Tesla Roadster is happening?, Kia EV3 in US, gas pumps replaced, and more

**Seth Weintraub** (0:04)
We are live.

**Frederic Lambert** (0:06)
Good new episode of the Electrek Podcast.
Frederic Lambert, your host. And this is Joel, I'm joined by Seth Weintraub. How are you doing, Seth?

**Seth Weintraub** (0:14)
I'm good.

**Frederic Lambert** (0:15)
All right. I'm glad you're doing good. Before we jump in, let me say a quick thank you to today's episode sponsor, GM. GM EV charging made easy with Energy Pass and Plug and Charge. Learn more at gminergy.gm.com/energypass.
We're going to have a little bit more to say about them later on the show. GM is doing a lot of move to make charging a little bit more seamless.
One of the last few steps to make the full transition to electric vehicles. All right. What are we going to talk about today? Talk about the Roadster set.
Believe it or not, I think the Roadster demo is really happening. But we're going to talk about why this is less exciting than it sounds. We're going to talk about Tesla's fight. We almost forgot about that that existed. The three years going union fight between Tesla and Sweden's IF Metal Union has been terminated. We're going to talk a bit about Ford's effort to manufacture the now called Phantom EV and its new Universal EV platform. The Kia EV3 pricing and range has been announced for the US market. One of the rare smaller EVs from foreign automakers is actually making it to the US market. I know we're often teasing you guys about what's happening in Europe and in Asia, and that you cannot get it in the US, but this is one that you can get in the US. I'm going to talk about it a little bit. I'm going to talk about the R1 2027 from Rivian. That's the R1S and R1T, a few changes for those. Lucid launching the new top-of-the-line Gravity. It's not quite the Sapphire, but it's something, that's for sure. Jaguar unveiled its new interior, its new controversial EV relaunch. We have the Type 1, it's called. It's the interior now, that's been revealed after the exterior was already revealed. Then we're going to end on the good news. We're going to talk about oil giants ripping off gas pump out of their gas stations to install EV chargers. Isn't that the end game that we've been working towards?
How long we've been doing Electrek? I'm going to say like 12 years, 15 years maybe?

**Seth Weintraub** (2:44)
All this time.

**Frederic Lambert** (2:45)
Yeah. All right. Let's start with the Roadster. Two things that happened this week in the Roadster earlier this week, Franz Ben Halson, the chief designer at Tesla was on Jay Leno. Unrelated to Tesla stuff actually, he was showing off his Pontiac Saltis with a V8. To be honest, I skipped through the whole episode because I don't care about V8 engines. Sorry. I think it was a V8 and inside is a Saltis. For those who don't know, back when he was working at GM or Saturn really, yeah, Saturn was under GM, right? Back in the day? Yeah. I'm not wrong with that. Franz is the one that designed the Saltis. Obviously, Saltis is a Roadster.
Roadster is coming up or should be. Gilenot ends the show by asking him, this is look, you're pretty good at designing a Roadster. Let's say I'm looking forward to the Tesla Roadster. He said very soon, which obviously Gilenot laughed at because it's been very soon for a decade at this point. But now, so that was nothing. But the information and the information, the website, the publication has been leading the coverage when it comes to the Roadster. They had a couple of reports over the last few months and they've been claiming that a demo is planned for August for the last few months now. They came out with a new report this morning, or yesterday, last night. Anyway, I got to check it out this morning, where they released a lot more details about it.
The information is a pretty good publication, pretty good track record of accuracy across the board. And in this case, they have a lot of smaller details. So they said the demonstration, so specifically about the demonstration, is planned for again this month. So it couldn't be any time now in the next few weeks. Still, August is the goal. The site is the SpaceX Rocket Test Site in McGregor, Texas, according to three people.
And they released a few more details about... So we expect this to be somewhat different from the original Roadster in 2017 We hope so at this point, because again, it's been a decade. If they just unveil the same car again, it's nothing too exciting. Yvonne has been talking about adding cold air trusters to the vehicle ever since he unveiled it, really.