Trump's Tesla ad, cheaper Tesla model, Mercedes CLA EV, and more

**Frederic Lambert** (0:05)
And we are live for a new episode of the Electrek Podcast. I am Frederic Lambert, your host, and as usual, I'm joined by Seth Weintraub. How are you doing, Seth?

**Seth Weintraub** (0:13)
I'm good.

**Frederic Lambert** (0:15)
All right, I hope you are, because we have a big show today. We have a ton of news. This was a busy week all around. We have the Trump Tesla hat that we're going to discuss. That was quite interesting. Quite a lot of application to it. We got some results from it too, that I think could have been interesting for our listeners. We have our updates on the Tesla takedown. We have an update on the cheaper Tesla model coming up. We get a good look at the Mercedes CLA EV with all its specs, and it's a very interesting update. A big step up for Mercedes. And we get, at the lesser level, a sneak peek of the next-gen EVs from BMW. And it looks like, again, we don't have as much detail as we do for the Mercedes as we do for BMW, but it looks like it's also the Germans are stepping up big time with their EV. And a couple of other news, and then at the end, as usual, we take you guys' questions. So if you have any questions, you can put them in the comment section right now when I get to them at the end of the show. But let's start about this fascinating thing that happened this week on Tuesday. So on Monday, for context, because the context is important here, Tesla stock crashed 15%. Now it has mostly recovered this week since then, that 15%, but 15% in a single day after the stock already crashed like 40% since its all-time high just a few months ago. It looks like Elon Musk was panicking a little bit, and he reached out to his buddy Donald, and Donald said that as a show of faith for Elon and to help encourage Tesla, he's going to buy a Tesla vehicle. And then the next day, Elon brought a couple Tesla vehicles to the White House, and they held a press conference in front of the White House, and the press conference basically amounted to a commercial, an infomercial from the president about Tesla. And you even see, getting at like a good shot, you can clearly see the talking points that was handed to Trump, and it's basically like a pitch with the pricing of each model. It says all cars have sales driving, just needs to be turned on with a fee. Like it was basically like a pitch of this vehicle done by the president, which was like moonlighting as a Tesla salesman for a day. And I have mixed feeling about this because it is Donald Trump who's been pushing misinformation about electric vehicles for years, now positively talking about electric vehicles, specifically Tesla, of course. So if you put my mission glasses on, you could make an argument that this is positive for the mission. However, you also have to take into account that Elon is his biggest political donor by far. And he does that a day after the stock crashes. And then, I don't know if you heard that said, but a day later, the day after the infomercials on Wednesday, New York Time and Axios reported that Elon has told White House officials that he plans to give Trump another $100 million in political donation, a day after this. So it does like this is like commercial. Yeah, it's $100 million commercial. It's the most better than the Republic thing I've ever seen. So it is obviously sad for the US that this is happening. Like, yeah, I'm not gonna lie, but at the same time, it's not necessarily bad for EVs.
That's it. It's not bad in EVs if it works. So obviously, this is Trump talking to his fans and Trump has been, it's not the first thing that Trump is trying to sell to his fans. I mean, he's just trying to sell steak, he's trying to sell like fake universities, he's trying to sell like MAGA hats. Like, he's selling like, MAGA hats is probably his biggest success, I would assume, in terms of actual take rate. But is this thing actually working? And obviously, most people, even the MAGA people, I think would see through it in the first place that this is not like a legit endorsement of Trump liking Tesla vehicles.

**Seth Weintraub** (4:39)
I mean, he doesn't drive.

**Frederic Lambert** (4:42)
To start with, he's not allowed to drive. That's true. I mean, he's coming on 80s, so probably his best driving years are behind him to start with. But as the president of the United States, you're not allowed to drive. And even if he's not president, he probably wasn't driving himself like in New York or whatever. He had drivers around.