00:02:47.120And so because they believed, look, if you believe that Biden was going to be reelected or that Kamala was going to be elected or that the green, that AOC and the green mandate and everything was going to continue,
00:02:58.200then you went that way to protect your business because, you know, under federal guidelines, you had to do it.
00:03:03.340Meanwhile, the consumers were discovering that when you take that $7,500 subsidy, remember all the headlines about this, when you take that off, it points back to the hybrid vehicles being more cost effective.
00:03:17.880And you have a Honda Civic hybrid that can go 600 miles because it's a small fuel tank and a little generator keeps recharging battery.
00:03:26.640It's actually more efficient and it actually was less dollars.
00:03:30.340And so Ford has said, listen, the all electric stuff, we can't make it work on a 5,000 pound pickup.
00:03:39.760We're writing all that off, 19.5 written down.
00:03:42.620But we're going to have a big effort to put the hybrids in the middle because we know Americans like the fact that the hybrids are more economically priced
00:03:51.500and you can go 600, 700 miles on your crossover or your Honda Civic and that's where the market is.
00:03:59.320But this is really – I feel like that California owes the Ford shareholders probably half of that $10 billion because that was done at legislative gunpoint
00:04:11.600and they didn't have the electrical power infrastructure to really support.
00:04:15.880If the consumers had done that, it would have been a brownout at night.
00:05:09.380I think that this is the classic mistake people make in business, which is people thought that the consumer was buying an electric vehicle because it was electric.
00:05:18.760People are not buying a Tesla because it's electric.
00:05:20.720They're buying it because it's a better car.
00:05:21.900It just happens to be electric, and that's a huge difference, right?
00:05:24.740If you get in a Tesla, the first time people sit in there, they feel like this is a car from the future.
00:05:38.480You had all this, but it was a better experience as a car.
00:05:41.640So what Elon did was Elon, I think very smartly, if you go back and you read his master plan for Tesla, et cetera, he said, listen, if I just show up, remember like the original electric vehicles?
00:05:49.880They were kind of these small little things that kind of made you feel like maybe not as manly.
00:05:54.180You get in this little thing, pull up, somebody sitting in an F-150 jacked up next to you at the red light, right?
00:05:59.600People didn't want to ride in those things, right?
00:06:01.040It was kind of like a stupid little car, almost like a clown car, right?
00:06:04.780Well, what Elon did is he made the Tesla cool.
00:06:07.160And so he started with the Roadster, and it was kind of like a sports car, right?
00:06:32.860It's easier, you know, if I don't have to go and charge this because I don't have a charger at my house and sit there for 25 minutes for it to charge up.
00:06:39.100So Tesla being a superior car is what drove those sales.
00:06:42.880Well, what did Ford and GM and all these guys do?
00:06:44.740They basically said, we're going to take our exact same car, which is inferior to the Tesla, and we're simply going to try to rip out the gas engine and put it in an electric vehicle.
00:06:52.860Most consumers buying a Ford F-150, they don't care about an electric vehicle.
00:07:00.280Why would I want to buy a big truck that's electric if it's harder for me to go do the things I need to do?
00:07:05.780So I think that's probably the biggest thing is when you do these mandates, they're, you know, again, let's just say they have good intentions.
00:07:10.800You can question whether they do or not.
00:07:12.140But it doesn't address the actual driver of the consumer behavior.
00:07:25.560And by the way, it's also a – like I remember one time I'm talking to a friend, Tom, Jim Scott Bell.
00:07:30.940And I'm writing this fiction book, and it had such a massive mission messaging in the fiction book.
00:07:36.700He says, remember, if the message you want to put in the fiction book is more – is bigger than the entertainment aspect of the book, you won't sell.
00:07:46.760He said, if the entertainment is 95 percent and messaging is 5 percent, then you'll sell.
00:07:52.520These guys tried to do – EV is 95 percent.
00:08:13.600Just run a poll on that if you could just to see what they're saying.
00:08:17.140Brandon, what are your thoughts on this story?
00:08:19.020Yeah, I really hate waste of potential more than anything.
00:08:22.900And the amount of money that's been poured into the EV initiative, it's so sad because, like,
00:08:27.880we talk about all the time about the things that actually would benefit from government subsidies like, you know,
00:08:31.960like a homebuilders initiative or an initiative to build nuclear reactors to give us more power for the country.
00:08:37.820But we've spent, like, probably hundreds of billions of dollars over the last 10 years into trying to pressure or incentivize companies into building EVs.
00:08:45.520And, you know, I sent Rob a chart that shows the amount of material that is required to build an EV versus a gas-powered car.
00:08:53.460And, like, does this look like a good return on investment, especially when the output of energy is not higher?
00:08:58.120So I almost am forced to wonder since—
00:09:24.500Yeah, it's just, you know, it's not something that I think would be created if the market wasn't being forced to create it.
00:09:32.340That's the point, is that the government's putting a lot of pressure on companies to build it.
00:09:35.300But it's not something that would be really profitable or a good return on investment, I think, to build if they weren't getting pressure to do it.
00:09:44.080But I almost wonder, since, like, energy matches, like, the population growth, I almost wonder if the government wants to do this to, like, maybe slow population growth.
00:09:54.800Because, you know, the more energy you have in the country that's free and accessible, the faster the population grows.
00:09:59.820So it creates a lot of weird questions why they're saying that we need this to save the world, why they're saying we're running out of oil when we've established it.
00:12:14.180There's something going on as to why majority of the American car companies are not innovating at the same rate that the startup of Tesla or these Chinese car companies are doing.
00:12:23.760And so I think that if we could answer that question, that then could help change this market.
00:12:28.480And maybe you would actually have people want to go buy these, not because they're EVs, but because they're just better cars.
00:12:32.420And, by the way, it's funny you're saying that.
00:12:34.880Wall Street Journal just did a story on that a couple days ago.
00:12:37.800Can U.S. automakers compete with Chinese EVs while focused on gas guzzlers?
00:12:45.160And this goes back to Tom talking about the $2,500, $7,500 tax credit that they had in the past.
00:12:50.820Tom, where are you at with this, with what Pom said?
00:12:53.100Can U.S. automakers compete with Chinese EVs?