It’s Friday already. Today we’re talking about Tesla's official Cybertruck recall. We also discuss GM's innovative move into hydrogen fuel as a diesel alternative, as well as the high-stakes wealth race in Silicon Valley as Mark Zuckerberg surpasses Elon Musk to become the world's third-richest person.
Show Notes with links:
They can’t fix this one with an over the air update. As a follow up to our story Monday, nearly 3,900 Cybertrucks from the 2024 model year are being recalled due to a risk that the accelerator pedal may dislodge and become trapped, potentially increasing crash risks.
The defect could affect both accelerator and brake pedal torque, posing significant safety concerns, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Deliveries of the Cybertruck are now officially delayed as Tesla addresses these issues with the accelerator pedal.
"Tesla is not aware of any injuries related to this defect," assured the company in its communication with the NHTSA. Tesla plans to notify affected owners in June 2024.
It is unclear how the company plans to repair affected vehicles
GM is spearheading a new project to replace diesel engines with hydrogen fuel cells, debuting a medium-duty truck powered by hydrogen for Southern Co. in Georgia.
The Chevrolet Silverado 5500 truck will feature GM's Hydrotec fuel cells, offering over 300 miles of range, weighs almost 20k pounds, and has the ability to generate 300 kilowatts—enough to power 250 homes.
This initiative is part of the $65 million SuperTruck 3 program by the U.S. Department of Energy, aiming to explore hydrogen fuel's potential in heavy-duty vehicles and establish a microgrid for hydrogen fueling.
"This is the most exciting transformation I've been part of at GM," shared Mark Dickens, vehicle chief engineer for future fuel cell products, emphasizing the shift from concept to real-world application.
Mark Zuckerberg has overtaken Elon Musk to become the world's third-richest person, with a net worth of $175 billion.
Meta Platforms' stock has soared by 43% year-to-date, boosting Zuckerberg's wealth by $47.3 billion this year, while Tesla shares have plummeted nearly 40%, causing Musk to lose $55.2 billion.
The stark contrast in company performance has significantly shifted their financial standings, with Zuckerberg's wealth heavily tied to Meta Platforms and Musk's spread across multiple ventures.
Despite their competitive past, including a proposed but never realized cage match, their fortunes are now diverging sharply due to differing business outcomes.
All right, Friday, we made it. We made it. I mean, it's just the week, April 19. Today we're talking about Tesla's continued troubles GM going hydrogen and tech Titans duking it out, we'll call it, they never actually did. The people really weren't supposed to.
Kyle Mountsier:
The second story should just be called everybody goes Toyota.
Paul J Daly:
Oh, no, it's got more context to that. Okay. I
Kyle Mountsier:
don't know to do hydrogen. Yeah, that's like the, that's like
Paul J Daly:
the thing that everybody's saying that they're gonna come, they're gonna like, come in late. Like, oh, by the way, weave around the cornice and that little corner over there. Ya know what, we'll wait and see what happens.
Kyle Mountsier:
We'll see what happens. It man things that we come around the corner with, you know what I'm saying? Paul, you know, I'm saying things like a soda gun. I
Paul J Daly:
was like, What's he going with this? You know? Yeah, so sorta, kinda look, I mean, we've been talking about it every day. Because it's worth talking about every day. And we're now what? 2725 25 days? 25 days? Oh, my gosh, we're under kind of Nazis. But this is what we're gonna be. We're talking.
Kyle Mountsier:
What's that? Wait, 25?
Paul J Daly:
So we're gonna be like, three weeks next? Oh, my gosh,
Kyle Mountsier:
oh, my goodness. Let us have a minute, please. Oh, Paul, and I come to this, like, I have to go. I need to go do something stop the pod. No, but we, you know, we've got a great relationship with this venue. And, and what is really great about that is like the venue adds to the entire experience, right? The people there, the way that they, you know, flex and move while we're there. And one of the things that is a part of that is like, hey, they have an opportunity to make a lot more money on these rooms. And they've given us like five more as of two days ago. So like, if you're getting your ticket and you're getting your rooms, you can still kind of squeak in under under the bell. We actually had someone yesterday on a podcast be like, I've never, I've never been able to do that. How did you guys pull that off? And they're basically
Paul J Daly:
asking nicely.
Kyle Mountsier:
So that's like, that's all part of the experience, you know, is like, does the venue participate in the experience of ASOTU CON and that's, that was important to us. We like when we went there a year and a half ago, we were paying attention to how the front desk, how the people in the back how people smiled at you. So it's just like one of those little things that that we like to pay attention to? Sure. So
Paul J Daly:
I want to thank our CO presenting sponsors, Google Groups, and Reynolds and Reynolds for helping us make this possible. They've been just such such great partners to put on ASOTU CON believing in the more than cars mentality, and I'm excited to have them there and participating. Greg Yulan, the CMO is actually going to be one of the judges on pitch tank. So looking forward to we're gonna have Kyle, Steve Greenfield, Chase Frazier, is he going to be judge? Yes. Oh, my gosh, from FM capital. Because all these are lists, it comes so hard. Yeah, it's great. Look, if you've ever wanted to see people talk about their product in three minutes, and I know that's every dealer out there. Right. I don't want to hear you talking about 20 minutes talking about in three minutes. And I figured out if I want to hear the 20 Minute part, you get to do that at a soda con, we're going to line them up. So you can hear a lot of pitches short period of time. Here experts ask questions that you probably had or maybe you'll realize you should have had that question. And then make some decisions. Have some conversations, go home, make your dealership better. I mean, what's and being a hotel full of all your friends, your best friends? Come on. I mean, this this hotel is like 240 rooms, and now we're going to occupy like 210 of them. I think we're close.
Kyle Mountsier:
I think it's 220 now Oh, yeah. It's gonna be nuts. Pretty
Paul J Daly:
much. All that's left now are the top two penthouse floors in this casino hotel, you know, and they got casino things. I don't know, maybe maybe we'll get bumped to the top.
Kyle Mountsier:
I mean,
Paul J Daly:
we'll get al on this. It's gonna do it is somewhat fun. All right, so here you go. They can't fix this one with an overhead of an over the air update. As a follow up story to our story on Monday about Tesla's unintel. It tended acceleration issues, nearly 3900 Cyber trucks from the 2024 model year which is pretty much all of them are being recalled due to a risk that the accelerate accelerator pedal pedal or the cover on it might dislodge and actually stick the accelerator down, which sounds like the problem but essentially causing crash risks. The recalls for all cyber trucks that had been produced pretty much the defect effects. They say the accelerator and the brake pedal, we didn't see anything about the brake pedal torque yesterday, but National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration is now involved and delivery the cyber trucks are now officially delayed. You know, Tesla is not Yeah, this was not aware of any injuries that has happened but it's unclear how they're going to repair the affected via Yeah, cuz
Kyle Mountsier:
Where are you going to repair those in the five shops you have per city? Right? This is like, uh, you know, the fun. The interesting thing is, is I don't remember actually Tesla having like an in person recall at this point. Everything has been like, oh, and guess what, we fixed it over the air. You know, their, their r&d and their, their, their product go live is typically super tight, which is why they don't have those issues. They have a lot more software issues, but not not a lot of physical issues. So this is kind of an interesting one. I'm really interested to just watch it play out. See how even Elon responds to all of this via Twitter. I haven't seen anything yet. Maybe I just missed it. And see how the public kind of reacts to, hey, we thought this thing was like, God's gift to or Elon is gift to trucks, you know? So to Mars rovers. I just looked really quick. I didn't see any other recalls. But everything's kind of buried under the news about cybertruck Recall. Right? So
Paul J Daly:
we'll figure that out. We'll figure that speaking of figuring things out. So I got a follow up comment from Lee from reaching out. I know we had to phone a friend, but DM friend in the comments, John Foley have recharged check them out, says they've had a few and he is an absolute Tesla expert. If you want to use EBS expert,
Kyle Mountsier:
he's gonna be ASOTU CON Of course,
Paul J Daly:
he thinks he's the people he came up with the idea for recharged out of soda con man years ago. Amazing do is every time I know it makes me so happy. Or if you didn't come up with the idea he was at least like I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do it. And we gave we gave him we gave him some like, Hey, you should go do big, audacious, borderline stupid things to build a company.
Kyle Mountsier:
Borderline stupid thing.
Paul J Daly:
I mean, that's kind of every company, right? This is this doesn't really add up if I'm about to, you know, embark on the risk I'm about to embark on. GM is spearheading a new project to replace diesel engines with hydrogen fuel cells, debuting a medium duty truck powered by hydrogen for southern coat in Georgia. So southern coast power company, right? Yeah. The Chevy Silverado 5500. It's going to feature GMs, high high Hydrotech fuel cells offering 300 miles of range, it weighs almost 20,000 pounds, which is 10 tons. If you're doing the math, and has the ability to generate this is cool. At first I looked at the truck, I was like this truck looks really kind of like, dumb, right. But then I realized there's a full power plant in the middle of it. So it's able to generate 300 kilowatts of energy from this power plant on the truck, which is actually enough to power 250 homes. Like that's 250 homes. So it's like literally like a rolling power station. The initiative is part of a $65 million super truck free program by the US Department of Energy looking to explore hydrogen fuels potential. And here's a quote from Mark Dickins, vehicle chief engineer for fuel cell products. He says this is the most exciting transformation I've been a part of at GM, hey, well, I generate power,
Kyle Mountsier:
like this is this is something that everybody's trying to figure out is what the actual next level of fuel, you know, and efficiency is like, is it all BV? Or is there an opportunity for hydrogen? We see. I mean, we've we've chronicled this over the past two years, multiple times where you get commercial grade tech first, right? That's a little bit quicker to market even things like autonomy at a commercial grade, and then it gets pushed down into you know, residential and consumer product. So kudos for GM did to for dropping this kind of it was out of left field from my perspective,
Paul J Daly:
I know and they did say one of the things that this if you know if all goes well as this would be the reason that a micro grid of hydrogen fuel refueling stations would be built. And so that also makes sense start building the infrastructure to move the hydrogen around, which is a great step in the direction of actually being able to get hydrogen at like a consumer pump. I did see an article yesterday I think it was the I think it was the F 150 Lightning it was the new Silverado is one of the trucks said it can power your house for two weeks. I think that's the lightning, right? It's the lightning I'm pretty sure I'll tell you what, it can't power my house for two weeks because I got four kids, four kids and boy, even everything. Yeah, right. Speaking of those little suckers
Kyle Mountsier:
big suckers now, and they're coming out punches Mark Zuckerberg has overtaken Elon Musk to be the world's skip this third richest person. Remember those days when Elon Musk was the richest person take a little dip with a net worth of$175 billion meta platform stock has soared year to date 43% boosting Zuckerberg his wealth by a little over 47 billion this year. While conversely Tesla shares have plummeted nearly 40% causing Musk to lose $55 billion literally
Paul J Daly:
if you look at the chart it's like a mirror image it is
Kyle Mountsier:
crossfade reference thing you know obviously Zuckerberg Musk all of their a ton of their net worth is tied to their platforms performance the ability for the stock to stay strong and you know all of this paired with like Elon Musk and the board of Tesla trying to rewrite his compensation package after it was said hey you can't do that you know the the fun the fun part of this is I'm still waiting for this cage match that was proposed but it never actually happened because Elon saw a picture of a mark with his shirt off at the gym and decided otherwise but yeah kind of why it kind of kind of wild to see someone just because of stock price go from like one to three in a matter of a couple years. Well
Paul J Daly:
I think I think Zuckerberg all of his wealth is or most of its tied up in meta, Ilan he's like spread out across a number of things like Musk is very closely tied to metta. I wonder what these guys talk about. I think number one is Jeff Bezos number two is some some other guy didn't recognize a Saudi guy, right? Yeah. So no, a lot. The world's richest man is no longer a car guy. The world's third Oh, I
Kyle Mountsier:
mean, unless you're talking about selling cars on Amazon.
Paul J Daly:
He is not a car guy. Absolutely. I will never refer to Jeff Bezos as a car guy. It's just it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. Hey look, we know you have a Friday to get through. You have a weekend coming up. You have cars to sell you have people to serve. You have a soda con tickets to buy. Just go check out the speakers at ASOTU con.com.