Tesla's Rival Has An Unfair Battery Advantage - NEW EV Batteries

Today we're getting into the latest Tesla news, including new software features, the Model S and X shipping in Europe, Tesla's newest safety system, and ultra-fast charging for 2024, so let's get into it. First up today, Tesla's refreshed Model S and X have had quite the rollout. For a while, Elon Musk talked about this car never being refreshed, but then Tesla did just that. In January of 2021, they announced the refreshed Model S and X with the now-legendary, or infamous, yoke steering wheel. The rollout of the Model S took a while, and the Model X has still seen heavy delays, with some customers receiving their orders just now that they've had for many months. Those cars have yet to ship outside of North America, but now, both are being introduced in Europe and China. Reservation holders in Europe were contacted to confirm their deliveries, and told that the first batch of Model S Plaid vehicles would be arriving in November. This would likely put deliveries in November or December. After that shipment, there is another batch scheduled to arrive in Q1 of 2023. Many expected this for some time, as drone flyovers spotted Model S vehicles at Fremont with European license plate holders. Now it is confirmed. This is great to see for these cars, since they have had such a long wait on their rollout. Clearly, they aren't the priority for Tesla, with them only selling less than 20,000 of these cars last quarter, but customers have been waiting on theirs for some time in these markets, and they are still a part of Tesla's lineup. Pretty crazy that the refresh was announced back in early 2021, and some customers may be finally taking their delivery in early 2023. Over in China at the same time, it has been revealed that the Model Y was the best-selling SUV of any kind in China for September. The CPCA released a list of automaker sales, and 46,694 Model Ys were sold within September. In second place was the BYD Song, selling 45,934 units total. This is very impressive to see, and yet another market the Model Y continues to dominate in. This also comes at the same time that Tesla's Giga Shanghai hit record output. In September alone, Giga Shanghai produced 83,135 vehicles, which beats their previous record in June of this year. That factory is by far the most productive factory for Tesla, especially considering it first opened in December of 2019, and it's rumored to only be getting better, ramping up to 100,000 vehicles per month by the end of the year. Giga Shanghai is likely the factory that Tesla wants to emulate the most, as they continue to ramp up Giga Texas and Berlin. Regarding Tesla's popularity in Germany, a very tough auto market, Tesla managed to outsell all other cars within the month of September. Germany is well-known for their cars, with companies like VW, BMW, and Mercedes located there, but the KBA announced that Tesla delivered 9,848 Model Ys in September. That makes it the best-selling vehicle in the country for September, dethroning the VW Golf, which sold just over 7,000 units. Tesla also sold 3,878 Model 3s in September, so it's pretty remarkable to see all of this in Germany in particular. As always, keep in mind that sometimes this is related to delivery pushes, with Tesla pushing most of their cars towards the end of the quarter in certain markets. Next up today, Tesla is constantly pushing out software updates for their vehicles and phone app updates in order to improve user experience. The newest update from Tesla brings a much-improved energy app to all of their cars. This app has always given insight into what your real-world range usage is looking like, but now Tesla is giving you insights into every possible thing affecting the range you get in your car. Range is the biggest unknown for many EV buyers, so an app like this is extremely useful for EV buyers and Tesla buyers specifically. Tesla has added a number of factors to their range calculations lately, including tire pressure, crosswind, headwind, and more, but none of that has been visible to the vehicle owner. Now, Tesla tweeted saying, On screen, you can see the same trip stats that you've been able to see for a while now with the energy app, but it will give you a live projection of vehicle range on your trip. It also shows you how much range has been used versus predicted. Here we can see 12.3 miles of range consumed, which was 1.8 miles more than the trip projection. The live projection for arriving home is 148.2 miles remaining. You can also see a full breakdown of your consumption from various things. 9.8 miles was taken from driving, 0.8 from climate controls, 0 for battery conditioning, 1.5 miles for elevation, and 0.2 miles for everything else. It then shows how the trip projection differed from real-world consumption, and further gives you range tips to optimize this in the future. They say, Setting cabin temperature to 72 degrees would have saved 0.2 miles. Obviously, these are small numbers for this example, but it would make a big difference being able to see tips like this, especially on longer road trips. If a range tip tells you you could have saved 30 miles on your trip, that's definitely a change you'll want to consider. Now, that's your range prediction for driving, but Tesla also breaks down your range used when parked. Obviously, everything in the car uses the battery, so these are factors as well. 20.3 miles was consumed while parked, 2.3 miles from screen time, 3.5 miles from preconditioning, 13.5 miles from sentry mode, and 1 mile from vehicle standby. Most of these are seen as optimal by the Energy app itself, but they recommend being plugged in for preconditioning the cabin if possible, and using sentry mode less if possible, since that used a significant amount of your range. I'm very excited to play with this update once it is pushed to all cars, and this is something that will be extremely useful for all Tesla owners. I imagine a lot of people will find something they didn't realize is consuming a lot of range. My only wish is that you could switch between miles and kilowatt hours. Technically, the range it's showing is also an estimate, and seeing battery percentage or kilowatt hours here would help me with the energy loss a bit more directly. I'd also love to see how tire pressure is affecting range, but that may already be there or be added in the future. Next up, battery technology is constantly evolving, and the ultimate goal for many is to have longer-lasting, faster-charging batteries. StoreDot is an EV startup who continually announces innovations for their battery cells. This time, they say that their XFC EV battery cells have exceeded 1,000 charging cycles of extreme fast-charging. Additionally, these are their cells in a production-ready EV form factor. Apparently, they repeatedly charged them from 10-80% capacity in just 10 minutes, and then discharged them for an hour before recharging. They did this repeatedly to achieve over 1,000 extreme fast-charging cycles before the cells had degraded below 80% of their original capacity. For many here, 70 or 80% of the original capacity is about the time you would need to replace the battery. Within the first 600 cycles, though, they did not see any noticeable degradation, and they are expecting to achieve even more improvement by the end of this year. As for what their implementation will look like in EVs themselves, StoreDot's CEO said, quote, We have already hit our target that we agreed with most OEMs. This allows for a 500,000 km warranty already, assuming each cycle is for 500 km range. They are shipping high-energy dense pouch cells to OEM partners for testing, and these are their 105 cells. We've talked about them before, but essentially, it's 100 miles of driving, restored with 5 minutes of charging. That's very impressive, as in theory, you should be able to charge a Model Y in about 15 minutes or less, depending on what percentage you're going for. This is much faster than what superchargers and Tesla's current battery tech provide. Not only are they working on these pouch cells, but they have also unveiled their own 4680 battery cells. Tesla, Samsung, and LG are all working on 4680 cells. So if StoreDot truly figured something out here, it would be incredible. Quote, In a world first, the company demonstrated the prototype 4680 form factor that is fully charged in just 10 minutes. StoreDot's extreme-fast-charging cylindrical cells utilize a 4680 format, the one increasingly favored by global carmakers, and have been in development for over three years. For the 4680 cell, they last said they plan to be in volume production by 2024, and they now say the same for their pouch cells, and these will be made with their manufacturing partner EVE Energy. As always with advancements like this, it's important to keep a few different things in mind. On the one hand, they are promising a lot. Charging infrastructure in order to charge this fast would be a big factor, and this is yet to be proven on production vehicles. Additionally, scaling is its own story. It's one thing to make a super-fast-charging battery that holds up, and it's another to make millions of them for tons of EVs. At the same time, it's very exciting to see. The future looks very bright for EVs. Today's battery technology is already very good, and it seems like each day we hear about even better tech than this. In a few years, and especially decades, it will be incredible to see what is available at scale. As for Tesla's position here, I imagine they'll be interested if StoreDot can prove this concept at scale. Everything for Tesla is about scale at this point, so this will only concern them once they believe they can achieve it at scale. Eventually for Tesla as well, if this technology proves true, I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla opted to simply buy them. Next up today, Tesla may be one of the first car companies to implement a new hazard warning light system. Hazard lights are standard on cars and have been for a number of decades, but Emergency Safety Solutions has created a new system called HELP, or Hazard Enhanced Location Protocol. They say, quote, ESS Hazard Enhanced Location Protocol, HELP, is designed to provide highly conspicuous lighting and digital communication using existing vehicle lighting systems in vehicle telematics, OEM cloud platforms, and navigation application systems. In their video, they talk about how a disabled vehicle crash happens every seven minutes in America because vehicles are unable to fully see a disabled car on the roadway until it's too late. Even when these lights are on, it's not enough, so ESS is looking to change that. Quote, Emergency Safety Solutions, Inc., creator of the Hazard Enhanced Location Protocol, HELP, which revolutionizes vehicle hazard warning systems to help prevent crashes into disabled and vulnerable vehicles and their occupants, announced today it signed a global agreement with Tesla Inc. to deploy HELP on Tesla models initially in North America via over-the-air software update. Their CEO added, quote, Tesla is a leader in bringing first-time innovation to passenger vehicles and is leading the way by implementing HELP technology on potentially millions of Tesla vehicles worldwide. In practice, this system will automatically turn on when certain things are detected, which is something Tesla's vehicles already do to a certain degree. I experienced this when I was rear-ended in my Tesla and my hazard lights were already on automatically. But this new system will blink much faster at a rate that they say is scientifically proven to grab the attention of oncoming drivers better. Then it will send a digital communication to navigation systems of oncoming cars to warn them of the stranded vehicle. Some cars and apps already do a feature like this, but this will be a standardized approach. As for the implementation of this system, it's another example of Tesla's software approach being very useful. Reportedly, quote, The new hazard warning system is expected to be pushed through an over-the-air update to a range of Tesla vehicles. In theory, all Tesla vehicles should be receiving this over-the-air software update, with the improved hazard light system. We should be getting a lot more information about this soon, but this, along with Tesla's recent seatbelt tensioning software update, shows that software updates can add much more than fun app features to your vehicle. Next up today, also regarding safety, there was some speculation recently going around that Tesla may be cheating on certain safety tests. On September 7th, it was announced that the Model Y earned a 5-star rating from Euro NCAP, which was the highest score under the new protocol. Tesla said, quote, As part of this assessment, Model Y received the highest overall safety among any vehicle tested under Euro NCAP's newest, most stringent test protocol. This was based on an evaluation of Model Y's ability to protect adults, children, and vulnerable road users like cyclists and pedestrians, as well as its safety assistance features. In most categories, the Model Y beat other cars by a few percentage points, which is very impressive. Tesla's focus on safety continues to be proven in independent testing, but many were skeptical as it was found that Tesla had special codes in vehicle software when used by crash testing agencies. This raised many red flags for people as to the idea that Tesla could be altering their system to perform especially well in a crash test. Maybe they were making their system more sensitive in order to achieve a better safety score. This started with AtGreenTheOnly tweeting, quote, Tesla just added ANCAP support in their code. This is in addition to already existing iVista, Chinese Testing Grounds, Euro NCAP, and Korea NCAP. One wonders why do it? They also give testing houses one-off builds with the testing house in the name. With tweaked settings? This was of course speculation, but shortly after, a spokesperson for ANCAP said, quote, We're aware of the claims made on Twitter and are looking into it. Many were concerned that in theory, Tesla could have been cheating in a fashion to what VW did, programming their cars to cheat on emissions tests with Dieselgate. If Tesla was cheating here, of course, that would be a big issue. Now it has been announced that Euro NCAP found no evidence of Tesla cheating these tests. Aled Williams, director of Euro NCAP, said, The integrity of its star rating scheme is of utmost importance to Euro NCAP, and we will continue to do all we can to ensure the ratings reflect the safety which consumers can expect from their vehicles. So far, Euro NCAP's investigations have not revealed any evidence of any attempt to cheat the tests by Tesla. They said that they examined Tesla's software updates to test vehicles and did not find any fault. And they further said that for any GPS geofencing concerns, that, quote, It is possible that GPS location is used to identify that the car is at a specific test track. It's one of the possibilities we put to Tesla, and they absolutely deny that this is done. Reportedly, these software codes used to identify these cars, quote, are used only to identify the region for which the car is configured. With Tesla shipping in different markets, this is how they actually identify the region. Different regions, such as Europe, Australasia, etc. differ in terms of legislation, as well as road conditions, markings, etc. The recent addition of ANCAP to the code of Model Y coincides with the start of sales of that vehicle in Australasia. Reportedly, Euro NCAP is continuing their investigation, but as of right now, they have found no evidence of Tesla altering their cars for safety tests. There likely won't be any additional findings here, but I'll keep you posted if there are. Last up today, some updates about other automakers. Polestar officially unveiled the Polestar 3 this week. It's a small SUV that they plan to begin delivering next year. As for the specs, it will have 489 horsepower, a 0-60 in 4.9 seconds, top speed of 130 mph, and a battery capacity of 111 kWh. That's a very large battery, but unfortunately, the targeted range for this car is only 300 miles EPA, or 610 miles WLTP. It uses a 400-volt architecture and will start at $83,900. There are also a few different packages on top of that, like a plus package with a 25-speaker sound system or pilot pack with heads-up display and more. There's also a performance pack with added performance on top of the specs I already listed. What's clear here is that Polestar isn't directly targeting the Model Y. Many are comparing the two, but the interior of the Polestar 3 features a lot of premium upgrades the Model Y can't really compete with at this point. At the same time, regarding range, efficiency, speed, and all of that stuff, the Model Y is already beating this car with a significantly cheaper price. The Polestar 3 will be utilizing Android Automotive for its infotainment and will be built in the U.S. First deliveries are expected in Q4 of 2024, and Polestar's CEO said that, Polestar 3 is a powerful electric SUV that appeals to the senses with a distinct Scandinavian design and excellent driving dynamics. It also takes our manufacturing footprint to the next level, bringing Polestar production to the United States. In theory, with it being assembled in North America, it should qualify for the tax credit come January 1st of 2023, but as of right now, it's over the price cap of $80,000 for an SUV, so it won't qualify. Definitely an exciting electric offering from Polestar, but not something Tesla will be too worried about for the time being. Over at BMW, they're looking to bring gaming to their cars next year. One feature included in every Tesla is gaming. For some, it's completely unnecessary, but for others, it's a really fun bonus to have in a vehicle. BMW is one of the first companies aside from Tesla that has announced the addition of games. They will be working with AirConsole to add casual games to their cars that players can control with their smartphones. BMW said, With AirConsole, we will leverage innovative technologies combined with a broad variety of fun and multiplayer games. This will make every waiting situation inside the vehicle, such as charging, an enjoyable moment. At Tesla, they're also working on full Steam integration, which could take their gaming to the next level, but this has yet to be released. Over at Chrysler, they're looking for a full rebrand and looking to take on Tesla directly. Chrysler has already teased their Airflow electric vehicle concept, but now they specifically plan to appeal to young urban drivers. Chrysler's CEO said, Everyone's going after Tesla, but I think Chrysler is the one brand in the portfolio that has the capability to do that because we've been hyper-focused on just a BEV offering, the design themes, and we saw a little bit of it when you saw the Airflow design. It's very aero and contemporary with thoughtfully appointed technology that helps make the driving experience easier, better, and safer. And I think that we've got a real shot at taking on Tesla. It's always great to see companies with aspirations like this, but Tesla is so far ahead of Chrysler, who has yet to even ship a single EV, that it's unclear how they'd achieve this. For scaling and shipping EVs at reasonable cost, I'm not sure how this would be done, but Dan Ives said, Chrysler's brand has always been aspirational but accessible when it comes to price. Demographically, it appeals to an under 40 demographic that is a sweet spot for electric vehicles and has been for Tesla. In theory, there could be appeal for this brand, so I'm curious to see how Chrysler would evolve the Airflow concept if it ever happens. Over at Lucid, they are pushing a new software update, which brings a lot of improvements as well as their driver assist systems. It performs lane centering and is a feature they talked about since launch. Great to see this launching, and another company pushing useful software features in their vehicles. As for production, they increased their production this last quarter, producing 2,282 EVs total. This is great for them as Q2 was a total of 670 units, but it's still fairly low all things considered. Based on these results, Lucid says they're on track to achieve their revised 2022 production target of 6,000 to 7,000 vehicles. Many were unsure of them hitting that goal, so a productive Q3 definitely looks good here. Hopefully things can continue to scale up because they have a great product on their hand and I'm always rooting for more EVs. That's all the latest Tesla news for today, so in the meantime, if you want to see any and all the issues that I've had with my new Model Y, you can check out that video linked up here or in the description below. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you on the next one.