Fascinating conversation! Knowing that TELO has industry pioneers as advisors gives me even more confidence that I’ll get to actually own one of their game-changing trucks in the years to come. Keep the episodes coming team, great stuff!
I feel so fortunate to listen to this. I believe the word EVERYONE will use to describe Marc's conversation with you is FASCINATING. I'm sure this vid is going to slowly be discovered and ignite into a viral hit. He could have spoken for hours and I would've hung on his every word. I only wish that someday Martin would have a similar video posted. This content is TH-cam at it's BEST, Thank You for posting it.
I've heard so many stories about the genesis of Tesla. It's nice to actually hear it straight from the source. And of course, very anxious and happy to hear more about Telo. Can't wait for you to make it to production and see one in my driveway. All the best. 🤙🏼🤙🏼🤙🏼
This is a fabulous, educational sharing of historical experiences that gives insight into current and future developments. THANK YOU for sharing this with the World!
@jamesengland7461 At 88” over its “below the beltline” cosmetic wheel pants Aptera is the antithesis of a “metro EV”. It’s an answer to a question no one asked. I had a CRX Si, and an SVT Focus. And of course a GTI is a hot hatch. An Aptera is an insult to “hot hatch”. Likely THE worst metro proposal ever. If you want to simulate one, go get a Polaris Slingshot and put a 5” wheel spacer behind each front wheel. Go drive it through Midtown. Or Philly, or Key West. A DOA proposal.
@@bobhellman8676it may not be a good city EV but Aptera hits a lot of key points for a certain group of people. I'm one of the ~50k reservation holders and look forward to solar charging and 10 mi/kWh efficiency. Telo is similar in that it's focusing on another niche market segment. I hope they both make it!
@AverageJoe928 I cannot fathom how Aptera has gone 2 rounds over 20 years and has never been held to demonstrating their claims. You, like 10’s of thousands of others, have that 10 wh/mile expectation seared into your soul. But one would think, just once, they would have had a mule openly demonstrate 11.07 or whatever @ 65 mph in a valid test. Or lay out those panels @ high noon and confirm, yup, 731 watts. They’ve said a lot, they’ve taken a boatload of crowdfunded cash, but have pushed out actual test so far it’s not clear what or if you’ll actually ever get/see anything like “their promise”. November ‘23, when they were courting those last 500 Accelerator slots, Anthony promised “PI’s completed in the first few months of next year”, and “crash data by mid-next year”. All while zero parts showed up in ‘23 to build those PI’s! They sat on their ass in ‘23 waiting on the BinC from CPC like that was the last piece to the puzzle. About as dumb as proclaiming the arrival of the Red Viking AGM’s signaled imminent production. About as accurate as their Lord and Master Munro predicting “Wheels on the ground by September” 18 months ago. On their USCG data. You can’t have a $30K BOM and claim you’ll be viable making that $32K LE vehicle on your website. I hope people go to CES to see one before they slip into their unsustainable abyss. You realize people like Aptera and Elio make it harder for people like Telo, right? If Aptera drives the PI back from CES and has 75 miles range still in it I’ll take back what I’ve said about their lack of demonstration. Eyes wide open. Show us.
Not surprised that Marc wants to skip over the details of Musk's early contribution. Tarpenning and Eberhard had an exit for their prior company of well over $100 million, and they put in a couple hundred thousand, all other investors besides Musk put in $100,000, and Musk put in $6.9 million, that was the funding as of Round A. No one ever asks why the two of them, who had a lot of money, did not want to put much of their own money into Tesla. Also, the business plan from what I understand was really bad and the only part actually used was to make EVs and contract out what they had to. As for barriers...yeah, there is a huge one, and it is called Tesla. Tesla sets the market price and they have enormous scale of production, technology of production, and vertical integration cost advantages. Yes, when Tesla was starting up and the only EV game in the world they could raise prices from $75,000 to $100,000 without hurting demand. Rivian and Lucid are losing money at a fantastic rate because they do not have the same luxury. Sure, it is much easier to get the parts one needs from suppliers than in 2008, but you still need some kind of idea why you will be able to ask MORE for your EVs than Tesla does for the same size vehicle, because you are not going to be able to have a positive gross margin otherwise. Look at this innovative design and packaging probably not going to work too much, people will still want to pay about the same for the same size EV with about the same range and so on. You WILL lose lots of money to start, so you better have a huge pile somewhere too. It was incredibly easy to know that Fisker was going under because they never had anywhere near enough cash to really start production, and they did not have real prospects of sustainably raising more capital either, due to Henriks prior effort. I admire your courage and efforts, but I think the window of opportunity to start a new EV company outside of China that succeeds long term passed in around 2012. Robo taxis are going to shrink the total market, FSD is the killer app of EVs, and Tesla just has too many cost advantages. Yes, great, your truck is good for European cities...Europeans bicycle a lot more and electrified cargo bikes are increasingly popular, and if I do not need a truck daily I can just get a Cybertruck robo taxi soon enough. Others will go for the Rivian R2 and so on, if Rivian survives long enough, which seems decently likely at this point. Not here to bash your dreams, I just think the TAM for what you are offering is not huge, the costs of reaching production and remaining in production are very high, and likelihood of ever making back the money burned is small.
I think you over estimate how much FSD will be used and that robotaxis will be allowed to operate as Waymo isn't available everywhere and they have been doing it way longer than Tesla.
@tribalypredisposed The essence of the Telo effort is to use as many “shelf parts” as possible in the creation of a vehicle that’s essentially “densely packed utility in simplest form”. For those of us who appreciate what certain vehicles do (I have a Wrangler JLU and an F150 SuperCrew) Telo’s hitting a unique sweet spot in a Swiss Army knife way, in my opinion. As opposed to a Cybertruck, which is an overgrown waste of stainless. The only people I see doing well with these locally are the wrap shops applying matte finish PPF to off the hand prints and wavy sheetmetal. So Telo is not going to go head to head with Tesla. They have an opportunity to build something for what it actually does. This is not a world domination thing, it’s a smart niche thing. Hopefully, a return to simplicity and function, and they appear to be on track. Their small business approach is much appreciated by me anyway. I have a shop in CT that has virtually the identical equipment Telo has and we’ve shipped 100’s of millions of dollars worth of product of our own design with always less than a dozen people (plus our kick ass vendors). This can work!
@@PandaKnight52 Waymo is using LiDAR, so they have to map out every bit of the area their taxis are geofenced into, and they cannot operate in snow conditions, and they need a local support location with remote drivers and emergency in person drivers, and each taxi is estimated to cost them around $200,000 as they buy an EV and then install all the 27 sensors and the computer. All of the above is why you can find probably a thousand or more videos on TH-cam discussing how Waymo’s technology is “not scalable.” Which is why Waymo operates in just portions of seven cities. Tesla, on the other hand, uses only cameras, which they include in every car they manufacture, and the computer every car needs for FSD is included too. No mapping is needed, it can drive when it is snowing or the road is covered in snow, and people buy the cars so Tesla makes a profit off putting new robo taxis on the road. Not only is the Tesla solution scalable, when they are ready it will just take a software update and there will be more than two million Teslas on the road capable of providing robo taxi service if their owners decide to. Waymo tells us nothing about what will happen with Tesla.
@@bobhellman8676 Never said Telo would go head to head with Tesla, but Tesla sells half the EVs sold in America, so they set the market price, essentially the perceived value of all EVs is determined by the prices of Teslas. If you think you can sell a Telo for $10,000 more than a Model 3 costs, then I agree, but not many. And using a bunch of off the shelf parts means higher costs, less optimized production, higher vehicle weight, etc. I doubt Telo will be able to sell for less than $10,000 more than a Model 3 and have positive gross margins. So many people look at the Tesla story and think, see, new EV startups can succeed! But Tesla had no competition, a great CEO with deep pockets and an insane appetite for risk, and still very nearly died three times. It is easier to get parts now, sure, but it is harder to get capital, harder to get buyers to choose you over all the other EVs, harder to make EVs at a competitive price. Ford and GM are losing tens of thousands per EV sold, so are Lucid and Rivian, Telo will be able to sell at a profit because?
In simple terms a micro truck or Kei like truck even with the added benefit of having the modular payload really needs to be priced like one and not upwards of 45K.
Why not instead of a mini Cooper truck focus on making the ultimate utility, low cost, Ryobi drill of a kei truck (with side collapsing/expandable truck bed and removable battery bays which can be used for other purposes) Additionally, If you lower the max speed to 45 or 35 to only use on local roads you can greatly increase efficiency of the battery and reduce weight and complexity. Then sell the truck at Lowes or Home Depot. Don't even bother trying to create your own dealership network. I love the concept but a truck marketed to people who like mini coopers is going to fail.
Fascinating conversation! Knowing that TELO has industry pioneers as advisors gives me even more confidence that I’ll get to actually own one of their game-changing trucks in the years to come.
Keep the episodes coming team, great stuff!
I feel so fortunate to listen to this. I believe the word EVERYONE will use to describe Marc's conversation with you is FASCINATING. I'm sure this vid is going to slowly be discovered and ignite into a viral hit. He could have spoken for hours and I would've hung on his every word. I only wish that someday Martin would have a similar video posted. This content is TH-cam at it's BEST, Thank You for posting it.
That was phenomenal!
Great conversation! Crossing my fingers for you guys. Happy new years to the Telo team
I've heard so many stories about the genesis of Tesla. It's nice to actually hear it straight from the source. And of course, very anxious and happy to hear more about Telo. Can't wait for you to make it to production and see one in my driveway. All the best. 🤙🏼🤙🏼🤙🏼
I love the music choice! Great interview, thank you.
Nice to see the OGs being recognized. Ahem Tesla.
This is a fabulous, educational sharing of historical experiences that gives insight into current and future developments.
THANK YOU for sharing this with the World!
Wow, great talk
I want you to make it but I wish you made a hot hatch! A true City EV! 5 miles per kw!
Aptera!
@jamesengland7461 At 88” over its “below the beltline” cosmetic wheel pants Aptera is the antithesis of a “metro EV”.
It’s an answer to a question no one asked.
I had a CRX Si, and an SVT Focus. And of course a GTI is a hot hatch.
An Aptera is an insult to “hot hatch”. Likely THE worst metro proposal ever.
If you want to simulate one, go get a Polaris Slingshot and put a 5” wheel spacer behind each front wheel. Go drive it through Midtown. Or Philly, or Key West.
A DOA proposal.
@@bobhellman8676it may not be a good city EV but Aptera hits a lot of key points for a certain group of people. I'm one of the ~50k reservation holders and look forward to solar charging and 10 mi/kWh efficiency.
Telo is similar in that it's focusing on another niche market segment. I hope they both make it!
@AverageJoe928 I cannot fathom how Aptera has gone 2 rounds over 20 years and has never been held to demonstrating their claims. You, like 10’s of thousands of others, have that 10 wh/mile expectation seared into your soul. But one would think, just once, they would have had a mule openly demonstrate 11.07 or whatever @ 65 mph in a valid test. Or lay out those panels @ high noon and confirm, yup, 731 watts.
They’ve said a lot, they’ve taken a boatload of crowdfunded cash, but have pushed out actual test so far it’s not clear what or if you’ll actually ever get/see anything like “their promise”.
November ‘23, when they were courting those last 500 Accelerator slots, Anthony promised “PI’s completed in the first few months of next year”, and “crash data by mid-next year”. All while zero parts showed up in ‘23 to build those PI’s! They sat on their ass in ‘23 waiting on the BinC from CPC like that was the last piece to the puzzle.
About as dumb as proclaiming the arrival of the Red Viking AGM’s signaled imminent production. About as accurate as their Lord and Master Munro predicting “Wheels on the ground by September” 18 months ago.
On their USCG data. You can’t have a $30K BOM and claim you’ll be viable making that $32K LE vehicle on your website.
I hope people go to CES to see one before they slip into their unsustainable abyss.
You realize people like Aptera and Elio make it harder for people like Telo, right?
If Aptera drives the PI back from CES and has 75 miles range still in it I’ll take back what I’ve said about their lack of demonstration. Eyes wide open.
Show us.
@AverageJoe928 Aptera needs to drive the PI back from CES and have 75 miles of range left over, like it’s supposed to be capable of.
Show us!
Not surprised that Marc wants to skip over the details of Musk's early contribution. Tarpenning and Eberhard had an exit for their prior company of well over $100 million, and they put in a couple hundred thousand, all other investors besides Musk put in $100,000, and Musk put in $6.9 million, that was the funding as of Round A. No one ever asks why the two of them, who had a lot of money, did not want to put much of their own money into Tesla. Also, the business plan from what I understand was really bad and the only part actually used was to make EVs and contract out what they had to.
As for barriers...yeah, there is a huge one, and it is called Tesla. Tesla sets the market price and they have enormous scale of production, technology of production, and vertical integration cost advantages. Yes, when Tesla was starting up and the only EV game in the world they could raise prices from $75,000 to $100,000 without hurting demand. Rivian and Lucid are losing money at a fantastic rate because they do not have the same luxury. Sure, it is much easier to get the parts one needs from suppliers than in 2008, but you still need some kind of idea why you will be able to ask MORE for your EVs than Tesla does for the same size vehicle, because you are not going to be able to have a positive gross margin otherwise. Look at this innovative design and packaging probably not going to work too much, people will still want to pay about the same for the same size EV with about the same range and so on. You WILL lose lots of money to start, so you better have a huge pile somewhere too. It was incredibly easy to know that Fisker was going under because they never had anywhere near enough cash to really start production, and they did not have real prospects of sustainably raising more capital either, due to Henriks prior effort.
I admire your courage and efforts, but I think the window of opportunity to start a new EV company outside of China that succeeds long term passed in around 2012. Robo taxis are going to shrink the total market, FSD is the killer app of EVs, and Tesla just has too many cost advantages. Yes, great, your truck is good for European cities...Europeans bicycle a lot more and electrified cargo bikes are increasingly popular, and if I do not need a truck daily I can just get a Cybertruck robo taxi soon enough. Others will go for the Rivian R2 and so on, if Rivian survives long enough, which seems decently likely at this point. Not here to bash your dreams, I just think the TAM for what you are offering is not huge, the costs of reaching production and remaining in production are very high, and likelihood of ever making back the money burned is small.
I think you over estimate how much FSD will be used and that robotaxis will be allowed to operate as Waymo isn't available everywhere and they have been doing it way longer than Tesla.
@tribalypredisposed
The essence of the Telo effort is to use as many “shelf parts” as possible in the creation of a vehicle that’s essentially “densely packed utility in simplest form”.
For those of us who appreciate what certain vehicles do (I have a Wrangler JLU and an F150 SuperCrew) Telo’s hitting a unique sweet spot in a Swiss Army knife way, in my opinion.
As opposed to a Cybertruck, which is an overgrown waste of stainless. The only people I see doing well with these locally are the wrap shops applying matte finish PPF to off the hand prints and wavy sheetmetal.
So Telo is not going to go head to head with Tesla. They have an opportunity to build something for what it actually does. This is not a world domination thing, it’s a smart niche thing.
Hopefully, a return to simplicity and function, and they appear to be on track.
Their small business approach is much appreciated by me anyway. I have a shop in CT that has virtually the identical equipment Telo has and we’ve shipped 100’s of millions of dollars worth of product of our own design with always less than a dozen people (plus our kick ass vendors).
This can work!
@@PandaKnight52 Waymo is using LiDAR, so they have to map out every bit of the area their taxis are geofenced into, and they cannot operate in snow conditions, and they need a local support location with remote drivers and emergency in person drivers, and each taxi is estimated to cost them around $200,000 as they buy an EV and then install all the 27 sensors and the computer. All of the above is why you can find probably a thousand or more videos on TH-cam discussing how Waymo’s technology is “not scalable.” Which is why Waymo operates in just portions of seven cities.
Tesla, on the other hand, uses only cameras, which they include in every car they manufacture, and the computer every car needs for FSD is included too. No mapping is needed, it can drive when it is snowing or the road is covered in snow, and people buy the cars so Tesla makes a profit off putting new robo taxis on the road. Not only is the Tesla solution scalable, when they are ready it will just take a software update and there will be more than two million Teslas on the road capable of providing robo taxi service if their owners decide to.
Waymo tells us nothing about what will happen with Tesla.
@@bobhellman8676 Never said Telo would go head to head with Tesla, but Tesla sells half the EVs sold in America, so they set the market price, essentially the perceived value of all EVs is determined by the prices of Teslas. If you think you can sell a Telo for $10,000 more than a Model 3 costs, then I agree, but not many. And using a bunch of off the shelf parts means higher costs, less optimized production, higher vehicle weight, etc. I doubt Telo will be able to sell for less than $10,000 more than a Model 3 and have positive gross margins.
So many people look at the Tesla story and think, see, new EV startups can succeed! But Tesla had no competition, a great CEO with deep pockets and an insane appetite for risk, and still very nearly died three times. It is easier to get parts now, sure, but it is harder to get capital, harder to get buyers to choose you over all the other EVs, harder to make EVs at a competitive price. Ford and GM are losing tens of thousands per EV sold, so are Lucid and Rivian, Telo will be able to sell at a profit because?
In simple terms a micro truck or Kei like truck even with the added benefit of having the modular payload really needs to be priced like one and not upwards of 45K.
Why not instead of a mini Cooper truck focus on making the ultimate utility, low cost, Ryobi drill of a kei truck (with side collapsing/expandable truck bed and removable battery bays which can be used for other purposes) Additionally, If you lower the max speed to 45 or 35 to only use on local roads you can greatly increase efficiency of the battery and reduce weight and complexity. Then sell the truck at Lowes or Home Depot. Don't even bother trying to create your own dealership network. I love the concept but a truck marketed to people who like mini coopers is going to fail.
It's not marketed like Mini; that's just a handy size reference. What you're talking about is golf carts, not streetable cars.
Sadly where I live i see both side by sides with electric and a few times golf carts...
It's the size of a Mini not for Mini Cooper fans.
Don’t change a thing! I’ve ordered one and cant wait for its fruition. Its perfect!
@@jamesengland7461 Kei size and utility would be great and priced way cheaper.