Louis: 0:00

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

Doug: 0:04

I'm Doug.

Mike: 0:05

And I'm Mike.

Louis: 0:06

In today's episode, we'll talk about some highlights from the Tesla Q4 earnings meeting. Also, Tesla appears to be facing some major sales downturns globally, and Even though it's only been a few weeks, we've already got some movement on our predictions from our last episode. So we'll touch on those, all that and more. episode 72 starts now Alrighty. How are you gentlemen?

Doug: 0:32

Pretty good.

Mike: 0:32

just dandy

Louis: 0:34

since the last episode, Doug and I got to hang out in person,

Doug: 0:38

Oh yeah.

Louis: 0:39

Doug visited in Austin.

Doug: 0:40

I came out for the, , Astro Awards,, we briefly mentioned it, , in the last,, episode, Tim Dodd, Everyday Astronaut it's like the second one he's done in person. And it's pretty cool, basically a bunch of enthusiastic space nerds, but it was a two day event and it had, panel discussions about things we find interesting, new space versus old space, Apollo 16 Astronaut Charlie Duke was there and he did a keynote.

Louis: 1:04

That was really cool.

, Doug: 1:05

a couple of the people from the, , Polaris Dawn mission were there., during the awards, our likely next NASA administrator, , Jared Isaacman. At least came in with a pre recorded thing, he couldn't be there in person. Obviously SpaceX and Rocket Lab and those, , companies got a lot of mention.

Louis: 1:23

The space force was there.

Doug: 1:24

yeah, the Space Force was there to recruit. I, don't know that they had a very useful, , recruiting event. They were sponsors and I guess they have to try to recruit if they're going to sponsor.

Louis: 1:33

Yeah.

Doug: 1:34

what did you get out of it, Lewis?

Louis: 1:36

I thought it was cool. Some of the talks getting to, see, uh,, Apollo astronaut that walked on the moon. It was really neat. And hearing him speak in person and,, some of the, other folks that have been to space, that was really neat., there's definitely some interesting people that were there. It was kind of like going to a comic con or something I felt like where. I was just surprised that the, gamut , of people that attended, some folks that have like no background in science, no knowledge about technology or space or anything like that., but., yeah, it was really interesting. I had fun.

Doug: 2:10

Yeah, it's cool. I got to meet Scott Manley.

Louis: 2:11

Scott Manley.

Doug: 2:13

to him a couple times.

Louis: 2:14

so cool. that guy's awesome. I love his videos.

Doug: 2:17

He did a, DJ session, the evening after the first day. that was pretty cool.

Louis: 2:21

Fly safe.

Mike: 2:22

Um,

Doug: 2:23

yeah. You know what's funny though? With all the SpaceX stuff, , Elon Musk was only mentioned by name once. kind of felt like, everybody was trying to avoid mentioning him because that was literally days after the inauguration.

Louis: 2:37

They definitely avoided that. it was noticeable.

Doug: 2:40

yeah, I was like, let's not mention the elephant in the room. Probably in response to, , certain gestures he made, just a few days prior. yeah, That was kind of odd and obvious, but anyway, yeah, probably go next year. I enjoyed it enough that I'll go back.

Louis: 2:54

I will probably plan to go and I'll get better tickets.

Doug: 2:59

Yeah, yeah,

Louis: 3:00

They were sold out of all the VIP things by the time I decided to go. So Doug got to do some things that I didn't get to, but next year I'll be better prepared.

Doug: 3:09

the tickets were tiered. The highest level was, anything I would pay for this kind of thing. I think it was like a thousand bucks or something.

Louis: 3:15

Thousand bucks

Doug: 3:17

they called that the Apogee level, I think. I got the orbital.

Louis: 3:21

Yes, you were orbital.

Doug: 3:22

Which was maybe 300 bucks, which was still kind of a lot. but, , it got me,

two main things: 3:26

during this, , evening, nightclub thing. There was a VIP sort of level and it gave you a chance to chat with some people.

Louis: 3:34

He got to look down upon peasants.

Doug: 3:38

the main benefit of that was I got to chat with some of the, panelists, like Scott Manley, I got to chat with them up there, but it was a loud environment. It wasn't really the kind of environment to chat with people. And then they did do quote unquote meet and greet that was scheduled., but that was not good., I think there were so many of us at that level. I've never been to one of these fan conventions, but it was like. You're lined up and you get one minute with each person. Like speed dating or whatever? some people you actually want to talk to. Some people you don't necessarily want to talk to. And then you're just like standing there. Hi. And it's just weird.

Mike: 4:12

a

Doug: 4:13

I would do that differently. I mean, really, that kind of thing should just be Cocktail tables, and you just, can chat with the person you actually care to chat with, , I suppose you have the, danger of somebody hogging somebody in that case, but still, that would have been more natural than this thing, this speed dating set up.

Louis: 4:29

They could have done separate lines, but then you'd have one really long line and a

Mike: 4:33

lot of short lines or no line.

Louis: 4:35

Right.

Doug: 4:36

That would be even more like a comic con kind of thing. I don't know. It just was weird. So, anyway, only complaint about the event. Otherwise, it was very well done and, uh, it was cool. Yeah, so I enjoyed it.

Louis: 4:47

Indeed. So, the other big thing that happened since last episode is they Q4 earnings for Tesla. Yeah, we learned all kinds of stuff. There was a lot of things that come out of that. Some good, some bad.

Mike: 5:02

Yeah.

Doug: 5:03

they spun it mostly good, but, , the funniest thing is, , we just had our predictions episode, right? We don't do the show that often, but we did it, I think it was the 19th of January, , and then the earnings report was, what, maybe two weeks ago at this point. so many things we were talking about , already had some movement So, , maybe we should dig into those.

Louis: 5:23

See which things we were already correct on. No, I'm sure there were a few that we were not.

Doug: 5:28

Let me just pull one up. now talked about this all last episode will another vehicle, Tesla or otherwise, dethrone the Model Y as the world's best selling car, right? And our predictions were, Mike and I both said, no, Model Y is doing pretty well, will continue to do well. And Louis, you said, yes, some other car, and you thought it might be some BYD thing. Now, the information we had as of the 19th of January was that the

Mike: 5:54

The Corolla,

Doug: 5:55

The Toyota Corolla had outsold the Model Y.. Now, I listened to the earnings call, and during the earnings call, Elon's like, and the Model Y remains the best selling car of the year.

Mike: 6:07

Barely,

Doug: 6:08

And I'm like, oh, really? Mike, what's the truth here?

Mike: 6:12

it is the best selling car in the world., Lewis and I were talking about This pre show and what was it Lewis?

Louis: 6:19

it's 1. 09 million.

Mike: 6:22

units.

Louis: 6:23

Versus 1. 08 million units.

Mike: 6:26

Right. It's really tight. if, you look at the Model Y as an EV only, it's got no competition, it's way ahead of everybody else. But if you look at an aggregate and you say worldwide, any vehicle being sold, the model Y is still number one, barely, next year, all bets are off. It's that close

Louis: 6:46

Yeah. But in our last episode, we had already thought that the Model Y was not the best selling car because that's the numbers of the time. So it seems that new numbers came up, Tesla released additional numbers., since then the Model Y barely squeaked it out.

Mike: 7:02

you, should consider how Tesla handled Q4. They had all kinds of incentives. They heavily discounted. They were pushing inventory out as hard as they could, to try to get to their numbers. Now they still miss their sales numbers by 16, 000 of what the street was expecting and what they actually sold. So , they did not hit their numbers on one side of the conversation, but they're still the best selling car in the world. Barely.

Louis: 7:29

They managed to make up the ground they were down for the year.

Doug: 7:32

Well, it's still impressive.

Mike: 7:34

It's very impressive.

Louis: 7:35

Yes.

Doug: 7:36

Thinking ,that, the model I had lost position, we then were like, Will it regained the throne in 2025? With this new framing that actually remained the king for 2024 what's happening in 2025 then,

Louis: 7:50

I think it's losing it.

Mike: 7:51

think it's going to get dusted

Doug: 7:53

they have a new version of the Y available, is that not going to drive some sales?

Mike: 7:59

even with the new model. I think it's going to get dusted.

Louis: 8:02

new Model Y the refreshed Model Y Juniper is out? And yes, that will definitely help numbers for sure. Absolutely will help numbers. However, if we look at it from the best selling car in the world, Tesla really benefits from, global sales, , and. Global sales are majorly under attack for a number of reasons. You know, I think Germany right now is down 60 percent in January, year over year.

Mike: 8:31

Norway's right behind them. Norway's tanked.

Louis: 8:34

So, Europe sales for it has gone way down. the U. S. Is biggest markets for E. V. S. Like California also way down,

Mike: 8:43

and, And we should add Tesla . Ev sales are down, everybody else's EVs are up.

Louis: 8:48

correct,

Mike: 8:49

it's very specific to the brand.

Louis: 8:51

That being said, while the models newer and nicer and has cool features. There's also things around like tax credits going away and other kinds of, drama and uncertainty around that., it's not like, Ooh, new car. We're definitely selling a lot more. So do I think it's going to sell? Well, I still think it'll be Tesla's best selling vehicle. I think it'll do well. It may even do comparable to what it did last year, this year might be comparable., but I don't see it growing. I think it's likely declining a bit., and other, , companies are growing, , to fill the market . So I'm thinking it's going to drop . But I also didn't think it was gonna have it last year. And it barely, I was almost right, but this year I think, uh, it'll drop.

Doug: 9:32

the question is those worldwide numbers., in China. The competition is doing gangbusters.

Mike: 9:37

Yeah.

Doug: 9:38

BYD is doing amazing things., I don't know what the culture is like in terms of going domestic. Certainly Tesla has some brand cachet there, but in Europe, we need to get Seb as a German and, European,, expat, to get his input on that. But , there's a lot of. Negative feelings about the Tesla brand in Europe and it's happening in the U. S. as well, but of course in the U. S. it's just more polarized. It sort of depends on your feelings , of Elon. And , given his current role in the government, dude, how involved in Tesla is he really at all right now?, Bonus package I was at the shareholder meeting back. I don't remember what year it was, but it was at the computer history museum in mountain view. And when it was first proposed, if I'm remembering correctly. The whole point of that thing was to keep Elon's attention on Tesla. And, it seems to me his is barely on Tesla, so make any sense, really?

Louis: 10:37

on that, I believe the official statements or something around, it was three or four months or something. And then he's going to be back., so , he's really supposedly only focused on the government stuff for a few months. We'll see what happens, but I think, the plan, at least his public plan is that he will be back focused on Tesla. Um,, I think a lot of it though, it's politically polarized. And from what I've been reading, , the drop off on one side is not being made up yet by the rate of growth on the other. So while one side of the political spectrum is now distancing themselves, the other side , is increasing, but not at a rate that equals the drop. So I think , that's where the, damage is. And the other thing is. A lot of people that are against Elon are upset now for whatever political reasons that I won't get into., the problem there is they don't want to give any money to Elon through any means. So even if Elon had nothing to do with the company, as far as day to day running, he still profits from it doing well. So a lot of that is they just, don't want to be involved with any of his brands, , which is unfortunate., for folks that, want those companies to do well, but

Doug: 11:40

yeah. Tesla to do well, I want SpaceX to do well. the others are kind of, whatever.

Louis: 11:46

boring

Doug: 11:47

Boring, yeah. I mean, the boring company is not impressive to me. Okay, you can dig out a single lane hole. Okay, that's great.

Mike: 11:56

me throw something out to you guys and see what you take on it. So the Y is the best selling EV by far. Model 3, second best selling EV that Tesla owns. The X is way down. they sold hardly any Xs last year in 2024. Even less than they did for the Model S

Doug: 12:16

X is actually more expensive than the Cybertruck right now.

Mike: 12:19

Yeah. So I'm wondering, you know, is it time for Tesla to prune the product line a little bit?

Doug: 12:23

No, no, no what, Tesla needs to do is actually spend some time on the X and the S and make them better. Make them the flagship vehicles. They should be,

Mike: 12:33

so you think put capital into it to bring it up the spec and freshen it up?

Doug: 12:37

yeah. I think when they test a new feature, it should be on those cars, , that should be where it comes out. And then it should trickle down to, The three and the why.

Mike: 12:46

It seems kind of backwards right now.

Doug: 12:48

yeah. That was part of the reason, , the sales of the S and the X actually went down when the Model 3 came out. Like, oh, it's the Model 3. So it's the third car and it's more advanced and Tesla had to, you know, they don't really do marketing, but they do do messaging.

Mike: 13:03

they do.

Doug: 13:04

they had to try to emphasize that, it's actually a lower tier vehicle, but clearly had newer technology at the time.

Mike: 13:11

So this was actually a real conversation that came up about a week ago, where a friend was asking, should I even look at the X when I've got Juniper sitting here? they were serious.

Doug: 13:21

I would agree to some extent, both are kind of bad at being larger people movers. The third row and either one is, Kind of, a joke, I guess.

Mike: 13:32

And he does have an up and coming family, so, be able to shuffle people around is crucial

Doug: 13:37

Well, Juniper is definitely a more advanced vehicle.

Louis: 13:40

for sure.

Mike: 13:40

without a doubt. Sure.

Doug: 13:41

yeah, dude, refresh the X, make it better. think it should be in that segment of sort of a larger SUV, maybe increase the utility of it. you know, that second row, I was at , the model X unveiling event at the Tesla factory in Fremont. And part of what they showed was all the seats could lie flat. So you had this huge amount of space. And then somehow Elon got in his head that he wanted these captain seats on the second row. And then that meant a lot of delay

Mike: 14:09

which don't lay flat.

Doug: 14:11

and they, they obviously don't lie flat. And that meant a lot of delay in shipping the model X. , and , the head of manufacturing who actually spoke at our event, in 2015, he ended up getting, fired or scapegoated on that., he was some army vet guy who was, , really interesting. Dude, gave a great talk. We have video of it. We should probably publish it., even though it's, a decade old now, it's might still be interesting. But, um,, they didn't quite deliver What they promised with that vehicle now I think they did come up with a more commissional next row But yeah, dude now the Model Y, you know, you can press a button and the seats lie flat on the Model X the thing should easily carry seven people They should design it to do that and you should be able to press a button and all the rear seats, lie flat and you can, Put stuff in it and increase the utility of the thing.

Mike: 14:57

would you say the X should go toe to toe against the Rivian R2 upper scale, mid tier SUV esque.

Louis: 15:05

for price point,

Mike: 15:06

Yeah, there we are. No kidding.

Doug: 15:09

it, should, be a Land Rover.

Mike: 15:11

Right.

Doug: 15:11

should be. a high end SUV type thing.

Mike: 15:14

like the X. It's a great car to drive. It's got a really nice fit and finish and it feels solid. It feels kind of wide.

Doug: 15:23

it is, wide, but I like that canopy that it has in the front.

Louis: 15:26

And you can get it in plaid. saying

Doug: 15:30

you can get a Performance x

Mike: 15:31

That's true. it's got the little decal on the back. Yeah. It says plaid.

Doug: 15:36

have to Say when they first unveiled the model 3 and I got to ride a model 3 But then it was a really long line. It's gonna take you hours if you're gonna ride it again But they had the model x there too And I was like, oh i'll ride in model x and the dude took it Through, , a autocross type course. And I was blown away. I've never been in an SUV that handled like that. I'm like, what the heck? Like I'm holding on. It's, and that was, uh, that was something else. So yeah, come on, make those cars better.

Mike: 16:07

introduction to the X was I was getting my three serviced in my driveway, you know, mobile Ranger. And they actually called and said, Hey, we're going to bring an X by for you to test drive. Okay. So they did. They brought an X by and I drove around for 20, 30 minutes while they worked on three. And, hell of a great way to make a sale.

Doug: 16:27

Well, they didn't make a sale,

Louis: 16:28

they

Mike: 16:29

No, they, didn't. They didn't. Well, indirectly, I ended up with the Y.

. Doug: 16:33

Yeah. Well, money wise, it's a better value, but make the X better. Come on.

Mike: 16:38

X was a nice car, I have to say.

, Doug: 16:40

so anyway, there's overall global sales downturn. So we're all guessing probably that the Y is not going to stay at the top worldwide. Is that the, feeling?

Mike: 16:48

unfortunately.

Louis: 16:50

probably not.

Doug: 16:50

Yeah, it's too bad., Okay, so another thing, and this one is particularly interesting to me. the question was, when will RoboTaxi start delivery? Now, as we do, we talked for a long time, and I kind of reframed this question, and one of the things I said, well look, I think what Tesla needs to do, , I think probably, FSD is good enough right now that they could do a taxi service, geofenced, I suggest the city of Austin, do it in Austin, and I predicted that they would maybe not do it in 2025, but probably do it in 2026.

Mike: 17:24

sounds like June.

Doug: 17:25

what happened, Louis, can you tell me?

Louis: 17:27

Yeah. they announced that they're planning on doing it by June this year. So in Austin. geo fenced robo taxi. It's unclear if it's going to be this new cyber cab vehicle or not. I think it is. It's heavily implied that it will be, but I don't know for sure., certainly nothing prevents them from doing it legally because Texas, as someone who lives here, they don't care. We already have, driverless cars going around Austin., I think the law, when I looked it up, it's literally just, They have to have the car insured as you would with a normal car. So that's to be insured and it has to have, , sensors and cameras and things that'll collect data in case there's an incident. And that's pretty much the requirement. As long as you do those things, you're allowed to do it.

Doug: 18:11

Now, that's the state of Texas. What about, , the city of Austin? which leans a little more liberal and, how, are they feeling about it, you think?

Louis: 18:19

sure.

Mike: 18:20

liberal compared to who?

Doug: 18:22

Compared to the rest of Texas.

Louis: 18:25

so I would argue that, all big cities, even in red States tend to be blue., and , with how, , the state legislature is here, Austin doesn't really get to disagree. Cause whenever they try to pass something that conflicts with state law, the governor and others crack down and, do things , there's been tons of drama, like You know, stereotypically, you can't get pulled over by an Austin cop because they're not going to pull you over for traffic infractions, , but then every now and then, like the state will send in state troopers and then you got to deal with, oh, well, state troopers will pull you over for all kinds of stuff., so anyway, it is what it is, but again, we do have waymo here. We do have, self driving cars. running., and I think it's very likely that they're able to do this. Their headquarters is here in Austin, right? Tesla does bring in a lot of tax revenue into the state., so they have a lot of sway. it's very likely they'll be able to do this as soon as they think they're ready., now when they think they're ready versus when we think they're ready is not going to line up. So I think Tesla is likely to do this this year. but as often with Elon's statements, you know, it might get delayed to next year, , or even the year after, but more than likely I would say 2026, it's likely going to happen., but yeah, they're aiming for June this year. So,

Mike: 19:35

So, in that vein. I just got the latest update, 13. 2. 7, that was installed a couple days ago,

Louis: 19:42

must be nice. Mr. Hardware 4.

Mike: 19:44

thank you, I've, put something, they've heard of like 400 FSD miles on it already, including coming down the mountains yesterday, and I got to say,

Louis: 19:52

It's impressive for Mike.

Mike: 19:54

it works pretty well.

Doug: 19:55

He'll be coming down the

Mike: 19:57

That's right. It actually stayed in the lane.

Louis: 20:00

So, yeah, it's definitely possible.

Mike: 20:01

I think he has a fighting chance if it's Geofence and he's got some guardrails set up for it.

Doug: 20:05

Like I said, I think it's already good enough to do that kind of thing. Now, the question really is, what vehicles will they use? Especially in an urban environment, I would really like to have a nose camera. Surprise, surprise.

Mike: 20:18

that'd be Juniper.

Doug: 20:19

that would be Juniper, that would be the CyberCab if they're ready for it.

Louis: 20:23

That would be the cyber truck,

Mike: 20:25

Not a chance.

Doug: 20:26

Cybertruck would be a terrible vehicle to use as a robo taxi . Mainly because, again, the pedestrian safety is terrible for that vehicle. So if they run into, if they just bump into somebody, or somebody's just crossing a crosswalk and just bumps into the Cybertruck, they're gonna get lacerated.

Mike: 20:42

yeah, it'll be all over the evening news.

Doug: 20:45

and yeah, it would be all over the news. it might be cool to ride in., I would certainly. try it if I had the opportunity, but, , I think that would be a terrible choice.

Mike: 20:53

think the Y would be a great choice. You could put a lot of people in the Y plus you got the back storage for luggage and everything.

Louis: 21:00

I think the problem is they want to sell those Ys. But yeah, I think it's likely going to be a cyber cab. I think that's the vehicle they're aiming for. They don't need a lot of them. It's not like they need to be full manufacturing Only need to do a couple,, Mike: that's true. All I got to do is get one out there and they say, yeah, we got it out.

Doug: 21:15

I wonder if they'll have any, special livery, yellow wrap or, , a cab look to it or what,

Louis: 21:21

That would be funny, but I doubt it. I, it's probably going to be like the golden thing that we've seen right in the videos.

Doug: 21:26

if it's the cyber cab, it

Louis: 21:28

Yes.

Doug: 21:29

I think I had heard in one of the interviews, the gold was kind of a nod towards yellow cab , but if it's like, a three or a Y. Yeah. I wonder if they'll do anything special for that. And I think they should use those too. because part of the promise is like, Oh, my own car will be able to do this, right? And I think that will be a good demonstration of that. Like they did at the CyberCab event. They had 3's and Y's as well as these CyberCabs, so. You don't agree?

Louis: 21:55

I don't think they're going to let us do that for at least another year.

Doug: 21:58

They won't., but part of them selling the cars to us is the promise that it will do that. And so if they have some demonstration of it doing it, Even if it's in this geo fenced, environment, then maybe that helps sell them. And said they wouldn't have Ys cause they're trying to sell them. I think that helps them sell them like, , here they are out

Mike: 22:13

in the wild, actually working.

Doug: 22:15

on the street doing stuff. Yeah. I get the sense, from that call, . We've had a global downturn in sales and it really is. The future of the company depends on, autonomous and Optimus, right? I mean, that seemed to be, that seemed to be what he was saying.

Mike: 22:33

was very clear that FSD was going to be the future and what drove the value of Tesla. It's not the car, it's the software.

Louis: 22:39

well, technically he said Optimus, but we'll get into that,

Doug: 22:43

So, another question we had, , for our, predictions was, will Tesla offer an upgrade path or hardware three owners? And then we went on about this. And we've talked about it before, too, so I don't want to completely rehash it here., but, , the sense I got certainly from Mike, from Louis a bit, is that,, they're not going to do it. They'll just, , try to incentivize you to buy the next car, which I agree they would do. But during those conversations, I convinced myself, you know what? I think they can just make a new board, and that's probably what they'll have to do.

Louis: 23:14

I, believe what I said was something like, I don't think that they are, but my copium says that they will, because I want them to, I did not think they were going to do it

Doug: 23:22

Uh huh.

Louis: 23:23

This is the quote of Elon from the earnings. He said, He said, I mean, I think the honest answer is that we're going to have to upgrade people's hardware three computer for those that have bought full self driving. And that is the honest answer. And that's going to be painful and difficult, but we'll get it done. Now I'm kind of glad that not many people bought the FSD package.

Doug: 23:43

Yeah.

Mike: 23:44

no timeframe is said.

Doug: 23:46

A couple things.. another person from Tesla was saying, well we're still working on hardware 3, we're still trying

Mike: 23:53

Yeah. Still trying to make it work.

Doug: 23:55

And then Elon cut and was like, yeah it ain't gonna work. And, yeah, we'll have to replace those computers. Mike talks about timeframe. The thing is, , replacing the hardware 3 computers with hardware 4 computers still might not be enough, the promise is that this is going to be a proper robo taxi that can drive me, across country or whatever while I sleep. I don't know that hardware 4 can do that. if hardware 4 can't do that and they're going to replace. hardware three computers, are they going to have to replace the hardware 4 computers also?

Louis: 24:25

So if Tesla was smart and they were actually planning on doing this, they would be designing the hardware five computer with this in mind, right? Because already the problem was the hardware three to four changed the form factor. So you couldn't take the module from hardware four and put it in a hardware three, they have to redesign the whole thing. In theory though, they know both the hardware three designs and the harbor four designs. And they are making hardware five right now for the cyber cab. That's literally what is in very early limited production. It's not ramped up, not going to be in anybody's car anytime soon, but they could be designing that harness to actually work and be backward compatible as far as the physical, hookup as it were. Yes., you won't be able to get the full hardware five, you'd need new cameras. You'd probably need to do wiring and all this other stuff that they might not be willing to do, cause it'll be difficult, but, they should at least be designing that hardware

Mike: 25:19

I've I've read hints at cooling issues trying to go backwards.

Louis: 25:23

interesting.

Mike: 25:24

That the processing power required in four and probably five with the A. I. driving everything is going to be a challenge.

Louis: 25:31

Yeah. I mean, it's certainly possible. What the other engineer said at the event before Elon gave his, well, honestly, we're going to have to do it., Realistically was fair. And what I'll say is, the challenge, why they have the upgraded hardware and why they're doing that. Is because they need larger models, as it were more parameters, more, processing power to handle that., but what the engineer had said was something along the lines of, there's people out there, not Tesla, but people in general in the field, researchers are doing a lot of work on porting larger models to smaller models and getting this similar performance or better performance. And that's very true, right? Like we all saw that with all the deep seek drama recently., there's a lot of push from, , research out of, , meta and, , other sources where basically they are showing smaller models that are outperforming the older, larger models due to more efficient ways of training and just, techniques in how they're, , setting up LLMs and things. Now, , obviously full self driving does not use an LLM. It's not chat GPT, but it is using transformers, the same architecture. Pattern. So it's very similar. So there's a lot of techniques that come over and, , can be equivalently used. So I think it is possible that in the future they could maybe scale things back. The problem is it's a very big unknown and it's a lot easier to just go to better hardware, especially as better hardware becomes cheaper and cheaper and more available. So,

Doug: 26:52

Yeah, it's an unknown. And the problem is that it's unknown where people's lives are on the line, it's a, safety critical thing as opposed to, help me do my English homework, right? so that's something to think about. Another thing that came up. Was that it seemed he wasn't going to be replacing the camera, so it'd just be the computer. and as we both said, we want the new cameras. But that becomes an unrealistic, problem. probably labor wise, that would be rough.

Mike: 27:22

they could replace the side cameras. Yeah. Labor wise would be hard.

Doug: 27:26

That's easy, they pop out, but the connectors are different.

Mike: 27:29

Yeah.

Doug: 27:29

so if they want to fish a new wire through, which I guess they could, but that's two out of, eight or nine, right? There are eight cameras, nine with the new, Juniper, because it has a nose camera.

Mike: 27:40

right.

Doug: 27:41

and that nose camera, supposedly sees 180 degrees. to me, that's , a big deal, and that should be part of what, builds that vector space , of mapping the objects around you. And we've described it before that, , , maybe with fewer or not as high resolution sensors, you still get a vector space that just might not be as good., in that same call, just along the same lines, , this is a dumb question to ask, but , one of the analysts asked about LIDAR again., Elon is always going to have the same answer, but his question was, If LiDAR were free, would you use it? And Elon's like, no, humans drive. And I've said the same, , we were just using visual and driving, right. humans don't have laser shooting out of their eyes. That's literally what he said., but really you still want your car to be super human, right? You want your car to be better

Mike: 28:31

Yeah, I was gonna say, I'm not sure I trust my eyes.

Louis: 28:33

and technically we're not just visual. We're also tactile. We feel what the road conditions feel, like, and we can hear and things around us. So technically we have more,

Doug: 28:43

the car could do that too. I don't know that the car is doing anything auditory. It should listen for sirens , since , as a human driver, you hear a siren and then you're like, okay, what's going on? Is this something I need to react to?, But, Yeah, , it's just funny that he'll die on that hill., I think if LIDAR were free, I'd freaking include it. Come on, let's have another modality. maybe it makes the computational problem harder. but the way he put it, like, we had, radar in the car and we decided to ignore it., and then made a big point about, demonstrating that he knows what LIDAR is. I'm like, okay, we know you know what LIDAR is. Come on. He's like, I led the team that developed the LIDAR for the Dragon Capsule. Okay, come on. Ha ha ha.

Louis: 29:25

led every team,

Doug: 29:26

Yeah, exactly. I'm like, come on.

Louis: 29:28

yeah, so I,

Doug: 29:30

Uh, but anyway, so we'll get some computers. We don't know when. preference is it happens when it actually makes a difference. Not when it just makes it slightly better. It needs to actually make it work, just one more thing, you know,, Mike, you were talking about getting a new update. So, I came down, in a Model Y, still hardware 3, but it recently got a software update, and it was pretty good. It's pretty good, but. They changed a bunch of things. this is 12. 6. 3. I don't know if you've used yet, Louis. But, I feel like what they've done, and maybe this is just because of how it's trained, since it's a neural net now that is making the decisions instead of having a separate choice about how many times it changes lanes, how close are you going to follow, and how fast you're gonna go. It seems to be that they put those all together. And now you have three modes. chill, standard, or hurry. And it constantly displays it. I actually, I was driving and I'm like, what is the standard?

Mike: 30:33

It's got standard up on the

Doug: 30:34

why do I need the word standard staying there the whole time? Why don't you just tell me what my speed set point is? It didn't make any sense. Until I saw how different the behavior was. And I could only get it to drive to me sensibly under hurry, it was tailgating people under hurry. I'm like, what the heck?

Mike: 30:51

I stay in standard. chill is dangerous,

Doug: 30:54

Hmm, too passive.

Mike: 30:55

yeah, it's way too passive keep it in standard and just kind of deal with it.

Louis: 30:59

I have, 6, 3, and I find myself in standard because of the follow distance But then I have to manually tell it to change lanes, to pass people , because. It's like, if I wanted to drive at a reasonable speed and if traffic's going slow and we could be going faster and lanes are open, go use them. So I have to manually do that. But then I agree with you. It's. Is then stupid when you're in hurry mode, because it's like, Oh, I don't need distances. And it's like, no, no, no. You still should have distances. I just don't want you to go 50 in a 70, right? Like that

Doug: 31:32

in the process of driving down here was, you used to be able to get it to warn you when it's about to change lanes, like the steering wheel would vibrate or something.

Mike: 31:41

No, it just goes.

Doug: 31:43

and there was nothing.

Mike: 31:44

you hear it going click, click, and starts changing lanes.

Doug: 31:46

So I'm not really sure I like that. maybe that's a side effect of how it's done now. Train off an aggressive driver versus,, a not aggressive driver or something. But I would really like to decouple those things., I was trying to find a setting, like those constantly changing lanes. Okay, I want you just to stay in this lane for now. And I couldn't find the setting of. Stop changing lanes. It used to be an option, as it wasn't there anymore.

Mike: 32:08

Yeah, it's gone, is unfortunate.

Doug: 32:11

to me, that was a step backwards.

Louis: 32:13

But going back to the topic, have to say, yay. We might get a hardware upgrade.

Mike: 32:19

dude, don't hold your breath.

Doug: 32:22

when we talked about it a couple weeks ago, there were inklings that they were going to do something. They didn't say what, but they're gonna do something. This time was a bit more specific that he said they're probably gonna have to replace the computers. So, there's some, motion there.

Mike: 32:35

I, am skeptical.

Doug: 32:37

Let's see. We have

a comment from Lunick Links: 32:38

"I think one issue with LiDAR is that there is only a certain amount of systems that can operate in the same space at the same time. not an issue now, but could be later." I mean, I know what you're talking about. This has come up before. If it really was an issue, there are things you could do. you could code your own laser in such a way., won't go into the details of that sort of thing, but you could code it so you know it's your own laser as opposed to scatter from somebody else's laser. That's a solved problem. It might increase the cost, but that's something you can do., so, I'll just put that out there.

Louis: 33:10

Doug used to be a laser physicist.

Doug: 33:12

I've spent a lot of time working on lasers., one thing that came up in the call, like one of the engineers said, LiDAR won't work in the fog or something like that. Okay, I mean, that has to do with your choice of wavelength,

Mike: 33:25

my FSD front camera in the windshield doesn't like raindrops. So

Doug: 33:29

Yeah.

Louis: 33:31

My vision doesn't work well in the fog either. Like

Doug: 33:35

honestly, my feeling about that is I would like to have more modalities. and every sensor is going to have a regime where they're going to fail. So, anyway, have all the modalities,, you should have x ray vision, Why not?, Mike: On that, happy note. yeah, let's move on. Was there anything else in the Earnings call that was worth, chatting about.

Louis: 33:54

the Tesla semi questions. When asked about , semi and how that's going, Lars, Moravy, he said, " the first builds of the high volumes and design come late this year in 2025 and begin ramping early 2026. But as we've said before, the semi is a TCO no brainer. I think it's really similar to Optimus." and then Elon jumped in and said, " it's not nothing. It's probably, it might displace a 10 billion a year thing. That's 1 billion a month at some point, probably, but all this is going to pale in comparison to Optimus."

Doug: 34:30

Hmm.

Mike: 34:30

Hard to believe that a billion dollars a month will pale.

Louis: 34:33

yes, said something like it'll be less than 1 percent of Optimus at a different point. But, basically what that tells us is, high volume for. semi is coming later this year, and they're going to ramp in 2026, for those of us that think this will be largely impactful in, EV adoption in emissions reductions and all that other kind of stuff., it's a good thing, but, it's way behind schedule, right?

Doug: 34:58

Yeah.

Louis: 34:58

Hey, they're finally getting there. wonder what's changed. I wonder what's enabled them to do this now. But.

Doug: 35:03

I don't know. I think part of it's been, battery. I think, semi probably needs a ton of batteries. And so battery production limitations, I think the semi is probably their most important vehicle in terms of impact on the environment., just think how much , the, semi and it's usage like, most cars are parked. Most of the time. Most semis are probably driving most of the time.

Mike: 35:28

24 by 7, yeah.

Doug: 35:29

In addition, if they get FSD working on it too, that can be a big deal., if it ever gets to the point of being autonomous where, the driver can actually go to sleep or something. That would be game changing.

Mike: 35:41

was thinking of a very specific use case here in San Pedro, not too far from where I live. identified the biggest diesel , polluting, isn't so much the driving to the truck, it's all the idle time at the port, While they wait to get the air sea cargo containers and whatnot.

Doug: 35:55

Yeah, so I think the semi is big deal. To me, that's , a lower hanging fruit and is more likely to be useful before Optimus is, okay. On a similar note, this isn't really so much, , with the earnings call, but another question we asked was, will a competing company. Beat Optimus to market and we asked that, again on the 19th of January and, is there something that we can buy, Louis?

Louis: 36:19

there, sure is, and I said, yes, so I was right. there's a company called, Unitry that is, already selling a Unitry G1. Now I can't say for sure that they're shipping yet.

Mike: 36:31

They'll sell it.

Louis: 36:32

they claim that they are, they say contact us for delivery time, but you can buy a humanoid agent robots.

Mike: 36:39

16K bargain.

Louis: 36:41

able to do a bunch of things. You can program it to do different tasks. I don't know that it's, , that useful, but it's probably on par of an Optimus at this, point. And you can buy it.

Doug: 36:54

if you ever see video of this thing, it's sort of smaller. It looks like, a pygmy guy, I think it's like four feet, something. But, , it looks pretty agile., and also they sell it. They said, starting at 16 K, but it seemed like the they're selling it more to like if you're a research institution or something like that,

Louis: 37:11

They have an EDU model.

Doug: 37:13

Yeah, exactly. So it didn't seem so much for the consumer, but for, research people.

Mike: 37:18

won't fold my laundry.

Doug: 37:21

probably some university student would buy it and then try to train it to fold laundry. And that would be like a project or something,. Louis: probably do that. Except I don't fold laundry, I just hang mine up, so. so I don't know if this question is definitively answered already. But the thing is, though, there are tons of these, robot companies in China showing very impressive things.. at least as impressive as Optimus, and they seem pretty poised to sell them. And China does manufacturing exceptionally well. I mean, to me, that was the main thing about Tesla was that, okay, they're likely to actually sell this thing. Whether or not I can do anything useful they're likely to sell it. Well, I think, probably some company in China is also likely to sell it. So, if this thing isn't quite real yet in terms of selling, I think something will be before the end of the year,. Louis: for sure.

. Doug: 38:03

Okay. Let's see. Now, , this isn't quite related to the earnings call., but, the question was, will And that was a somewhat esoteric question for, people in the know, but I just listened to the last episode, if you want to know what that means, what happened Boeing, , who was the main contractor on SLS, SLS is the space launch system,, for the moon program called Artemis., and , they basically said they may have to, nothing definitive, but they may have to lay off a ton of people related to SLS because it could get canceled, , when the next budget comes out and they're sort of required by law, there's this thing called the WARN Act, and I don't remember what that acronym stands for, but it's basically that they need to give 60 days notice to employees if they expect significant layoffs. So basically because of regulations, they needed to do this. but it doesn't bode well.

Louis: 38:56

and related when we were at the Astro awards, right. This was a topic that was brought up a bunch. You got a bunch of space nerds, policy people. There was a former, , deputy director of NASA that was there that we got to see, Apollo astronauts are all kinds of, but there was a policy expert and most of them seem to imply that they felt that the SLS should be canceled, that SpaceX. Is doing a much better job. Blue origin is doing a much better job that, , we should move away from SLS. I did like, , Charlie Duke, , the astronaut that actually made some comments saying, he didn't think we should cancel it for a few reasons, but primarily because we already have some objectives and timelines around going back to the moon. And so the question is, if you cancel it, can you still meet that? Or are you just delaying everything? so if you could keep it going a little bit longer, but you'd still hit your objectives, then maybe it's worth keeping around, um, which is a fair argument. I don't know the specifics there. I'm sure Doug, you have some thoughts on it,

Doug: 39:52

I think a lot of people missed the meat of that argument because he said , well, we've already spent all this much money. We might as well use it. And instantly you could hear it murmur through the audience. Oh, that's a sunk cost fallacy. heard people literally say that. And of course, it occurred to me to like, wow, that sounds a lot like a sunk cost fallacy. And because of that, I feel like people didn't quite listen to what he really said., my point of view about it is,, and it shouldn't be here. five years from now, certainly not 10 years from now. It's not a sustainable, , rocket really. And it hasn't factored in any reuse or anything like that, except maybe the Orion and the Orion has, you know, issues with this heat shield right now. But, , I think it should last through, I don't know that it will, but I think it should last through Artemis three. I think we have a plan for that. We should do Artemis three. in that time, we should also have competing contracts for private, launch vehicles to, continue. Like, the problem is cadence. Okay? If SLS was launching every 3 months, it would be a lot cheaper. And of course, that's probably unrealistic. Every 6 months, say. It took how many years to develop, and it launched on a demo mission , with nobody on it. To send a Orion around the moon. In 2022 and nothing's happened since and they've already had to push back,, Artemis II, , a couple of years that already slipped the 2025 and they're already saying, oh, no, what happened till 2026 because of the heat shield issues., and honestly, the heat shield issues are bad enough that I wouldn't put anybody on that thing. It's got a design flaw and their solution is. Okay, we're just going to change the re entry trajectory so that the heat shield, doesn't suffer so much.

Louis: 41:29

we don't generate as much heat basically. Yeah.

Doug: 41:32

well, to do with, The duration,, so that it will kind of go down and then come back up and go down,, that kind of thing, I don't know. That's a great idea., but I think as a program, Artemis three should happen. it's unclear what. Like, what does Elon want for it? Because I think that's probably a big influence because I don't think Trump really knows anything about this stuff and he'll just do what Elon says., Elon may have reasons for wanting Artemis cancelled. SpaceX is on the hook, , for the human landing system for Artemis basically, they proposed Starship as the landing vehicle. Now, Starship Makes next to no sense as a lander. It's so huge, it's ridiculous., but it's something that's already being developed, and how convenient that, now you're getting, , NASA money or government money, billions of dollars to help develop this landing system. If Artemis III was cancelled, then SpaceX would be off the hook for coming up with this lunar lander, yet they still would have reaped all this development money for Starship, which is still ongoing. that's the kind of negative way to look at it. But really, it doesn't make so much sense as a lander, even , Dr. Robert Zubrin, he said it made no sense to say huge, instead of star ship, they should have star boat.

Mike: 42:46

Starboat.

Doug: 42:47

cause it's this huge giant thing and can you imagine , if you had to leave in a hurry, you gotta get on this elevator cause the crew entry is like way at the top of this tall thing. I managed to talk to the guy, that does the commentary on the live streams from Boca Chica, , for SpaceX. During the, launch events for Starship. And he was saying, yeah, maybe, maybe they should do a star skiff, at least that's more alliterative than star boat. But, yeah, dude, Starship landing makes no sense. It's so huge, and that's not what it's designed for. You know, it's designed to be a Mars lander, really.

Louis: 43:19

If you think about it with Apollo, we built something that was landing that didn't need you to have infrastructure on the ground and then take off again, right? Like, you don't want to have to build up a bunch of infrastructure to then be able to use it. If we had infrastructure, if we had bases, if we had pads on the moon, then sure you could land it, but it still wouldn't necessarily make sense because the amount of fuel and other things you're using.

Doug: 43:42

That's a real thing. it has yet to be seen that, Starship could land on the moon and then launch again. I mean, we already saw what happened to Starship launching from concrete that got loose and blew up and went into the, nozzles or whatever at least on the super heavy booster. I think what they had in part of the design were some thrusters that were further up, , around the top or the middle of the starship. And , maybe they would need to fire those to lift it up a bit before the main engines. don't really know what the plan is there, what Apollo did was, , basically the lander had two pieces. So they had the landing part, but then the actual crew module of the lander separated. And so it basically landed with its own launch pad. so anyway,

Louis: 44:28

Jinx,

Doug: 44:29

We had a couple other things we could chat about., There was that tesla, I guess a couple weeks ago. Actually, they showed it at the cyber cab event They showed in video but didn't say anything about it But they had this robot that just sucks. That's how they put it.

Louis: 44:42

This robot sucks is the title of the video.

Mike: 44:45

right. Cleaning robot.

Louis: 44:48

I have to say, I totally want one of these for my garage., I don't need it to, do this all the time, but , I hate cleaning a car. it's one of those things. It's just annoying to me. I could have a thing that auto vacuums and auto, it sucks out the water bottles and all the other nonsense. Like, that'd be great.

Doug: 45:06

it would be nice to have something on the Roomba level where it just happens every day

Louis: 45:11

Right.

Doug: 45:11

you park., so it's not having to do some huge cleaning job every time, it's just, stopping the accumulation, the, buildup.

Louis: 45:18

Clean, the touchscreen for me. See, I want that. Clean the touch screen every time. I don't have to do it.

Doug: 45:24

Well, if it's doing all that, I want it. to clean the exterior too.

Louis: 45:27

That's fair. Hey, let's do it. We have this arm, clean the exterior too. So what are your thoughts? Do you think this is just they're setting up for their depots in Austin?

Doug: 45:37

I don't know. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense., Mike: And here, I thought they'd

Louis: 45:42

It's an Optimus. Clearly hard for optimists to do it.

Doug: 45:46

We've had this discussion. Typically, if you have a, specific purpose, you're probably better off designing a robot for that specific purpose. But this kind of job is a rather nuanced job. So, it's hard to say, , like what they're showing here, , it looks too ideal., what if there's bubble gum on the seat? what if someone barfed and it got in the cracks of the seat?, this doesn't look Like it's cleaning enough.

Mike: 46:12

kids have been known to trash a car a lot worse than this. Just going to the grocery market.

Louis: 46:18

Yeah,

Doug: 46:19

I mean, vacuuming is good, and a basic wipe down is good, but This doesn't look like a deep clean.

Mike: 46:24

Although, honestly, I've been in some cabs that aren't much better. So,

Doug: 46:28

How many would they need, and I guess they would do it while it's charging,

Louis: 46:32

probably. Yeah, I'm not sure it makes sense. Do you think this was just a marketing gimmick and they're not actually planning on using these for the RoboCop? Cab fleet.

Mike: 46:40

by the time you buy the robot, you program it, you spend all the capital. You can hire a couple of guys to go in there and scrub a car out a lot faster.

Louis: 46:46

Sure,

Doug: 46:47

at this point, it's the kind of thing where it'd be cheaper to hire somebody., but , their goal is to eliminate those kind of workers, right?, that's seems to be the goal of Optimus. So, um, I don't know, man. What I'm looking at right now doesn't necessarily look that useful to me. but maybe it could be., it would be nice as a service, like when I just park to supercharge, could you me a clean? Actually, you know what I've seen, not robots, but people set up near superchargers doing these kind of services.

Louis: 47:16

Like, car detailing kind of thing or cleaning.

Mike: 47:18

Rove Chargers has gotten very close to that. So they've got superchargers set up. They're covered, canopied over. You can pay to get the car washed, touchless if you want, and then they've got an area that you can park the car, wipe it down, free vacuum cleaner, free air. I mean, it's just, it's not much of a stretch to have another stall or two where you're willing to pay somebody to do a light detail. And they've got the waiting areas already set there. They've already got the areas set up. You've got Wi Fi, you've got food you can buy, all that good stuff.

Louis: 47:49

Yeah. it's interesting

Doug: 47:51

Yeah, did you want talk about that, gamer thing?

Louis: 47:55

Mean we can yeah, we can talk about it.

Doug: 47:57

It's a little old news

Louis: 47:58

It's little old news it's been a couple weeks

Doug: 48:00

it hit close to home for you, did it,

Louis: 48:02

It did

Doug: 48:03

Can you give us the context then?

Louis: 48:04

sure, , basically, Elon, , has claimed in the past that he's a bit of a gamer, right? He started, even when he was a teenager, he supposedly made a video game or whatever and sold it or made money off of that when he, , so he's been into games, video games For years and years, , and one of the, , very popular games, , in the franchise of known as Diablo. They had a Diablo 4 that came out. It's very popular., there was the original Diablo was back in the 90s. So it would have been when Elon was prime video gaming age before he was. Running all his companies., so anyway, , he basically,, there's competitive ladders. There's all these, rankings and stuff of like where you are and how high up you are in rankings. And Elon was essentially one of the top players in the world or so he claimed., he had this character and it was, among all the millions of people worldwide, he was in the top 20. which is very impressive considering majority of the top 20 are literally people. That play video games for a living and stream it all day long. That is their job. That's how they make money. And Elon is the CEO of multiple companies. Nowhere possible has the time to actually. Put into those games as necessary.

Doug: 49:16

Well, he has the time to run three companies and work in the government too,

Louis: 49:19

right, exactly.

Mike: 49:20

you go.

Doug: 49:21

So he must have, copies of himself.

Louis: 49:22

So, you know, people kind of like said, it's unlikely, but whatever, we didn't push too much, he streamed it a few times. He streamed him playing this game, whatever it's Diablo four game. And then another game came out, , called Path of Exile 2, which is a very similar game, except it is a lot more hardcore, it is a lot more unforgiving, it requires way more knowledge, way more effort,, I'm a big fan, I've played, , Path of Exile 1 a lot, and play hardcore on that, and basically you can't make any mistakes when you're playing on hardcore, if you do any mistake, your character dies, and your character's gone. outro music plays Basically. So that's why it's like such a challenge as can you get through?, and so it came out again, like Elon, Oh, he's got this character. It's one of the top in the world. He was, I don't remember the exact place, but he was, , in the top 10 on the ladder, , Oh, look at him. He's, so good, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And at this point Diablo four, okay, maybe it's unlikely, but maybe, but path of exile two, there's no way all the hardcore gamers. Like there is no way you would have to devote thousands of hours. He does not have the time he's doing doge in the government. He's running his company. It's impossible. There's no way you could do this. And so he claimed that he was. Streamed it live and from his live stream, it was immediately obvious to anybody that plays the game that he has not really ever played this game and he had no idea what he was talking about., and there was a lot of amusing things that would come up like, Oh, look, his character is logged in right now while he's live on television at the inauguration for Trump. Stuff, Stuff, like that.

Doug: 50:56

I think they could look at the IP address and, it was in China or

Louis: 50:59

and, basically he, he did actually eventually come at, so at one point he was playing, didn't know what he was doing, got his character killed. Right.

Doug: 51:06

didn't get the Chaos Orbs.

Louis: 51:08

And he didn't know how the inventory, he didn't know basic things about the game and how it works.

Doug: 51:12

don't know anything about it, But yeah.

Louis: 51:14

it was very funny. and so he did eventually come out and admit that yes, he was paying people to boost his accounts and to play the characters,

Doug: 51:21

Like, you have to do.

Louis: 51:22

But, he tried to downplay it as well. Yeah, but you have to, everybody that's in the top does that. And it's like,

Doug: 51:28

Korea does it, he said, I think.

Louis: 51:29

yeah., And the answer is, you know, No, nobody at the top is doing that. They actually are playing the game. It's ridiculous that he's, you know, , I will say there are certain cultures and online video games where they don't view paying to win. You know, we often say pay to win, spending money to have an advantage. They don't view that as a negative., in the West, we tend to view it as a negative. We think it's essentially cheating, but , there are cultures and video games where they don't view it that way, but yeah, anyway, it was very funny. Elon was trying to appear cool, trying to fit in and say that he's a gamer and look at me. I'm doing all this stuff. It's claimed it was him until we've definitively had proof that it wasn't him. And then he was like, Oh yeah, you're right. It wasn't me. but, everyone does it. So it's fine., anyway, so I just thought that was funny. I found it amusing , my, , friends group that are all big, gamers, it was a big deal to them because , they're not necessarily big into Tesla. They don't necessarily follow Elon stuff that closely, but suddenly in internet meme culture, it became a thing. So it was kind of amusing., but yeah, Elon wanting He is not. He can't be because he actually has jobs and other stuff to do., I don't even consider myself a hardcore gamer anymore because of my career and other things, but sure. 20 years ago, 30 years ago, I was. But anyway, so

Doug: 52:45

It's a weird thing to do. let me just put it that way.

Louis: 52:49

to lie about,

Doug: 52:51

yeah, and, For a lot of people, it was kind of like, a sort of a revelation to them. To me, having, , followed,, Elon and Tesla for, , nearly 20 years now, it is actually not surprising. And it kind of plays into his personality. Something I just don't really get. But, , Elon does , massage the truth quite a bit, , particularly about things to do about himself, like his personal accomplishments, , and the thing about it is like, dude, it's impressive enough, like, the things you're doing are impressive enough, you're already,, the best at whatever , you know, he never quite struck me as a science or engineering genius because I've, met people that are legit science and engineering geniuses. But he certainly wants to be perceived as one as part of his persona., and that's fine, whatever, but dude, he's probably the single most,, important person in the history. of Tesla as a company, but he didn't found it, right? But he made a big deal about eventually being and rewriting history to make himself founder of the company , when he wasn't, that was, , Mark and Martin, but,, okay, fine, but it just doesn't make, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Like , the kind of things he will do, like, you know, he was accepted at Stanford, right? Accepted at Stanford, that's interesting enough,

Louis: 54:07

It's impressive. Yeah.

Doug: 54:08

impressive enough, yeah. But to be like, oh, I dropped out of Stanford the first day of school or whatever. That's part of the narrative he spins. I did grad at Stanford. might make sense as an undergrad. That doesn't make any sense as a grad student. It just doesn't make sense as a grad student to say, oh, I dropped out the first day. You know, you have an advisor. You take a leave of absence or something, That's more how it is...

Louis: 54:29

I mean, even, the whole, physics thing, which there's pretty much proof he'd never was a physics major at UPenn going to UPenn is impressive. He had some physics classes, but he went to UPenn. I think his degree was in economics, which is fine. He went to Wharton, which is already one. Of the top business, if not the best business schools in the world. You're already impressive. You don't need to embellish. And whenever he does this, what's funny is it causes people to start digging in and question like, well, wait, what are these other things he talks about? Cause you know, for example, when the whole Twitter thing happened in the X purchase, he started saying a lot of things publicly. That came out that made a whole generation of software engineers go, wait a minute. I don't think he really, he, he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to computer software, because he's saying a lot of things that we know about that, like, that makes no sense. And then you go, well, wait, does he do this for things that I don't know about that? I just take for granted and like, assume that he knows that he's talking about. And that's what happens. The whole gaming thing made a whole people that I know that went, wait a minute, he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about and he's lying. Does he do that with other things? And it's like, yeah, he does.

, , Doug: 55:38

back to Stanford since that's something I know about, he was going to Stanford to study, high energy storage systems. I think it was basically like, super capacitors or something like that. I saw him at interviews where he basically lets the person think he's going to Stanford. to study high energy physics, which is something different completely. That's like, , particle physics and, , working with a linear accelerator or whatever.

Louis: 56:02

which Stanford wouldn't even be where you'd want to go to do that,

Doug: 56:04

Nah, Nah, you can do that at Stanford. Come on. We got the Stanford linear accelerator. It doesn't matter. Anyway, if you were to do that stuff at Stanford, it would be in the physics department. And he let people think he was doing physics, but what he was talking about was really material science, which is a fine discipline, but if you're, among those things, among nerds, there's kind of a hierarchy, right, you'll have physics at the top, and then electrical engineering, and then, like, material science is somewhere down the line, right,

Louis: 56:34

people would argue that mathematics is at the top,

Doug: 56:36

okay, that goes separate.

Louis: 56:37

for a purity standpoint.

Doug: 56:39

Yeah, for a purity thing, mathematics is at the top, but, we were talking science engineering, we actually set mathematics, lateral.

Louis: 56:45

we don't consider that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Doug: 56:48

It's just a, different thing, but typically, to put it more succinctly, what defines the hierarchy is how much math you need to know. so the physics is at the top, and, , material science is, somewhere down, like, biology is even lower or whatever, even though it's very complicated systems, right? I hate to say this because people are going to send me hate mail, the point is that he was more likely accepted for material science, but guess what? Physics sounds better.

Mike: 57:12

Yeah. It's cooler. Sounds cooler. Silence.

Doug: 57:14

dude, You are a amazingly successful businessman, okay? You don't need to make us think you're some physics genius. It's just not necessary. but somehow that's part of his personality is he needs to be perceived as that.

Louis: 57:29

And it's not just him, , of my favorite YouTubers, , Dr. Angela Collier, , she's a PhD physicist, right? And basically has a whole video complaining about billionaires trying to pretend to be physicists because a lot of them do it., and basically , the notion is that in society, physics is viewed as one of the most difficult, most challenging fields, probably because of the amount of mathematics you need to know for science, right? I don't think that it is. Just, that's how it's viewed. And people, because of famous, brilliant minds, people say, Oh, this is super genius. It's always a physicist in the past for the most part, Einstein and Newton and all this stuff. So there's this connotation of like, Oh, these really great and brilliant men. And so there's a whole slew of billionaires, , that basically want to come off as being, they were physicists., and the funny thing is, it's like, all of you could be physicists, just go and be a physicist, just go to school. And get your degree. You have the means you have the money. Just go do it. If you want to do it, none of them actually do that. None of them go to school. None of them have a degree in it or do any of the work, but they want people to think that they are.

Doug: 58:33

yeah,

Louis: 58:33

the, well, I could have been a physicist, but I had to become a billionaire instead. And it's just like, cool, good for you.

Doug: 58:41

I don't know that it's the society in general, but it's certainly the nerd tech subset

Louis: 58:48

society. Sure.

Doug: 58:49

because, probably all of us in that regime had to take some physics classes, and we're among the people to know that, oh, here are the people that are good at physics and here are the people that aren't, and that was some differentiator. I would say, I think Bezos though was like the guy who basically said, Uh, yeah, I'm not as good as this other guy at this, I'm not going to try to be a theoretical physicist.

Louis: 59:12

Bezos is the only billionaire I've seen that actually came out and said, he was a physics major and he said, I'm not good enough to be a great physicist. So I'm going to go into this other thing that I feel I could be great in because he recognized there are other people smarter and better at it that he just wasn't there. So he is the one exception, which I agree with. that like actually fairly said that, but yeah, I mean, it's definitely true. was originally a computer science major and I was bored. I didn't find it challenging. So I literally switched to physics as my major because I was like, well, that's the hardest darn thing I can pick. So I'm just going to do that, right? Like I get it. It's definitely in nerd and science culture, how it works. But yeah, anyway, so yes, , it's a common thing though. He's not the only billionaire. A lot of them have done this. A lot of tech billionaires, come out

Doug: 59:58

I don't know to this extent though about so many, not just physics, but so many other aspects of his life. He's had to tailor the things that he's the best at whatever it is he does. And there are some weird things that kind of happen for a short period of time. Like at some point it was like, Oh, I'm going to play the violin. And I think he gave that up really quickly because I guess what smart people play the violin or something, right? It's like, come on, come on. What are you doing? I don't know, whatever, he's got these personality quirks, but you gotta worry a bit now that he's in such a high power position. And I've said it before, I'll say it again, we have the Elon alignment problem. Like the AI alignment problem, here's the Elon alignment problem. Hopefully, things he does are for the benefit of mankind, but I'm, a little bit concerned it's mostly for the benefit of one man, as opposed to mankind. and all we can do is hope that our interests align, somewhat, and that we benefit, , more than we, suffer. So. There you

Louis: 1:00:58

Indeed.

Doug: 1:01:02

on that, happy note.

Louis: 1:01:03

on that happy note. I guess that wraps it., . Oh, look, we have a comment from Grey Snow Fox., yeah, we appreciate that. He said, finally, some normal people who love Tesla as the company being realistic and honest about Elon all justified and reasonable criticism and discussion subscribed, liked with notifications on. Thank you. Thank Thank you, Grey. We appreciate that. yeah, we always try to be somewhat, realistic and we want Tesla to be successful. We love the products. We want them to produce good products for the consumers. And yeah. Appreciate that., . This has been episode 72. So as always, thank you all for listening and watching. Thanks for hanging out. We appreciate it. Thanks for the questions and comments. Keep it coming., like, and subscribe. You can always check out teslamotorsclub. com our website., there's a lot of interesting forums and posts on there for good Tesla info. can become a supporting member on the website as always. That helps., the website and the podcast, , and we'll see you next time. It's supposed to say Laters. now. Yeah. Laters.

Doug: 1:01:59

Yeah, laters.