The Future of Electric Vehicles: My Thoughts on Sandy Munro

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link down below hey everyone meet kevin

here last week i had the most incredible

opportunity to speak directly with sandy

monroe from monroe and associates

sandy monroe is an expert engineer on

costing vehicles and consulting for me

vehicle manufacturing and especially

since i personally and many of us who

watch this channel

have a lot of money invested into the

electric vehicle space i wanted to kind

of

look back at some of the notes that i

took from the interview with sandy

monroe

keep in mind when i do interviews i take

notes not only

to reference them in the future but i

also take notes because often times

something that somebody says

is something that i want to ask a

follow-up question on and so you'll

regularly see me in that interview

refer back and say hey but you just said

this how does that relate to this

and that in my opinion is really

important when interviewing

okay so i've got my notes up and i'm

gonna go through

some of the really neat things that i

learned uh

not too terribly much from on lucid from

sandy monroe he hasn't done a breakdown

on those vehicles yet

and i respect him for not touching on

something he hasn't gone deep on yet so

i think that that is a very respectable

but i want to give lucid a shout out

here because you might be wondering

what i do think is very cool about what

sandy monroe says is he is almost

confident

that tesla is 10 years ahead

on self-driving technology this is

something

i i mean i don't know if i can put a

number on how far ahead tesla is

but as a tesla owner and having had a

lot of issues with my tesla in 2017

and seeing how the software has

graduated i can tell you

it's a climb it is a path like it is a

struggle to get full self-driving moving

or even the self-driving that we have

now where you got to fully pay attention

and

the car can't do everything yet with the

exception of the beta systems which are

in beta

i don't have the beta yet but i've seen

videos of it it's amazing

uh i i would venture to say tesla is at

least three years ahead of the

competition

i don't know about 10 but hey sandy's

the expert in this so this is no

shade on sandy this is just me agreeing

that i definitely think tesla

is far ahead of the competition and this

is actually one of the concerns that i

have for lucid

lucid says that they're going to be

level 3 autonomous

ready but i don't know which platform

they're going to use who are they going

to partner with to do this who's going

to provide

their autonomous chips who's going to

provide you know are they using lidar

sensors if so who's providing them

i'd like to know those details and i

don't have those details yet

but i do agree tesla is far ahead with

the autonomous and folks

one of the things i've always said on

this channel is the value of an ev

manufacturer is not the fact that they

can slap batteries on the car

it's the fact that they can slap

batteries on a car and have autonomous

driving

that is the future whether we look

towards robo taxis or what

the future is self-driving vehicles and

a company that does that well is a

company i want to invest in

this is one of the reasons i'm also

investing in neo though it's a smaller

portion of my portfolio i do invest in

neo as well

and as much as sandy monroe does not

like the legacy automakers which we'll

talk about in a moment

i have to say gm out of all of them and

the

chevy well that's not chevy the cruise

department which is an entire company

that was actually bought by gm

that is now under the gm umbrella that

company

solely works on autonomous driving tech

they've got like 30 000 employees now

which i think they've like 15x their

employee account

and that company got an investment from

microsoft and that cruise company within

gm has like a 30 billion

valuation which is almost half of gm's

total valuation

that company inside gm has a lot of

promise to me like i wouldn't be shocked

in the future if cruz is more valuable

than the parent company gm we'll see pay

attention to gm though because of that

so uh love love the argument on the

autonomous driving system and i think we

you know we didn't talk about it too

terribly much but i will say

it is the most valuable part of an ev

manufacturer so i'm excited about that

and i really want to highlight that now

let's talk about the uh the discussion

about manufacturing

so i brought up the lego example because

in sandy monroe's interview with elon

musk

elon musk talked about how elon's able

to reduce

30 percent of the size of his factory

facilities

by having uh castings that basically

automatically put together somewhere

around 170 parts into one part so saving

169 parts

something that i didn't think about and

that i really respected

getting this insight from sandy monroe

is he makes a really good point

that when you have metal and you have a

bunch of different metal pieces

you have to bolt those pieces together

bolts need

washers in between them you have to in

certain places

weld those pieces together and welds can

break you know

sometimes ships sink because the welds

break

and there are rivets and places and i'm

not a manufacturing expert here

but based on what sandy's saying by

suggesting look we get rid of

all of those potential quality issues by

turning it into one piece

that is huge for a manufacturer and

nobody else is doing this

and that's a reason sandy monroe thinks

that tesla's five years ahead of

everybody else

he loves what's tesla's doing if

anything sandy is looking at what

tesla's doing

and he's trying to teach other companies

how to do the

same thing and because that's what he

does he's an automotive manufacturing

advisor

and uh an air aerospace engineering manu

advisor as well and when i followed up

on this and i asked well who's going to

catch up

he said dude you can't you can't catch

up to tesla

you're always going to be number two

this was another big takeaway here

it's that look tesla might be years

ahead of others

but the thing is they keep improving on

the stuff they have now

while other people are playing catch-up

and this is something that i think

is really really powerful to hear as a

tesla investor

now i'm always cautious and skeptical

because i don't want to be the investor

that's like blind faith like oh yeah i

only want to hear the positive about

tesla obviously i want to hear positive

things about tesla

i don't like that sandy monroe said he

doesn't invest in tesla stock anymore

i don't know if that's uh you know

because of contractual obligations or

because of some personal beliefs

he has i have no idea i couldn't get

anything other than

positive out of him so in my opinion i i

did feel a little bit of

potentially cognitive dissonance uh here

where you kind of have two

competing uh beliefs so that was a

little confusing to me

uh i didn't really understand that uh

but either way

it it sounds like everything sandy

monroe is mentioning is absolutely

brilliant uh regarding a tesla and i

love that

but i did also kind of slam tesla and

this is where i like to bring up

follow-ups and i said well what about

the quality control you know why are we

having so many issues

at tesla and i've previously theorized

on this channel

that the reason tesla hasn't had the

perfect quality control

is because they're trying to get to mass

markets so fast

they're basically trying to say look 90

is still an a

let's go we'll fix the problems in time

but let's go we don't have 15 years to

create something perfect

we got a go go go sell sell sell create

something that's good enough

for the mass market and then we'll

improve over time sandy monroe

kind of agreed with this analogy now

while he didn't know what my analogy was

when i asked the question sandy monroe

stated well

that's just elon being cheap and in

other words

they didn't take the time to hire the

correct advisors

to make sure that tesla was doing all

the right things at all the right levels

of the process

this is really interesting because

obviously sandy monroe is an advisor

so a little bit it's a pitch for people

like sandy monroe because it's like hey

you need smart people coming into the

factory line and going yo

dude no stop doing the welds like this

do them like this

and this is true i agree with sandy that

people like sandy are extremely critical

in the manufacturing process

because if you perfect the manufacturing

process up front

then when you copy and paste it you're

copying and pasting quality

rather than imperfection and tesla has

had a reputation for imperfection

and i'm not like major in perfection

we're talking about like fog and lights

which can be expensive

you know panel gaps when my falcon doors

opened

the first time it rained here in

southern california uh the the rain

would funnel uh down the middle of sort

of this this gap they have at the top of

the falcon door

uh and then it would funnel into and

start shooting into the car from the

sides

and it would basically rain into my car

seats when i opened up the falcon door

uh needless to say that that should not

happen

uh and tesla did fix that problem but it

was one of my frustrations with tesla as

well

i had a lot of frustrations with tesla

the quality control had

it's gotten better okay let's put it

that way now uh

moving on uh sandy monroe also goes on

to touch on lidar which i really

appreciated this

uh he does not believe that lidar is the

future

he actually nicknames it ladar and i

don't know

i don't think he was mispronouncing it i

think he's basically calling it stupid

dar

so he's not very enthusiastic about

lidar

i think uh for for uh sandy monroe he

believes that in the future we're going

to

look at something more like a flir type

type technology

where we use infrared kind of a 3d map

locations in front of us

currently tesla does not do that so i

don't know is this

is this potentially the tesla achilles

heel and is that maybe why sandy monroe

isn't investing

keep in mind that tesla is a

manufacturer that says

we just want to perfect this camera on

radar technology and getting this

working they're the only one doing this

everybody else is using as elon

musk says the crux of lidar everybody

else

is not doing what tesla's doing and so

it makes you wonder does that mean

tesla's

doing it right and they're the only one

who's figured it out or is tesla going

to end up hitting a brick wall and go oh

crap now we have to adapt

either way i have no concern

uh it foretests on this because in my

opinion tesla could simply just buy

microvision they could install lidar in

the mirrors

like you put a new mirror unit in at the

front of the car now you're

forward-facing lardar

perfect now you've got the crux as

elon musk says but then you solve the

problem you know then you have lidar

forward-facing light on

we'll see uh then uh you know i i threw

this

in here because this came up as well

just in the sort of manufacturing talk

this was really a nano dimension

question i asked him what he thought

about 3d printing because i

i've outlined my thesis on nanodemention

and it's actually

even the the stock has done so

incredibly well and i'm so happy for

that i think there's a lot of excitement

enthusiasm about the stock

arc investors in it it's not a stock

that personally i've been

very very very long run excited about

mostly because i'm worried about 3d

printing

not being something that could be

commercially viable that it's maybe

really good for research purposes

instead

and i said that you could check out my

nano dimension video other but that

look that doesn't mean that every

research institution in the world won't

end up buying a nano dimension machine

and they end up crushing revenues right

like maybe they're just a company that

that they're not gonna

mass manufacture these 3d printers but

they're going to sell a craft ton of

them and make a lot of money and that is

one reason i really like nanodemention

it's not in my portfolio obviously you

know from when i made the video i wish

it was

i was very bullish on the company but i

also gave my concerns

and i brought this up with sandy and uh

he mentioned the problem with 3d

printing is that

it's slow and that's it it's really good

for making

one-offs like one-off examples or

templates or test products

but it's really good or i'm sorry it's

really bad for

mass manufacturing and so if you're in

nano dimension that's a reason to pay

attention to nano dimension to see if

they can speed that process up

really really important uh then i we

touched a little bit about

luxury cars which is something that

lucid is starting with

verse you know doing this this race to

the bottom the 25 000

card sandy monroe had a very strong

belief

that back in that history is our best

teacher basically that back in the day

nobody believed that making an

inexpensive car would be profitable

and that's one of the reasons the united

states said ah whatever let japan just

do the cheap cars

and look at what's on the road now

hyundai

honda toyotas you know these cars

that are high quality cars at a low

price

very well done and they're they're

foreign cars and they're absolutely

phenomenal

and so sandy monroe says history told us

that was a big mistake and that

if you focus on luxury buyers at some

point you're going to run out of

luxury buyers and even though they can

be impressive really the way to make

money is by selling to the mass market

and that's actually what tesla is doing

that's exactly what tesla's doing

and lucid plans to go down that same

trajectory they're going to start with

their luxury car

then they're going to work their way

down to less expensive cars

okay then uh we have uh i i asked about

archimoto i said look seems like a fun

car

i'm going to try it out soon i want to

know what's taking so long

why have we been you know 13 years in

the process and what's taking so long

and sandy monroe actually said hey look

he's working with them

to get to mass building right now that

the vehicles that

uh that archimoto has right now are not

capable of mass production

and so they have to make changes to get

to mass production so this is going to

be interesting i'm going to pay

attention to arkimoto

it's possible that arkimoto in the short

term could have a little bit of

suffering in its stock

because of this transition anytime you

get a transition from this is what we're

doing now

to a completely new process you

generally suffer on margin

and uh you end up basically having to

rebuild from a lower point

so pay attention to that i thought that

was a really good signal to watch

for archimoto then uh i asked him about

battery technology and cindy monroe

believes that the 4680 cell which is

tesla's new cell for their plaid

editions

is going to end up clobbering everyone

is what he says

he's very very bullish on these new

battery cells

super excited loves that they get cooled

from the bottom which he says is how you

should

cool a bot a battery absolutely great

then he touches on quantum and he really

calls this totally different technology

and and he says in the future solid

state batteries will leave everything

else in the dust

in fact solid-state batteries are going

to be things that we're going to want to

end up using

for electric vertical takeoff and

landing vehicles

that that will have much lighter weight

batteries that'll give them higher speed

more power

and be able to travel further distances

alternatively

the other option to solid-state

batteries for flying vehicles could be

hydrogen sandy monroe is very bullish on

hydrogen

i asked a couple times because my thesis

is that hydrogen is not

going to be popular until 2030. and he

says look hydrogen's not for everyone

he didn't really give me a time frame in

terms of when hydrogen might be popular

it does seem like he thinks it's going

to be at least five plus years until

hydrogen's more popular

but he says the perfect market for

hydrogen is actually

big rigs and electric vtols vertical

takeoff and landing

vehicles but that they should do

something like

tank swapping instead of you have to

stand there with a nozzle and fill it up

i'm not exactly sure why he was very

bullish on like

tank swapping where you put in like a

here's your new hydrogen tank and it

swaps out the old one kind of like neo's

battery swapping tech

i'm not sure why he was anti-the nozzle

we didn't have we had a very limited

amount of time i mean i shouldn't say

very limited amount of time we had an

hour and ten minutes

uh but uh i mean we could have talked to

sandy for two or three hours

not that we would have wanted to do that

all in one sitting anyway but

i'd like to ask sandy more about why no

nozzle

what's the difference is it because you

you lose that potential compressiveness

that you have

with the hydrogen you know does it does

do you lose too much energy in that

transfer

i don't know uh now regarding the tesla

semi

sandy monroe actually thinks that elon

musk is wrong on hydrogen and that

hydrogen's going to end up being the

better product

for something like a tesla semi truck

that you should have because with

hydrogen you need if you have a fuel

cell and you need batteries anyway

the fuel cell charges the battery

basically uh he thinks that elon musk is

wrong here and that essentially in the

tesla semi you should probably have some

mix of hydrogen

and electricity which in my opinion it's

very likely that

if we actually have hydrogen

infrastructure in the future that'll be

an easy

change for tesla to make and who cares

if elon changes his mind but the big

problem right now is we don't have

hydrogen infrastructure

so we can't really expect to have all

this

uh you know the these hydrogen vehicles

on the road when we don't even have the

hydrogen infrastructure like where are

you going to fuel it these days

there's so few fuel you know places you

could fuel up

uh and uh on this he thinks we're way

behind the curve he thinks that europe's

already on this

china's already on this japan's doing

like the hydrogen highway

like the united states is going to need

a big governmental effort to push

hydrogen to really get this

moving i also learned that you should

not call electric

vertical takeoff and landing vehicles

drones apparently calling them drones is

offensive

good to know uh and that uh he's very

bullish on

electric vehicle takeoff and landing

units these evitals

and the reason he is is he says look

robo taxis are gonna be great

and i'm summarizing here i'm putting

this into my own words

robo taxis are going to be great but

they're really going to be a short-term

solution to a long-term problem

the long-term solution is taking

advantage of the third dimension

being able to fly up and down and then

move forward and backwards and left and

right

and the beauty about that is you'll have

so much more space between flying

vehicles

that autonomous flying capabilities

would substantially be capable of of

keeping and maintaining proper distances

from other vehicles

because you have so many different

layers that you could fly in you're no

longer just on one layer

you have multiple different tiers and

sky sort of in the sky sort of that you

could fly in

and a really good example of this that

we actually talked about in the

millennial money podcast

a new podcast between myself and some of

my buddies uh jeremy andre and graham

we we talked about how amazon robots

at the factories from like five years

ago they these things in some of the

factories

they move with such precision inches

from each other

in a completely autonomous way there's

really no reason for us

not to have this autonomy come to flying

vehicles as well in the future now those

the amazon bots that use qr codes on the

floor

so obviously there's still work to be

done but uh yeah

very inside exciting uh prospects

into electric vehicle uh or vtols

and it's gotten me excited to look into

more i'm not so

jumping up and down about the company

archer for example though because

like their united partnership is a joke

united's basically getting paid hundreds

of millions of dollars to make the

partnership this is my research

uh so you know and i think that's

probably why the stock isn't trading for

more than 16

right now we'll see what happens in the

long term long run i think the ev tolls

are going to be a really cool option

i do think there's a potential that

right now they're a little too hypey

and that we are still three to four

years out from actually having the right

technology to use these

in a mainstream way so maybe the better

time to buy these ev

tall stocks would be closer to like two

years from now when i asked sandy about

apple he kind of blushed and uh

bluntly dodged the question by saying

next question

so um it's obviously likely that

sandy monroe is under some kind of nda

where he can't speak about apple because

he's advising apple

but knowing apple honestly they probably

hire every advisor they can and they do

a lot of um

waiting and thinking uh whereas elon

musk is let's get to the market and then

think about it you've got really big

differences in personality here of

company

and i'm not saying one is right or one

is wrong but i personally do think it's

gonna

it's gonna be a while before apple gets

around and actually has a car out here

we'll see

uh one other thing that i thought was

really interesting from sandy monroe is

he bagged on

battery swapping he thought it was

stupid he says by the time you swap a

battery you could just have charged up

at a supercharger

uh and and neo is working on their

second version of battery swapping

technology they are working on speeding

that up

and getting more of these units out

battery swapping is something that did

fail in the united states at least per

elon musk

who knows maybe he didn't really give it

a a full shot

but uh yeah it'll be really interesting

to see where battery swapping goes and

neo goes

in the future so uh this is uh this is

kind of my overview here of my

conversation with sandy

i want to say this as sort of a summary

uh what i got from sandy is

strong bullishness on tesla that we're

still

years away from vertical takeoff and

landing but that we should pay attention

to it

now we're still many more years away

from hydrogen but that hydrogen is going

to be really powerful

for big rigs and possibly even

vitals i also am going to be a little

bit more skeptical on battery swapping

and i'm going to pay attention to this a

little bit more

uh and i'm fascinated to see tesla

continue to

redesign their manufacturing process to

save money i have to say this was uh

this was a very very fun interview i've

had a lot of fun

interviews i'm constantly looking and

talking to folks uh to see

who we could bring on the channel as a

guest but uh sadie monroe

huge huge thank you sandy monroe for

coming on uh

for anybody watching this thank you so

much for watching and your support

hopefully appreciated the summary and

sort of

kevin's reaction to this and folks we'll

see in the next video

you