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One of Tesla’s usually favorable Wall Street analysts, Dan Ives from Wedbush, published a note pleading with CEO Elon Musk to spend less time at DOGE. “Tesla and Musk are facing a defining chapter in their future and how Musk handles this next few months will be pivotal to the long term growth trajectory of Tesla in our view,” Ives wrote. Another thing Ives says Musk needs to do is prepare lower-cost vehicles for 2025.
The Tesla Takedown movement is rallying against Elon Musk, and it’s only getting bigger.
The Financial Times compared the electric automaker’s capital expenditure in the last six months of 2024 to its valuation of the assets that money was spent on, and discovered that $1.4 billion has “gone astray.”
Looking at last year, in the third and fourth quarter combined, Tesla spent $6.3bn on “purchases of property and equipment excluding finance leases, net of sales” according to its cashflow statements. Over on the balance sheet, however, the gross value of property, plant and equipment rose by only $4.9bn in that period, to $51bn.
$6.9 billion minus $4.9 billion equals $1.4 billion, or the sum the paper says appears unaccounted for. It’s a bit complicated, but unless Tesla reports the missing money in its next earnings report, it could indicate that something fishy is going on — beyond a stock collapse amid a global protest movement.
The automaker’s bigger EX90 EV got CarKey last year, and now Volvo is adding it to the smaller EX30. Volvo’s software rollout on the EX90 has been buggy, with features like CarPlay arriving slowly and owners complaining that their digital keys don’t work.
Can you trick a Tesla’s camera-based Autopilot system, which has been linked to hundreds of crashes, using simulated rain, fog? Will it barrel through a wall covered in an image of the road beyond, like Looney Tunes’ Wile E. Coyote slamming into the Road Runner’s fake tunnels?
Yes you can, according to Engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober’s testing. (Bonus: Rober also uses LiDAR to map Disney’s pitch-black Space Mountain coaster. )
The electric crossover (based on last year’s concept) will be the first built on BMW’s Neue Klasse EV platform, which introduces an 800-volt architecture and new “Gen6” battery packs featuring higher density cylindrical cells for up to 30 percent better range. The iX3 will kick off new technologies that will be introduced in more than 40 models of various drivetrains by 2027. BMW Group also announced its first hydrogen car slated for 2028 at its annual press conference.
The Lanzador EV concept-based vehicle will also “allow for up to 2,000” horsepower according to Volkswagen Group and Porsche CEO Olliver Blume, who shared the details at an annual media conference. Future Audi, Porsche and Bentley vehicles will share this new platform, however, Blume teases that the Lamborghini will have “a very specific set-up.”
F1 has a new trailer out that makes it seem, you know, like a movie about dudes driving around in circles. The film centers on Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a retired driver whose F1 team-owning friend Ruben (Javier Bardem) pulls him back onto the track to mentor up-and-coming racer Joshua “Noah” Pearce (Damson Idris). It hits theaters on June 27th before it winds up on Apple TV Plus at some point in the future.
Tesla has been promising more affordable models as the thing that will help pull it out of its current rut. But a new report out of China (by way of Electrek) suggests that they’re likely to be stripped down Model Ys. This follows reports that the company was testing sub-$35,000 Model 3s in Mexico with cheaper materials and fewer screens. Based on the 36kr report, the project is being spearheaded by Tesla’s Chinese engineers — which makes sense, because car companies in that country have really cracked the code on cheap EVs.
The big news in Rivian’s most recent software update was Enhanced Highway Assist for hands-free driving on compatible highways, but let’s take a moment to call out a very simple quality-of-life upgrade: you can now set the side mirrors to tilt down automatically when you go into reverse. (Lots of other cars have this feature, which makes parking a big vehicle like an R1S or R1T much easier.)
Decoder listeners know I asked CEO RJ Scaringe for this feature when he was on the show last year because it’s such a common request in the Rivian forums. He committed to adding it on the show, and now it’s here. See? Results.
[stories.rivian.com]
After filing for Chapter 11 in the US in November, Northvolt — which worked with Volkswagen, Volvo, Audi, Porsche, and BMW — has now filed for bankruptcy in Sweden. The company was founded by two ex-Tesla executives and was one of Europe’s leading efforts to rival US and Asian battery manufacturers before racking up billions in debt.
“As the bankruptcy process unfolds, the court-appointed trustee will determine the future of Northvolt’s businesses and their assets, including technology and production facilities.”
[northvolt.com]
Donald Trump livestreamed a Tesla showcase in the White House driveway on Tuesday, apparently reading the notes of a Tesla sales pitch as he performed choosing one of its EVs to purchase from five delivered for the event.
Standing alongside Elon Musk, Trump attempted to boost the automaker, after prices of its shares dropped 15 percent over the last five days, and said he’d label violence against its locations as domestic terrorism.
Although there have been an increasing amount of protests against Tesla, “the Seattle Fire Department (SFD) has not yet said whether foul play was suspected as the cause of the fire, which is under investigation,” according to KOMO News.
Rest of World looks at a small-town political fight over whether a planned EV battery plant from Chinese company Gotion was a boon for employment, an environmental disaster-in-the-making, or a “Communist Trojan horse.”
It opens with the VP of Gotion’s US subsidiary deciding “he would have to eat part of a battery” to prove they’re safe. So far, the plant hasn’t been built.
Musk tweeted that in 2022, adding that it could “...cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppy.” Today Electrek highlights this incident that occurred Monday morning in Ventura, CA.
It’s unknown if the Cybertruck’s driver forgot to engage “wade mode” or made some other error while trying to launch a jet ski from the boat ramp, but KABC reports the vehicle was completely submerged by the time fire crews arrived. A Facebook post says it took about an hour and a half to recover the Cybertruck.
Better batteries through Breathe’s better algorithms.
