00:00Let's get more with Daniel Harrison, an automotiveist with Ultima Media.
00:03Daniel, thank you so much for your time, and I appreciate it.
00:06So you can secure one of these with a $50,000 deposit, but there's no final price.
00:13Will you be putting your name down? Is this the future that we'll see on our roads?
00:19For credit to Elon Musk, I think this is a wonderful sort of bit of theatre,
00:25which is expert at, you know, Hollywood production values.
00:28It's making people talk about it.
00:31But ultimately, I think what he's trying to do is create a sort of halo product
00:36because Tesla doesn't currently have that.
00:40And almost to distract from the kind of nuts and bolts reality of making a car company profitable,
00:47and that is noticeable.
00:50He's gradually shifting away from that across the whole Tesla range.
00:53And, you know, he only has two mainstream consumer vehicles right now.
00:58The Model 3, the Model Y.
01:01The Cybertruck was a complete disaster, and the Tesla Semi is aimed at commercial use.
01:09So this is aimed at sort of giving some glamour and glitz to the brand.
01:14Well, it certainly did that, a halo product, as you say.
01:18But doesn't it have real-world applications?
01:20Can we see this, will we see this technology elsewhere?
01:24In an extremely limited way.
01:26I mean, realistically, flying cars are not going to happen in cities because of extreme regulation.
01:34Yes, there are prototypes that exist out there, but they tend to look more like planes with wheels and tend
01:41to be lighter.
01:42I don't think that's the intention here.
01:44Absolutely.
01:45This is not a serious flying product.
01:48It's designed to create media buzz and hype and interest around the Tesla brand.
01:54Well, we've seen a lot, haven't we, about flying taxis and flying cars, as you mentioned.
01:56You don't think there's a place for this in the low-altitude economy?
02:01I don't think so.
02:03As I said, the regulations are extremely strict about flying vehicles.
02:06If people think they're going to, you know, get past traffic jams by flying over them at DreamOn,
02:11that's not realistically going to happen anytime soon.
02:15I think some of the technologies, like the suction technology, already exist.
02:21The McMurtill vehicle proved that the fastest vehicle, 060 currently, I believe,
02:28and around the Goodwood racetrack.
02:29So it's not new technology.
02:31And the sort of, the trust vectors to boost potentially in very small numbers at the very, very high end.
02:39But this is a vehicle that's going to be hundreds of thousands of pounds
02:41outside of the reach of us ordering mere mortal consumers.
02:46So, do you think this will be of any benefit to Tesla at all?
02:50It's often been a market leader, hasn't it?
02:52Do you think the competitors will look at this and say,
02:54we'll concentrate on our main commercial products?
02:59Yeah, I don't think they're going to be concerned about this competitively.
03:04As I said, this is a Halo product designed to create glamour around the brand.
03:09Realistically, Tesla's problem is it only has two models that are dating now,
03:14despite the Model Y refresh recently.
03:16And it's losing on both fronts.
03:19It's losing compared to legacy manufacturers in Europe,
03:22but also the much cheaper influx of Chinese EVs,
03:27which undercut it and are more advanced in many ways.
03:30And that's partly the reason Tesla is moving away from being a car company
03:34to more of an AI, data-led company,
03:37where it makes money from software, robotics,
03:40and it's even, you know, repurposing some of its plants.
03:43It's scrapping the Model S, the Model X, to build humanoid robots.
03:47So, that is the writing on the wall here.
03:49Right. Daniel Harrison, thank you so much for your insight.
03:52Sally, back to you.
03:53No flying cars.
03:54Anytime soon.
03:55Thanks so much, Catherine.
