Welcome to Electrified. It's your host, Dylan Lumis, quick shout out to my newest Patreon Morteness. Thank you for choosing to support the channel. If you've been around for a while, you will remember back in 2019, Tesla paid $218 million for a small battery startup Maxwell Technologies. You may not remember though that Franz Fink was the founder who sold Maxwell to Elon and Tesla. And something to watch he now has a new battery startup called AM batteries. And at this new battery startup AM batteries, the CTO is Hugh Duong who worked for Fink back at Maxwell and was partially responsible for inventing that dry technology that Tesla bought.
Both of these men worked at Tesla as part of that Maxwell acquisition. But in 2023 Duong moved to AM, the new startup where he's now working on a new approach to dry electrodes that the company says is far easier to handle and cheaper than the method Maxwell brought to Tesla. Now yes, we can be confident Tesla has made significant changes to that process over the last six plus years working on that technology. And I've said a lot in the past, but if you don't want to take it for me, numerous industry experts think dry electrodes are one of the few new technologies that could sharply cut battery costs in a single stroke. And we know that battery prices are the single biggest cost of an electric vehicle.
So driving down those numbers will be crucial for EV adoption. Part of the problem Tesla had with its DBE process was using that dry powder it would lead to clumping up. But AM batteries may have a different solution. They're focused on spraying the powder onto the metal film making for a uniformly coated electrode. But the approach is still too slow for commercial use. AM's lines pump out electrode coated film at just 20 meters per minute, which is less than half of the 50 meters per minute regarded as commercial speed. And much slower than the 70 to 80 meters per minute Chinese companies have reached using the traditional wet process.
And of course that meters per minute metric just measures the speed of the line and how fast the materials are actually being coated. So I'm not sure Tesla would answer the question, but for all of you Tesla analysts, why not ask a question like this, where is Tesla at from a meters per minute perspective on its DBE process? And for whatever it's worth, think has said that they want to either license its technology or better yet someone to buy the company outright. And for those that think Elon is not involved in the nitty-gritty of the engineering process, think gave an interview to the information and explained what it was like when Elon met with Maxwell technologies back in the day.
Both Elon and Drew Baglino pelted think and duong on with a torrent of questions, and Elon wanted to touch things he had questions on every single aspect. And about two weeks later the acquisition was announced. All this to say, if and when AM can hit somewhere in that 50 meters per minute neighborhood, aka commercial speed, that would be when a company like Tesla might be interested in either licensing or buying this technology. So AM batteries is a name to keep an eye on and just because Tesla has solved DBE at scale does not mean there will not be new advancements or developments with the DBE process and with those 4680 cells overall.
And in terms of reducing battery pack costs for the cybercab, semi, cyber truck, I can almost guarantee you, Elon and Tesla will be watching AM batteries closely as the executives have already executed one very successful acquisition and exit. And this one will never get the attention that robotaxis do and understandably so. But just note there is currently a shortage of skilled equipment operators and when I say equipment I'm talking about excavators. And on that point there's a company, Bedrock Robotics based in San Francisco started by former Waymo Veterans. That's currently busy equipping these excavators with driverless technology.
And the CEO of Champion Site Prep which is an excavation company based in the Austin suburbs said some of his construction equipment has been operating autonomously using prototypes of Bedrock's tech since late last month. And he hopes to acquire the first commercial units later this year when Bedrock plans to begin selling them. And the CEO said I can envision six months from now on the next data center that I start putting five of these machines, the excavators, out there doing the same thing. It really is ready for play, ready for action this year we believe.
Champion Site Prep公司的首席执行官表示,他们位于奥斯汀郊区的挖掘公司自上个月底以来,已经开始使用Bedrock技术的原型进行自主操作。他希望在今年晚些时候,Bedrock计划开始销售这些设备时,能够购买到第一批商业化产品。首席执行官还表示,预计在六个月后,当他们开始建设下一个数据中心时,计划投入五台这样的挖掘机来执行同样的任务。我们相信这些设备今年已经可以投入使用,并能顺利运行。
So if Bedrock is successful it may be the first at least in the US that would take humans completely out of the picture. And just like Waymo this Bedrock company converts existing excavators with cameras that provide 360 degree field of view as well as LIDAR and a cellular connection. And I think we would all agree moving dirt in a fixed setting is going to be much easier than solving FSD out on the roads. So at a time when we need all input costs for EVs to come down every bit of automation and eventually human removal will help. And we know Tesla is doing groundwork and excavation right now in Austin. So just keep in mind autonomy will impact industries far down the EV supply chain as well.
And speaking of what Tesla is doing Joe Tetmire shared this video saying Giga Texas is preparing for a massive expansion and a new permit hints at what it will be. So going forward we will call this the North Campus. And this is expected to be the future home of the bigger Optimus production facility where they will be able to make 10 million Optimus per year. And this may also end up being the location for the Optimus Academy where Optimus are trained and ultimately interact with one another. In my opinion we should not expect anything from this site until late 2027 likely into 2028. But very clearly Tesla is not playing games and has huge ambitions when it comes to scale.
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I just don't want us to forget about the other initiatives Tesla has underway like the lithium refinery and the cathode factory and the upcoming mega block because it's so easy to get hyper fixated on just Optimus and autonomy. And when it comes to excavation and mining and specifically lithium mining lithium in the West has been on quite the roller coaster ride we had prices of about $80 a kilo in late 2022 and the price of the metal plummeted as low as $8 last year. But now lithium is staging a comeback it's risen 20% this year alone to around $19 a kilo. Thanks largely to the new demand for batteries to power the grid and AI data centers.
And most importantly this $19 per kilo is profit territory for most mines. Last week Trump put $10 billion into the mining industry as part of a new strategic critical minerals reserve that will hoard lithium rare earth minerals and dozens of other metals used in the defense tech and energy industries. And so while this administration has not been helpful to electric vehicles up the supply chain it has been. Trump also wants Japan, Mexico and other countries as well as the EU to help increase the production of critical metals outside of China.
And where I'm going with this the CEO of lithium America's just said electricity has become like the new gold. And we also have jensen from Nvidia saying it's not computing chips but electricity that's holding us back. And this lithium comeback is being attributed to a three-fold rise in stationary storage battery shipments from 185 gigawatt hours batteries in 2023 to 620 gigawatt hours last year. Again largely driven by these new data centers.
So lithium prices being up certainly helps Tesla's lithium refinery as the output is more valuable and Tesla having its own refinery means Tesla's not paying those higher prices to someone else. Now it should be noted that Spodgamine prices have gone up as well so Tesla's lithium refinery input costs are likely higher as well. I say likely though because I'm sure Tesla has long-term supply deals for Spodgamine input meaning Tesla is not paying spot prices. But the massive swings in this industry will be smoothed out by Tesla having long-term Spodgamine supply from mines in Canada and Australia which then gets refined in Corpus Christi into that battery grade lithium.
Which of course is then directly into the 4680 production process. So Tesla needing to buy less lithium from suppliers avoiding these higher prices is just one more benefit of Tesla setting up the refinery. Speaking of Tesla being ahead of the curve, the new governor of New Jersey just signed a flurry of new orders one of which was telling utilities to start tapping virtual power plants. The governor of Illinois recently signed legislation ordering utilities in that state to do the same thing to pay customers to let the power grid draw energy from their batteries.
And it's what we've been saying these orders reflect a growing reality in the US. Energy demand is growing fast but there's no way for AI data centers and grid operators to build new capacity quickly enough. Which is exactly where battery storage comes in to make the existing grid infrastructure even more efficient. And the industry is now saying batteries of various types like Tesla's new mega block and smaller residential batteries like the Powerwall are becoming the go-to capacity when the grid is struggling to meet demand.
And the CEO of a battery analytics company just said whereas perhaps even as recently as five years ago batteries might have been thought of as nice to have they now have become a central pillar of grid resiliency so they're more important than ever. And don't forget at the beginning of this year tariffs on Chinese batteries and battery storage went from around 38% up to around 55% which of course makes Tesla's production of its batteries here domestically that much more valuable. The CEO of Ravon Energy just said the combination of the IRA and then all these tariffs and FEOC restrictions have just been another impetus to continue to bring more domestic supply online.
The slower uptake of the EVs is freeing up battery cell capacity for battery storage to use. They're now retooling those production lines and creating cells specifically for the energy storage space. And now in another trend that would benefit Tesla we have customers that are willing to pay more for battery storage to avoid the possibility of tariff changes. So the customers are willing to pay a bit more for the certainty that domestic production provides.
And on this point, we learned that LG will manufacture LFP energy storage batteries for Tesla at its plant in Michigan. And remember this was the site that was previously operated as a joint venture with General Motors. But LG bought GM's stake in May of last year and now fully owns the site. And with a production capacity of 50 gigawatt hours per year, it's one of the company's biggest facilities in North America. And it's a perfect example of some of these EV battery cell production lines being converted to battery storage. LG's converting part of the Lansing factory to produce LFP batteries for energy storage.
Mass production of those lines is reportedly expected to begin in the second half of next year. Tesla has primarily used CATL's prismatic batteries for its MegaPak. But this move to source prismatic LFP cells from LG in the US plant could be seen as part of Tesla's efforts to bolster its North American supply base for its energy storage business. Which makes perfect sense given everything we just laid out.
And so this new US LFP supply for Tesla may not be ready until next year meaning the early mega block production might not use this supply. I would imagine that next year when production of both the mega block and these LFP cells are finally ramped, that the LG LFP supply will be used in the new mega block. And even though the mega block won't enter production until later this year we already have Niohwin announcing the start of construction of this 866 MW Goiter North battery site which is in South Australia.
Which is expected to be the first project featuring Tesla's new mega block technology. And as a quick refresher the mega block combines four of Tesla's new MegaPak 3 units into a single pre-engineered plug-in-play block delivering 20 MW of capacity. It's optimized for rapid deployment and cost efficiency offering 23% faster installation and up to 40% lower construction costs compared to previous systems. So this is what I mean when I say Tesla investors are distracted. This won't be as flashy as Robotaxi scaling or Optimus demos but this is the core tech that's bridging the gap for Tesla right now from a profit perspective.
And we know the total addressable market is nearly unlimited. The demand for mega pack and mega block continues to raise higher thanks to these AI data centers and the grid demands and all of the input costs and the raw materials that Tesla has spent years driving down. Vertically integrating are going to be the reason Tesla can offer market leading offerings and continue to be a market leader not just in the battery storage sector but as a cell manufacturer as well.
And to wrap it up the CTO of FlexGen just said in AI training clusters power can swing 50 to 100% of the nameplate load several times per second. That level of ramp rate is challenging for the grids and it's simply outside the operating envelope for most on-site generation assets especially turbines which cannot absorb that without risking damage. And his conclusion batteries are the only technology that can react at sub-cycle speed. Behind the meter batteries absorb these fast transients protect the grid from rapid swings and protect the data centers own generators from operating outside their limits.
总结一下,FlexGen 的首席技术官刚刚表示,在 AI 训练集群中,电力负载可以在几秒内迅速波动,从额定负载的 50% 到 100% 不等。这样的负载变化速度对电网来说是一个挑战,对于大多数现场发电设备,尤其是涡轮机来说,这种变化超出了其正常的运行范围,且可能因无法承受而导致损坏。他的结论是,电池是唯一能在亚秒级速度下反应的技术。电表后的电池可以吸收这些快速的瞬态变化,保护电网免受电力负载迅速波动的影响,并保护数据中心自有发电机不超出运行限制。
Data center developers energy storage tech providers renewable and conventional energy developers and of course the tech companies that will rely on them have begun to recognize this key role of energy storage. Elon gave a new 23 minute interview with Andre Tereg the plant manager of Gigapirlin. Rather than playing clips I'll just tell you what was said because there was music in the background and I'm not sure about copyright. But Elon did say Tesla is now expecting supervised FSD approval in the Netherlands on March 20th that's what the authorities told Tesla.
So March as expected but now we actually have a date. Elon is quite excited about people in Europe finally getting to experience supervised FSD and he thinks people will be blown away. Elon said that technically this year you will be able to fall asleep and wake up at your destination again from a technical standpoint. So the regulations will have to catch up but Elon thinks the software will be there this year. Elon said if things go well then eventually Tesla will manufacture both the cyber cab and optimists at Gigapirlin.
Elon said the Tesla semi should make its debut in Europe also next year. Gigapirlin has begun making 4680 battery cells on site and will continue to ramp that program. Elon made it very clear he thinks that legacy auto is making a strategic mistake pulling away from electric vehicles. He said it really makes no sense and those companies are headed to be dinosaurs. He said Tesla is not worried about those other companies stealing Tesla's technology because Tesla can't even cram a great idea down their throats.
And then at Gigapirlin Tesla does expect to expand the production of the model Y once FSD is approved and then eventually if the regulations allow it Tesla has plans to make Gigapirlin the biggest factory complex in Europe where they could eventually produce 4680 cells fully integrated refining the lithium making the cathodes and so on. Also making 4680s producing the cyber cab producing optimists and producing the semi.
And how about this so the new most affordable cyber truck trim the dual motor all wheel drive. If you scroll down new orders will no longer be fulfilled in June you'll now have to wait until April 2027. So that's a 14 month wait for new orders placed today. So yes clearly demand for this trim at this price point has been much higher than Tesla was expecting.
And now some will say that part of this wait time is due to production scaling limitations and I will grant you that to some degree the cyber truck lines have yet to scale past a certain number per week since deliveries to date have hovered around 5,000 units per quarter for the past year. But what I would say is if Tesla knew about very specific production bottlenecks right now then now would not be the time to make an offer like this.
But I have to admit the jump from June this year to April of next year does seem like something is going on here beyond just an influx of demand beyond Tesla's expectations. So we'll keep an eye on it but it does look like Tesla has found a winning strategy with the cyber truck and I have not yet seen if any June delivery holders have been pushed back as well or if this is just for new orders but I'll keep an eye out. And if any of you have a reservation please let us know below.
Benchmark just put out this EV charger density graphic showing the number of electric vehicles per public charger and then in the yellow you have the percentage of fast chargers said another way the Netherlands has the highest density of public EV chargers. So this number five means there are five electric vehicles for every one public charger but interestingly only 3% in the yellow of those are fast chargers and they're denoting fast chargers as anything over 22 kilowatts. The United States on the other hand has the worst EV charger density with 31 electric vehicles for every one public charger but I think it should be noted in the United States a majority of EV owners charge at home not often relying on the public charging infrastructure.
And then China the biggest EV market in the world has an EV charger density of nine so nine EVs for every one public charger and I shared that as a segue to this news today we learned that EVGO has crossed 5,000 DC fast charging ports in the US which makes them only the third company to accomplish that feat following Tesla and electrify America and that number does include EVGO's chargers and third party chargers operated under the EVGO network talking about the partnerships with GM and pilot EVGO expanded its network by over 1000 ports in less than 14 months that's roughly a 26% increase compared to almost 4,000 posts at the beginning of last year.
But get this of those 5,000 only 98 ports are actually nacks so far so EVGO has primarily been focused on CCS but the good news going forward EVGO said it plans to expand its nacks footprint to 500 plus stalls this year which means over 400 additional nacks stalls are coming soon and tell your friends EVGO is saying they're going to triple the network size the company announced a plan to expand the network to more than 15,000 stalls by the end of 2029 which would work out to about 2500 new stalls every year for the next four years.
On the autonomous front one country I'll be watching closely is the UK as its government just said it plans to change regulations in the second half of this year to enable driverless taxis to operate in the city and we know Waymo said it hopes to be operating a robot taxi service in London as soon as September this year we also learned that Uber and Lyft are also ready to launch robot taxi services in the UK when the rules change but interestingly in this article Tesla was not mentioned so I wanted to point out that the UK does not fall under the RDW the Dutch vehicle authorities exemption process so we're waiting on that approval which we were hoping for at the end of this month but it sounds like we won't hear anything until March.
But I want to be clear even if Tesla's supervised FSD is approved by the RDW and they're granted that exemption the UK will likely follow a separate approval process on its own now that's not to say that they wouldn't be influenced by the decision of the RDW as I do think approval there would be a major positive signal but I just wanted to make it clear that the UK would likely still go through its own process and Chris from dirty Tesla finally got to take his first unsupervised robot taxi ride in Austin.
But he said this I arrived early in Austin yesterday and I was super excited to try an unsupervised robot taxi but the entire day was incredibly discouraging I waited for hours walked all over the city and could barely get a robot taxi to pick me up at all and the few robot taxis I actually did get throughout the entire day every single one had a supervisor in them. But the following day he got one and he took multiple rides but have a listen to what he said about the pricing Tesla has since updated the prices and they are seriously impressive my shortest and lowest cost robot taxi ride of this visit was $1.49 which is just insanely cheap this was about a half mile five minute ride.
The most expensive and longest drive I had actually the one you're watching right now in this unsupervised robot taxi was $7.40 it was over 32 minutes long and took me 6.4 miles I compared the costs of the robot taxi to Weimo while I was there and from what I could see the Weimo was more than four times more expensive than the Tesla robot taxi one robot taxi trip I took back to my hotel cost $4.57 and when I opened up the Uber app and finally did get a Weimo offered to me it was over $21 for the exact same trip so look I know there's frustration out there about the scaling and I think it will be another few months before things get exciting but when it happens everyone else is doomed no one is going to be able to compete with Tesla's pricing not even close.
So in my opinion Tesla is going to destroy Weimo and Uber's market share the second there is any sense of scale and improved availability for a robot taxi and we know Weimo can't make a profit at its current pricing and of course there is a world where the serendipity of all of this is perfect 14.3 launches sometime next month gets a month out in the wild of testing and validation then we end up with 14.3.12 or 3 whatever it may be and CyberCab enters production in April some of those vehicles slowly begin deploying on the robot taxi fleet.
Tesla then becomes comfortable scaling unsupervised with reasoning added and with this 10 times bigger parameter model and then from there it's off to the races and speaking of the CyberCab Joe Tetmire was on brighter with Herbert earlier today confirming that the unboxed manufacturing process is underway there are five parts the front rear the structural battery pack and the interior and then of course the two sides they're constructed in parallel moved by robots and then bolted and or glued together Joe confirmed that the production CyberCab's have no steering wheel and no pedals any that are seen with those controls are still just for testing after Joe's tour of the manufacturing line he did confirm that the wheels on the CyberCab are going to be different front to back.
We know the CyberCab is a tear drop shape and the back is going to be more narrow than the front but we also know that the rear wheels are bigger than the ones in the front but further the rear wheels are actually going to be made of an alloy making them lighter and then the front wheels are going to be made of steel helping to make them cheaper but of course both will be covered by the plastic arrow covers so I found that to be interesting not just the size was going to be different but the actual material of the wheel will be different but the takeaway is that everything seems to be on track for April production and if things go well we could start seeing CyberCab's deployed as Robotex's unsupervised in Austin as soon as April or May.
On the supervised front Sawyer shared this clip of FSD proactively avoiding a potential collision I want you to note how the human driver actually swirved left almost like it was trying to hit the vehicle that was in the lane but FSD saw the potential danger slowed down and got over into the right lane beautifully and how about this from Pete FSD I can confidently say in all of my years watching FSD videos I don't think I've ever seen anything like this so if you want to talk about sentient behavior FSD pulled off to the side of the road safely to let this tailgator go past it and then it safely got back on the road and continued on.
In Sweden Tesla has applied to conduct FSD supervised testing in a new city this time in John Coping Sweden a public policy rep from Tesla said I can confirm we've submitted an application but I can't say much more about it she also said Tesla is satisfied with the tests in the region so far and we learned today that Abu Dhabi mobility has overseen Tesla's supervised FSD road trials in Abu Dhabi these trials are being conducted within an organized framework designed to assess the technology's performance in real world operating conditions and to verify its operational and safety readiness they said these tests represent a qualitative step to evaluate the text performance in the real world and to collect the necessary data to verify its readiness before any future expansion and usage.
And we have the general public continually waking up to the Tesla story I don't understand how everyone isn't just freaking out like imagine if they sold a washing machine that also dried your clothes and it folded them and to put them away saving you like three hours a week not just that but it's basically perfect and never made mistakes oh but also it cost about the same as every other washing machine that's what Tesla's are full self driving is perfect I've had full self driving for four years and it was garbage for three today it's perfect and like these cars cost the same as other cars and they drive themselves I don't understand why every new car on the road is not a Tesla unless you don't value your time or because you hate the founder I know Tesla prides itself on never advertising that as a shareholder please start but world needs to know about full self driving I'll give you the answer the reason everyone isn't freaking out is because everyone hasn't yet experienced FSD in its latest form.
Ironically Teslas have full self driving in Australia now so I'm here to test it out and see if it's actually good this Tesla can completely drive itself I'm swapping I'm so over driving I've got so much trust in this thing and I've been in for one minute where a few minutes in now and I have not touched it this is the future baby this is insane just indicated and it's looking at the traffic lights it's about to go through an intersection for me oh my god I'm literally never driving again sorry Jaguar and Land Rover this car drives itself all right I'm literally walking my into that dealership right now and ordering the Model Y for you.
Tesla owners in Canada Tesla has adjusted some of the wording around its end lease purchase options there has not been an official announcement but to date lease buyouts in Canada were heavily limited but now customers are being directed to review their lease agreement for purchase eligibility and are told to contact Tesla near the end of their lease if no purchase option is listed so basically just make sure if this applies to you contact Tesla near the end of your lease to see what options are available to you.
For now in Berlin Egame at all and Tesla have agreed to set aside their dispute over that labor meeting as Egame at all said the two sides have agreed not to repeat those allegations and comments until the end of the plants works council election next Wednesday the leader of Egame at all said now just a few days before the works council election we can concentrate fully on the issues there's a lot to do marking a major milestone for installers we have the supply partners group announcing it secured a distribution agreement to supply Tesla power walls and associated accessories this arrangement is in Australia and supply partners is expecting inventory to land in warehouse in late February.
They said Tesla sets a high bar and we've worked hard to earn the opportunity to represent a brand that customers actively ask for they said power wall is already a category defining product and what's ahead makes it even more compelling Tesla stock closed the day at $408.56 down 2.12% while the NDX was down 1.29% the volume was 10% below the average but you'll notice a few months ago the volume was hovering between 90 and 100 million shares per day and now you'll see the average daily volume is down to around 59 million shares traded per day so the market seems to be in this holding period not sure what to do with Tesla stock right now.
Don't forget check out delete me linked below for anyone interested and if you haven't I would encourage you to take five or ten minutes to look into the data broker industry I hope you guys would agree I am not an alarmist but the data is staggering hope you all have a wonderful day and a huge thank you to all of my patreon supporters.