Tesla Shorts Time — Episode 435

Hey, it’s Patrick in Vancouver and this is Tesla Shorts Time Daily, episode four hundred thirty five. It’s April thirteenth, twenty twenty six, and we’ve got a full slate of stories that feel like they’re all pulling at different corners of the same company: one foot firmly in Europe trying to prove it belongs, the other foot back home figuring out what it wants to be when it grows up. Let’s jump in. Tesla finally cleared its first regulatory hurdle for F S D Supervised in Europe, and the country that said yes is the Netherlands. After roughly four years of quiet lobbying, data sharing, and what I can only imagine were some very patient meetings in Brussels and The Hague, regulators there have signed off. It’s a genuine milestone, but it lands with a list of caveats that tell you a lot about how Europe is choosing to walk into this technology. Compared to what we see in North America, the Dutch version arrives with tighter geofencing, more conservative speed profiles in certain zones, and an even stronger emphasis that a human must remain fully attentive. That’s not exactly a surprise given how risk-averse European safety regulators have been, but it does mean Tesla is adapting its stack rather than simply exporting the version that’s been running on California and Texas roads. From a business angle this is still important because every supervised mile driven on European pavement feeds the improvement loop. More diverse weather, narrower streets, different signage, different driver behaviour; all of it becomes training data that eventually makes the system smarter everywhere. The approval also feels like a quiet acknowledgement that Tesla has been willing to dial back the marketing language and meet regulators where they are. Instead of fighting for “unsupervised” claims right out of the gate, the company is letting supervised operation act as the on-ramp. That measured approach might frustrate some owners who want full hands-off freedom tomorrow, but it could actually smooth the path for other E U countries that have been watching closely. Germany, France, the Nordics; they all have their own safety bureaucracies that take cues from one another. A cautious green light in the Netherlands could become the template rather than the exception. One practical wrinkle that’s already causing real-world friction: the approval is limited to vehicles with H W four hardware. Owners of older H W three cars in the Netherlands have been told they’re not eligible, and at least one person has already been offered a refund after buying in anticipation of the rollout. That stings. It’s a tangible reminder that the gap between hardware generations isn’t just about performance anymore; it’s starting to affect regulatory eligibility in new markets. Tesla has a huge installed base of H W three vehicles across Europe, and how they choose to support or eventually upgrade those cars will say a lot about how the company treats its early customers as the autonomy story matures. It also quietly underscores that the performance difference between the two generations has grown large enough for regulators to draw a hard line. While Europe cautiously cracks the door open, Tesla is simultaneously closing a chapter on its home turf. The company has ended regular production of both the Model S and Model X. What’s left is a final invite-only run of two hundred fifty Signature Edition vehicles, each carrying a sticker price around one hundred sixty thousand dollars. These cars feel like a valedictory lap for the pair of flagships that essentially launched Tesla as a serious luxury brand back in the early 2010s. Think about it: the Model S was the car that convinced a lot of skeptics an electric sedan could be faster, quieter, and more advanced than anything coming out of Germany. The Model X brought the falcon-wing doors and that massive windshield that still turns heads today. They were halo products in the truest sense; expensive, ambitious, and they carried the weight of proving the entire company wasn’t just a flash in the pan. Now, after more than a decade, their time in regular production is over. The Signature Editions will likely become collector pieces, and I suspect we’ll see them pop up at auctions in ten or fifteen years the way early Porsche 911s or original Land Rovers do today. For loyal owners who’ve stuck with these cars through multiple refreshes, it creates a nice bit of exclusivity. For Tesla the move is purely strategic: it frees up engineering bandwidth, manufacturing lines, and supply-chain focus for the next generation platforms that are supposed to drive the bulk of future volume. That pivot toward volume and affordability is showing up in other concrete ways. There are consistent reports that Tesla is developing a more accessible SUV that would sit below the current Model Why. The idea has been floating around for years; Elon has talked about vehicles in the twenty-five to thirty thousand dollar range once the company can hit the necessary cost targets through manufacturing improvements. This new entry-level SUV would apparently lean heavily on the next-generation platform and the structural battery techniques Tesla has been perfecting. If they can actually deliver something in that price bracket with decent range and the build quality owners have come to expect, it changes the math on who can even consider a Tesla. Markets like parts of Europe, Southeast Asia, and even more price-sensitive pockets of North America suddenly open up. It’s the logical next step after years of pushing the technology frontier; now the company needs to broaden the customer base so the fixed costs of autonomy development can be spread across millions more vehicles. It also signals that the halo-car era we just talked about with the S and X is giving way to something more democratic. That’s a healthy evolution for any company that wants to move from niche innovator to mainstream player, though it does mean saying goodbye to some of the romance that came with those original flagship models. Of course, moving downmarket isn’t without its bumps. The Cyber-truck, Tesla’s most expensive vehicle right now, just recorded what looks like a record-low sales week in the United States. The numbers are soft enough that they’ve caught attention, but the context matters. A lot of the early adopter wave that was willing to pay the six-figure prices for the Foundation Series seems to have satisfied its curiosity. Many prospective buyers are openly saying they’re waiting for the more affordable variant that’s expected later this year; the one that’s supposed to bring the truck into more realistic daily-driver territory. This lull feels familiar if you’ve followed Tesla for any length of time. We saw the same pattern with the Model Three: strong initial reservation wave, then a noticeable pause until the Standard Range versions and price cuts brought in the next surge. The Cyber-truck’s current pricing puts it in rarefied air, and for a vehicle with its size and shape, that limits the addressable audience. Once a sub-seventy-thousand-dollar version arrives and production scales, the expectation is that demand should rebound sharply. Still, the softness is a useful reality check. It reminds everyone that even a product with as much built-in hype as the Cyber-truck eventually has to prove itself on price, practicality, and total cost of ownership. Tesla will be watching these numbers closely because the truck is supposed to be one of the higher-margin contributors in the lineup. Closer to home, some Canadian Model Why Performance owners just got an unwelcome surprise with their new cars. The refreshed Performance trim, at least in Canada, appears to be missing vehicle-to-load capability; the ability to power tools, appliances, or even an entire campsite from the car’s battery. That feature is present on other variants of the refreshed Model Why and on the Performance model in other markets, which has left owners here trading theories on forums. Is it a software lockout? A hardware difference specific to the Performance motor configuration? A regional certification quirk tied to cold-weather testing? Tesla hasn’t issued a clear statement yet, and the silence is only feeding the speculation. For people who bought the Performance expecting it to be the most capable version in every respect, this stings. In Canada especially, where cottage-country power outages are a regular summer and winter occurrence, being able to run a fridge, lights, or medical equipment from your car isn’t a gimmick; it’s practical peace of mind. The episode is a small one in the grand scheme, but it illustrates how even a company as vertically integrated as Tesla can still have regional product decisions that feel arbitrary to buyers. It’s the kind of detail that loyal customers notice and remember, and it puts pressure on Tesla’s product and regional teams to communicate better when these discrepancies appear. On a more serious note, there’s an ongoing investigation in Norway that just got considerably more complicated. A critical network communications module was stolen from a Model Why that was involved in a violent 2023 crash in Bergen. The car had accelerated dramatically off the road under circumstances that are still not fully understood. Investigators had hoped to pull telemetry and camera data that hadn’t yet been uploaded to Tesla’s servers, but the missing module severs that direct link. Without it, some of the most granular evidence is now gone or at least much harder to recover. This case stands out because it touches on several sensitive issues at once: the trustworthiness of crash data, the physical security of those logging systems, and the growing global scrutiny around advanced driver-assistance and autonomy features. It’s a reminder that no matter how sophisticated the over-the-air telemetry is, the physical hardware still has to be tamper-resistant, especially at the scene of a serious incident. For Tesla it adds another data point to the argument that they need robust, perhaps even redundant, ways to protect and retrieve that information even when law enforcement or third parties have custody of the vehicle. The situation is uncomfortable, but it’s also relatively rare. Most crashes still yield clear telemetry because the modules do their job. Still, one high-profile failure like this can erode confidence if it isn’t addressed transparently. Shifting from regulatory headaches to something more optimistic, Tesla is bringing the Semi north of the border in a more public way. The electric Class 8 truck is scheduled to appear at the Truck World show, and it follows a private event at the new Vaughan, Ontario showroom. For Canadian fleet operators this is a big deal. Long-haul routes in this country often involve serious temperature swings, highway speeds, and payload weights that test any powertrain. Seeing the Semi up close, talking to Tesla’s commercial team, and getting real data on winter performance and charging infrastructure will help fleets decide whether electric heavy-duty trucks can fit into their operations. It also signals that Tesla isn’t confining its commercial ambitions to passenger cars. The Semi has been in limited production for a while now, and every public showing like this moves it from prototype curiosity toward something fleets can actually spec. If the truck can prove itself on total cost of ownership; lower fuel, lower maintenance, and decent uptime; it could accelerate the shift toward electrification in one of the hardest parts of the transportation sector. We’re still early, but the momentum feels real. Meanwhile Wall Street is keeping its near-term expectations in check. RBC Capital recently lowered its price targets on Tesla along with Lucid and Ford, citing softening E V demand signals and preparing for upcoming earnings. The adjustment isn’t shocking given the recent delivery miss and the uncertainty around exactly when those more affordable models will hit the market in volume. It’s a classic reminder that analysts are paid to look at the next few quarters, not the ten-year technology roadmap. Tesla has faced these waves of skepticism before, and the stock has its own rhythm. Still, the caution from one of the bigger banks does reflect a broader mood: investors want to see execution on cost reduction and new product timing before they’ll fully re-engage. One story I keep coming back to this week is that missing network card in Norway. It’s easy to treat it as an isolated incident, but it touches on something fundamental about how we build trust in autonomous systems. When something goes wrong at highway speed, the public and regulators need to believe the data trail is intact and tamper-proof. Tesla’s long-term credibility on safety partly rests on proving that its vehicles are not black boxes; that the evidence is accessible and reliable. The best response is probably a combination of better physical security on those modules, clearer hand-off protocols with law enforcement, and perhaps even redundant logging paths. It’s the kind of unsexy engineering work that doesn’t make headlines until something like this happens, but it matters. Stepping back from the day-to-day news, it’s worth applying a bit of first-principles thinking to the battery chemistry debate that never seems to go away. You’ll often hear blanket statements that L F P batteries are universally cheaper and safer, but that oversimplifies things once you start looking at real-world duty cycles, especially in cold climates. Physics doesn’t care about marketing slogans. The practical question is where the trade-offs in energy density, weight, cold-weather performance, and longevity make one chemistry the clearer winner for a specific vehicle and geography. Early lithium-ion cells delivered roughly one hundred fifty watt-hours per kilogram. Modern NMC packs now routinely exceed two hundred sixty, while L F P chemistries tend to land between one hundred sixty and one hundred eighty. That gap adds up fast. On a large SUV or truck trying to deliver five hundred kilometres of real-world range in a Canadian or Nordic winter, the L F P pack ends up significantly heavier. That extra mass hurts efficiency, acceleration, handling, and yes, it can even affect how much energy you need just to move the thing. L F P also tends to suffer more at very low temperatures, which can mean bigger packs or more frequent charging stops precisely when drivers want fewer of them. Tesla has taken the pragmatic route here. They treat chemistry as one variable inside a much larger system that includes structural battery integration, active thermal management, vehicle software that can dynamically adjust charge profiles, and even the shape of the vehicle itself. That’s why you see different packs in different models and different regions rather than an all-or-nothing bet on one cell type. It feels like the mature engineering approach: let the use case and the customer’s actual needs dictate the mix instead of declaring a single winner for the entire industry. Over time, the chemistry that delivers the best balance of cost, range, longevity, safety, and cold-weather behaviour for each specific duty cycle is the one that will win in that segment. Tesla’s willingness to run multiple chemistries in parallel might end up being one of their quiet advantages. Before we wrap up, it’ll be interesting to watch how European regulators react to the first batches of real-world data coming out of those supervised Dutch miles. Early feedback there could either accelerate approvals in neighbouring countries or add a few more hurdles. Either way, the Netherlands just became a meaningful test bed. That’s the latest from Tesla land. T S L A closed today at three hundred fifty one dollars and thirty nine cents, up eleven cents, basically flat. If you’re enjoying the show, a quick rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify makes a real difference in helping new listeners discover us. You can also find us on X at tesla shorts time. I’m Patrick in Vancouver. Thanks for listening, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow. (,478) This podcast is curated by Patrick but generated using AI voice synthesis of my voice using ElevenLabs. The primary reason to do this is I unfortunately don't have the time to be consistent with generating all the content and wanted to focus on creating consistent and regular episodes for all the themes that I enjoy and I hope others do as well.