Now we get to talk about Tesla Elon Musk What are confess things? Some flip-flopping from Elon Musk What's going on with the FTC We got to set something straight. So first things first: a Tesla is apparently now being investigated because apparently in some cases steering wheels are falling off According to the associate press. This is like music to the ears of all the Elon Musk and Tesla haters. I've never heard of this before, but then again, my anecdote doesn't really matter, but it is something that is making news this morning as well as the U.S Investigation Investigation Probe I Guess I should say into model wise look, you're almost always going to have these sort of Investigations this whole recall about loose bolts on 3000 models tiny percentage obviously of of the Tesla Fleet of about 4 million Vehicles so we're not trying to explain it away.

Obviously, Quality control is something that Tesla's obviously been having to deal with regularly. We could say It's Growing Pains for Tesla Hopefully newer models don't continue to have these issues. they're going to have to be things we pay attention to. But we we don't want to spend too much time just talking about recalls because they are what they are.

When you have physical recalls, guess what? So does every other auto manufacturer Except the reality is 99. Well, that's like 98.9 percent of uh according to forms of all Tesla recalls are solved by an over-the-air update which Rivals like the next best company for recalls that are being done over the air at like 30 percent. So Tesla's Miles Ahead here. but uh, let's talk about uh, the FTC Elon's flip flop on Twitter and then also what Arc Invest has to say uh I'm uh, going to pop open Arc Invest piece right here on Tesla Investor day and Atasha is Arcanvas EV analyst and uh, she provides you know, sort of a reiteration of some of the things that we've already known I Just want to give a sort of a brief summary of what Arc's position here is.

They don't give us any kind of financial projections or changes to their models. They still have this fifteen hundred dollar price Target get for Tesla But it's worth looking at some of their commentary here. so they write. despite mixed reviews of Tesla's investor day.

Tasha found no shortage and Sam found no shortages of important and exciting news we believe Tesla shared more profound news than a product prototype. The road map for continuous cost declines associated with scaling production. Now this is fair. They did exactly that.

This was really a how we're going to get our cost reductions presentation right. Very fair. Very fair argument. First, it will produce 100 of its controllers of the next gen vehicle.

Second, it'll switch to a 48 battery. A 48 volt battery architecture that should reduce power loss by 16 fold. That's basically the heat transmission through cabling inside the cars. When you go to a higher voltages away from 12 volt, you can.

You basically have less heat loss on wiring. Okay, this is actually why Europe uses the 240 volt system as opposed to 120. got it? Third, it will use local ethernet connectors to reduce complexity and wire harnesses. Maybe that that's what the Optimus is essentially in the future going to plug in, unplug, whatever, Then you've got electrical architecture, changes, the parallel assembly, or a process.

We've talked about that before reducing. Wasted Time Manufacturing Footprints Then they talk about and this was interesting. This is sort of the newer information that I got from Arc here. What? I Enjoy! Here is they talk about how Waymo and Chevy Cruze really have each attained one million miles cumulatively with no one behind the wheel on public roads.

And that sounds like a lot, right? One million miles? Uh, driven on roads. But take a listen to this. Tesla's Fleet currently drives more than 120 miles per day. Well, that's all vehicles.

Okay, that doesn't matter so much, but in total, we have 100 million miles in full self-driving with its most advanced driver assistance. Now it's unclear if they mean 100 million in total for FSD or if they mean 100 million of that 120 per day. I'm going to say 100 million in total because quite frankly I think a lot of people who drive Teslas don't actually use the FSD Mostly because it's kind of annoying because if you pick up your phone it just yells at you and it's like better to just have it off. However, I do have FSD and I will say if I it you know if you're actually like capable of paying attention to the car, it's phenomenal to just have it running on FSD.

Either way, if Waymo and and Cruz each at the moment according to Arc have a million miles driven on on essentially full self driving in Tesla's at 100 million I mean we? They're basically yeah, here it is: Tesla Vehicles have traveled 100x the cumulative miles and have collected 50 000 times. The data according to our research data will be critical in the race to create a scale and a fully autonomous taxi service. In short, Tesla's vertical integration seems to have given the company an edge that may take its less integrated competitors years if ever to replicate now. Uh, Elon Musk Yesterday in his presentation with Morgan Stanley talked about how basically Tesla investors are potentially misunderstanding the total addressable market for Tesla that it's not just cars, it's software.

It's basically providing Hardware with software style margins. Now, we don't want to be redundant, but but basically test Tesla could basically give away vehicles in the future and still have somewhere around a 25 to 30 percent margin on their Hardware solely because of software margins that are close to basically approaching a limit of 100 which is pretty remarkable. Now, there is also some other drama regarding Elon Musk and Twitter Specifically, uh, regarding FTC Federal uh, sorry, FCC it was one of them. It's either the Federal Communications Commission or the Federal Trade Commission one of them.

But anyway, there are these required depositions and audits I believe it's the FCC so I'm going to go with that by the FCC of Twitter because uh, Twitter is under a consent decree that has been in effect since 2011. it was actually expanded in 2022. The degree decree basically requires regular audits of Twitter to make sure that people's privacy are are being respected. whether that's their their age, their email, their location, data, whatever.

Well, the FCC requests. Apparently the FCC has pepper put with about 350 requests and Elon is is kind of freaking out on Twitter over them. but apparently this is pretty normal. It's the normal course of business for for a company.

uh, like Twitter to be dealing with these sort of requests from uh, the FCC but Elon Musk isn't very happy so he's kind of lashing out a little bit on Twitter. I'll show some of these tweets here, but it seems like a lot of these lashes these these requirements are just a normal part of the business that he bought, so it's It's potentially difficult to say that this is just some sort of unique incursion against Elon and rather it probably more of just like that's just the course of doing business for Twitter So I don't actually think it's really that big of a deal, but Elon Musk seems to be freaking out about that. In addition to he did flip-flop on the guy that he was publicly bashing yesterday yesterday, he was publicly suggesting that the individual an individual who was fired at Twitter was quote unquote the worst. He literally said he's the worst and uh, I basically pointed out publicly that this individual claims he has a disability and can't work yet can tweet all he wants Apparently Elon ended up getting on the phone with a person rather than listening to rumors.

Ended up talking to the person realizing that the person's actually not, uh, as unproductive as Elon Musk made it seem. uh, publicly. Now the dude has gotten an insane amount of attention online because of this Uh, I mean a massive amount of attention And so his his Twitter following has like exploded. Uh, now that's not to minimize the fact that you know his his disability was made public.

although I think he's personally been public about it before. But anyway, take a look at this. This is kind of the stuff you're seeing circulate online right now. The Biden administration's casual violation of the First Amendment should shock every journalist.

what's the limiting principle? And then you have these tweets like perfectly normal for federal investigative body to demand the mains, the names of reporters interacting with a company. And basically they're making this this claim here. yo. It's the Trade Commission Oh, it's the FTC Oh, interesting.

So anyway, the FTC Uh also asked the company to identify all journalists granted access to the company's records. Uh, and for more information regarding Twitter Blue subscription: Services The FDC has demanded Twitter turnover internal Communications related to Elon Musk and detailed informations uh, information about layouts and other business decisions. The FTC is also seeking to depose Musk in connection with the probe. Uh, I mean really? what? what? Yeah, you know.

Elon Musk complains. This is a serious attack on the Constitution by a federal agency. Uh, it it. really.

What's interesting to me is it does seem like the FTC could potentially be picking on Elon Musk. But then again, these decrees that allow these federal agencies to basically pick apart Twitter existed prior to Elon Musk's ownership. So I'm not sure if this is Elon Musk just kind of being frustrated with basically what he signed up for. and we know that Elon has a tendency of kind of getting frustrated online and then lashing out.

or or if this is like some kind of politically charged, uh, and motivated tool at harassing Elon Musk Who knows. Uh, but it's something that obviously we'll be paying attention to uh over the next uh, years. Uh, as uh as Elon continues to progress with sort of his uh, his his Twitter uh acquisition here. Now personally.

Uh, I don't care so much about the FTC probing. Twitter I mean you're getting the same thing from Europe and it's it's just the nature of being a social media platform and quite frankly I think everything should just be relatively transparent as the Twitter file showed. more transparency is better. So uh, you know personally, someone of nothing Burger in my opinion that but a lot of people are making a big deal about this that oh my gosh Twitter is going to get deposed.

uh, you know, politicians hate Elon to some degree that might be true. but I think it's a little bit of a nothing Burger it's going to be a headache for Elon nonetheless, but we'll see. Good to see though Elon Potentially, you know actually talked directly with this uh Hallie the person uh, that that he sort of outed on Twitter and uh, when it comes to uh Tesla drama in the near term regarding recalls not that big of a deal in my opinion. I'm more side with what Arc suggests and and what Elon suggests yesterday that if you're a Tesla investor, you really want to focus on the long-term autonomous benefits that uh, electric vehicles well specifically Teslas create now do keep in mind I I personally have a rule that the day someone in my family loves Tesla is the day that I have to sell it.

So I purposefully took them uh in my car the other day and I turned on Tesla full self-driving in an area where I thought the car would be facing some challenges and so it was dusk. Uh, it was. uh, you know, basically turning night time and we're we're coming up on a stop sign. one lane road in each.

Direction on a bridge and we have to turn left. There's a yield in front of us, stop sign to our right and we have to turn left and I I Had a suspicion this would be a challenging intersection at that time of day. It's handled it perfectly fine before, but that person was in the passenger seat they're not a big fan of. Elon So I throw it on Full self-driving Yeah! As we get to that stop sign, the course stops.

uh, sort of creeps forward waits for its turn. It has a little thing that pops up that says waiting for my turn and uh, and then it goes. Unfortunately, when it goes it, it nearly drives us right into the curb because it took too much of a turn. It went at the appropriate time, but I had to take over to prevent hitting the curb.

I Don't know if eight would have stopped I Don't know because I didn't want to take that chance. but but what was more important was that obviously as as someone who drives FSD I know it's 90 good, but there's still those five to ten percent Edge scenarios where it's like yeah, it does stupid things like you have to pay attention right? like when I'm on a one-lane road going against oncoming traffic I hold the wheel because I'm like I don't know if this thing's gonna try to kill me and eat over. it's never done that before, but I I Still like That's the kind of caution that I think beta tester should uh, should exhibit when they're driving FSC But anyway, when it nearly ran into the curb, the individual says yep, see, nope, nowhere near close I would never trust this system with my life. A lot of work to do Tesla sucks.

This is why I would never invest in Tesla and I'm sticking with Toyota Uh, and and to me I actually smiled because I'm like this is the point of being at The Cutting Edge of technology is that it's it's not perfect yet, right? That being 90 there is actually such an achievement, but the world does not realize how far Tesla has already come ahead of the competition. And again, my rule of thumb is not to convince that person to love Tesla. It's because when that person finally realizes that Tesla is is so phenomenal and why would you ever drive any other vehicle in a Tesla that's going to be Peak Euphoria for Tesla and that's going to be my exit for Tesla is when that person becomes a Tesla Fanboy I Know we've reached the top, but we are clearly nowhere near there. so I report this story.

Uh, honored to say we're nowhere near the top. Uh, so so anyway. I I that makes me very, very happy. Hopefully it makes you happy as well.

Uh, in other news, Volkswagen is putting on hold the expansion of their Eastern battery plant in Europe Eastern European battery plan because they're waiting to potentially and now likely receiving 10 billion Euros of incentives from the United States government to instead build that battery plant in America The EV incentive war is real and I'm ending this sort of EV discussion here by saying if you want if you liked the stimulus check uh era of 2020, you're going to love the stimulus checks that are being distributed to electric vehicle manufacturers, battery manufacturers, and Chip companies because the more the United States does it, the more Europe does it Europe Now losing a Volkswagen factory to the United States Dude, they are going to turn the money printers on to get Volkswagen to also build a new battery Factory in Europe and the more we get that kind of stuff, the more steamy checks are going to electric vehicle companies to propel the the goal of green Energy Right But it's not just Europe and the United States fighting. it's also China is also massively incentivizing the EV sector. So I think it's very fascinating. and of course, as if On Cue I was literally thinking it I should have said something because I knew it was going to happen.

But as if On Cue Here Comes Steve commodity Steve battery plant gonna need metal I was thinking it before he said it. I'm like I know this is gonna wake Steve up. he's gonna put his coffee down and go oh, you're not wrong Steve Copper will be the big Winger winner and you don't think battery medals are going to stay elevated with all these incentives. All right Steve All right, All right.

Uh, you're not wrong. You're you're not. You're not wrong. Uh, you know we.

It's going to take a massive increase in Supply just to keep uh Metals even stable. So you're right about that. See, see. My argument is that we're We'll have a massive increase in supply of these.

But you're right, a massive increase in Supply with a massive increase in demand could just create stability for electric vehicle style Commodities right? Whether that's lithium or nickel or Cobalt or copper or whatever, you're not wrong about that. Uh, you know, the generally the idea is oh more Supply the prices would come down. but then again, if demand is also exponentially Rising maybe we just sort of stair step up and those prices stay eleven. Okay, all right, all right.

But anyway, the incense Steve is an OJ I love Steve I actually I I when I hire people I tell them I do not need another Kevin I don't need people telling me stuff that I already think because then you just create more confirmation bias I Like people around like my favorite people to hang out with are people who have different opinions like Steve Uh, mostly because I I Like actually today I'm going to Puerto Rico I fly to Puerto Rico in like two hours. Uh, because uh, tentatively. I'm gonna go visit Peter Schiff You're going to meet him in person and then go yo Peter We're different.