$20k Bezos Backed EV Is the Anti Cybertruck

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[00:00:04] Doug McIntyre: So, a fascinating piece of EV news. There’s EV news every day. Jeff Bezos is backed, the company that makes a pickup, it’s Slate. That’s what it’s called. It is after the tax credit. It’s a $20,000 vehicle now, right? It has, it doesn’t have electric windows. I don’t think it has a radio.

[00:00:24] Doug McIntyre: It’s not painted.

[00:00:25] Lee Jackson: I don’t think it does either.

[00:00:27] Doug McIntyre: Right. It’s just the two seaters. No electronics has a two seater. Now, if you want to, you can tell them you want it to be a five seater and you want, you can turn this into a 40 or $50,000. Yeah.

[00:00:39] Doug McIntyre: But what they’re doing is they’re coming into the market and saying to somebody, if you just want a pickup that’s an EV just to drive, there you go.

[00:00:47] Doug McIntyre: Stick a dog in the back or whatever it is. We’re prepared to do this. The, the holy grail in EVs is a $25,000. Absolutely. And they, these guys could capture a decent part of the market for people who just want an EV that’s a small pickup. If I’m Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), I’m not worried yet, but I’m certainly looking into the rear view mirror to see if they’re, possibly coming around a distant corner.

[00:01:21] Lee Jackson: Well, you, you forgot to mention that it comes in one color, which is the, and, and I’m seeing that this is, it’s kind of this off gray that, I see it all over the place. I didn’t it, it got big a couple of years ago, but I see it everywhere now. Maybe that’s the new hip color for the hip people buying stuff, but it only comes in that one color.

[00:01:42] Lee Jackson: But yeah, I mean, if it’s produced in the United States or, or any place, that would we end up with a reasonable tariff on, and I’m sure Bezos will try to produce it here because he’s become very pro USA, in the last couple of years maybe it does take a big chunk out of, out of the other corporations pocket, especially more than Tesla, maybe Ford (NYSE: F) and GM (NYSE: GM).

[00:02:08] Doug McIntyre: Yeah, you’ve got now this fascinating global matrix of EV companies. You’ve got the Chinese who make apparently awesome EVs. Yeah.

[00:02:19] Lee Jackson: The BYD (NYSE: BYD) right

[00:02:20] Doug McIntyre: Top to bottom, simple sedans, 25K, all the way up to luxury EVs. There’s a rumor, which apparently is true, that they can charge some of these cars in five minutes.

[00:02:33] Doug McIntyre: Now, if that’s true, it is a complete game changer because, charging a car fully in your own garage takes several hours. On a supercharger, it may take 20 or 30 minutes, but that’s still a long time. A five minute charge is the equivalent of getting gas.

[00:02:51] Lee Jackson: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely it is.

[00:02:54] Doug McIntyre: You’ve got six companies right now in China that are very solid EV companies.

[00:03:00] Doug McIntyre: They’re blocked from the United States. They’re blocked from a lot of Europe. That may not last forever. You come to the United States, you’ve got Slate, right? Super cheap. Then you got lucid 80, 90, a hundred thousand dollars. They’re not gonna sell. We already know. Nobody wants, nobody wants to buy a $90,000 EV.

[00:03:25] Doug McIntyre: No, that’s not gonna happen.

[00:03:26] Lee Jackson: You buy a $90,000 one, get a Tesla or a Cadillac, or something like that.

[00:03:32] Doug McIntyre: You got Rivian on board. Again, expensive. You’ve got Detroit, you’ve got Hyundai, the Germans, and Detroit, right? All trying to sell what I would describe as mid price to upper priced EVs. The EV market used to be Tesla, maybe one or two other places were producing a very small number of EVs.

[00:03:54] Doug McIntyre: The EV business now worldwide is. At least 15 really successful companies. Some of ’em are not successful EV companies yet, but they can fund being in that. So if you said to me what has happened to Tesla, forget about the fact that the self-driving thing is absolutely perfect, or that they had a couple of wrecks, or that people are upset with Elon Musk because of the administration.

[00:04:24] Doug McIntyre: Tesla now has one to two dozen, honest to gosh competitors, most of which did not exist or were tiny five years ago. So to me, this new truck is just the tip of an iceberg that’s really huge. And if you’re, if you’re Tesla, aka the Titanic. You have to get your, your guy who’s in charge of your, your night watch up there with binoculars and do a better job of, of finding icebergs.

[00:04:57] Lee Jackson: Yeah. I agree. And, and the thing is, Bezos, if this is reasonably successful, look for the sedan to be right behind it. Right behind it.

[00:05:08] Doug McIntyre: Yep. That could very well happen. But the EV business over the last five years has gone from being fairly, not crowded to being extremely crowded.

[00:05:20] Lee Jackson: Yeah. And demand, demand, if anything, has kind of hit a plateau, at least temporarily.

[00:05:25] Lee Jackson: And, I, I guess cheaper electricity would be a, a answer, but I don’t think that’s gonna be the case. And as we’ve discussed recently, I mean, you may see filling up a, a. Internal combustion engine at one point in the next six months cheaper than charging electricity in your house for your car. Because of all the electricity demand in the United States,

[00:05:53] Doug McIntyre: I’m wondering what happens to EV in terms of the pecking order when you say AI, which is gonna be chew up.

[00:06:01] Doug McIntyre: Eric Schmidt said AI could use up 99% of the electricity capacity in the United States in 10 years. Think about that for a second. And he’s not an idiot. He’s a smart, smart guy. So, yeah,

[00:06:14] Lee Jackson: No, no, he is not an idiot.

[00:06:16] Doug McIntyre: You’re here. Then you’ve got Bitcoin mining, another energy hog. Then you go down from there.

[00:06:21] Doug McIntyre: And one of the things I like about climate change is the hotter it gets, the more electricity you need for air conditioning, the more electricity you need for air conditioning, the more that the utilities have to use things like coal. The more you use things like coal, the more you need air conditioning.

[00:06:38] Doug McIntyre: So you’ve got this horrible loop in the air conditioning business, but you need, the world is gonna need more air conditioning. You’ve got, typical residential customers and you’ve got your sort of legacy air conditioning people, your grocery store. Now I’ve gotta now find a place to go charge my EV.

[00:06:58] Doug McIntyre: Where am I on the pecking order when it comes to having easy access to electricity for my EV solid point?

[00:07:08] Lee Jackson: This is a very solid point.

[00:07:11] Doug McIntyre: Where am I gonna go?

[00:07:13] Lee Jackson: I don’t know, but as, as soon as I see you riding around in a Slate truck, then we’ll, well, then we’ll get into finding exactly where you can tune it up or fill it up.

[00:07:23] Doug McIntyre: For $50. I can get on the wait list.

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