier who were promised FSD, they're kind of out of luck. I don't see it ever happening for them. And it's a hardware limitation that Tesla either didn't fully anticipate or did and kind of blew it off. I mean, who knows? computers are like dog years. I mean, they probably had the best of intentions when they put it all together and sold it to the consumer, but you know, software moves at the speed of light. Sometimes

Louis: 44:16

the intentions are good. The Tesla didn't sell it knowingly going. We'll never get

Mike: 44:21

I think their intentions were fine.

Louis: 44:23

that's good. Court case over. They're not going to lose the case. Then

Mike: 44:27

I think the consumer. bought it in good faith, you know, they paid their 8, 000 for it or whatever they paid.

Louis: 44:34

money.

Mike: 44:34

But I kind of think Tesla owed it to them to either compensate them and say, sorry, our bad. We can't make it work. Here's a free supercharging or here's a credit or whatever, but they just kind of took their money and said, yeah, nice to know you.

Doug: 44:47

easiest thing they could have done is just, brought it forward as these people are often Tesla fans, especially early buyers. And they've since bought several Tesla's,

Mike: 44:58

Oh yeah. Early adopters.

Louis: 44:59

You're eligible for your next Tesla purchase for free FSD transfer, right? That's what they should do. They should just let them transfer it forward to a new vehicle because their old vehicle can't even upgrade to do the stuff that the new ones can.

Doug: 45:12

but also I bought this thing and I still haven't been given what I bought.

Mike: 45:16

I, supported you,

Louis: 45:18

Yeah, but that was R& D budget. You're not getting that back. That went to R& D.

, Doug: 45:21

especially the way they used to do it, because, when I bought it, paying for FSD got you nothing extra,

Mike: 45:28

It was a, promise.

Doug: 45:29

like there were no extra features until they, Reshuffled some of the things that you got with enhanced pilot, and they push that into, what they call it FSD capability or whatever. so yeah, I would have, thought that would be the way to do it. I mean, if you can get away with it though, geez, all that free money.

Louis: 45:43

you, guys agree with the lawsuit? Do you think it's a fair lawsuit of saying, Hey, I paid for this thing. You never gave it to me. It's some level of fraud, whatever, ignoring the legal definitions of what that means. false advertising

Mike: 45:54

In principle, I agree with it. You should have gotten something for your 8, 000.

Louis: 45:58

What about you, Doug?

Doug: 45:59

Yeah, I would say in principle, yeah, I I'm sure they had their lawyers go over the fine print pretty well, to me, one of the bigger things that, helps the class action case is, , that video that has been shown to be basically staged, and especially that little intro. That was a lie, right?

Louis: 46:18

Yeah.

Doug: 46:19

said,

Louis: 46:20

footage was

Doug: 46:21

this is all real and, we're showing you what it can do. And, there was no intervention

Mike: 46:26

Just

Doug: 46:26

where, it turned out, the route actually had been practiced several times and they were

Louis: 46:31

Helpers.

Doug: 46:31

spot vehicles driving along with it. Yeah. I mean, I don't have any problem with, with, Making that type of video, you know, , showing, , what we expect to happen. that's,

Louis: 46:39

art of the possible I want to punch every executive in the face that ever says it to me.

Mike: 46:44

but you have to present it that way.

Doug: 46:46

it was, presented as this is what's possible right now., so yeah, I think that is a problem and there should be some, restitution because of that. but, , even, without intent for fraud, The truth is people were promised something and. in the next year is what we heard all the time in the next year. And of course it's been, practically a decade. And, if you talk to any people that worked in the field at that time. They were all like, yeah, there's no way it's going to two years from now and most likely more than 10 years from now, back then. And these are the people that, should know something about it. Those are also the people that, uh, yeah, they wanted LIDAR, but. It was reasonable for them to want LIDAR because, that's what worked. Right. and Tesla literally has used LIDAR. How they use it to train their cameras. Cause LIDAR is a, piece of ground truth in terms of how far away are things in three dimensional space. but of course there are things you can do with cameras., motion parallax, or even just static parallax with multiple cameras that allow you to infer distance. basically you can train an AI, like, okay, what do you see? And then here's the actual, truth using the LIDAR data.

Mike: 47:56

so what you're telling me is there is actually hope. I real hope I can have Jarvis on my Model running FSD for me.

Doug: 48:03

maybe you'll get Grock making, uh, snarky comments at You oh, is that where you really want to go? You don't really want to go there. Making dad puns.

Mike: 48:13

Are you sure you want that?

Louis: 48:16

I did crack up though, I saw on streaming, there's , the Tom Hanks movie Finch, where he builds a robot. I haven't seen it yet, but I saw on the trailer, there's a whole thing where he builds a robot and then he's teaching the robot to drive. So there's a robot driving his car. And I was like, Oh, Hey, that's how he's getting self driving to work. I was like, we're gonna have optimists in as FSD. That'll be fun.

Doug: 48:34

You know, used to be another sort of DARPA grand challenge, not, the autonomous driving one, but there's one for humanoid robots

Mike: 48:40

Oh yeah, I remember seeing videos from that.

Doug: 48:43

and there'll be different tasks, like, , open, a door, and one was actually, , get in the car and drive it. And, , I don't know if they're still doing it, but, I'm sure you can find on YouTube, there are tons of great blooper reels of, various bipedal robots failing at various tasks.

Mike: 48:58

not quite as successful as they had hoped.

Louis: 49:02

Well, we'll get there.

Mike: 49:03

FSD is not quite as what we hoped either. I mean, between bashing your rims on the curbs

Louis: 49:08

I don't know, Mike. I heard, this Mike guy telling me that it was super impressive and everything worked perfectly. So I'm looking forward to hearing the update if it's repeatable.

Mike: 49:15

was a very limited space. Not a curb to be found.

Louis: 49:21

Alrighty. So that's our show. hopefully that was enough always, we appreciate your comments and questions and all that stuff coming in. So keep that coming., like, and subscribe, on X or, you know,

Mike: 49:36

It's Twitter.

Doug: 49:37

all the Twitter stuff has been expunged at this point, right? At least in terms of the routing of the URLs and stuff, right?

Mike: 49:42

He said The core. was all X now,

Louis: 49:44

the naming. Yeah, so on X and on YouTube, , feel free to go over to the Tesla motors club. com website. I'll become a supporting member that always helps out., thank you to , producers. Danny, who's holding down the fort today, , we will see you next time. Go ahead and say it, Doug.

Doug: 50:03

Laters!

Mike: 50:06

Can't go without it.

Louis: 50:07

Yeah. Go.