China EVs & More

Tu and Lei start out by discussing a provocative statement from Richard Yu, the Huawei executive in charge of their intelligent driving, who said in a much less kind way that Huawei's system would beat Tesla's FSD. 

They then talk more broadly about the current systems out there from other Chinese EV makers and agree that FSD will have it's hands full in the China market and is NOT the clear leader once it finally launches.

The topic moves over to all the recent news from automakers about their latest generation small displacement high efficiency enginers, specifically hybrid engines. With announcements from BYD, Toyota, Mazda, Subaru and others.

Tu then shifts over to his guest appearance on John McElroy's Autoline live show and the question that john posed to him. 

Tu and Lei move on and take a deeper dive into Porsche, it's recent hybrid 911 unveil and it's sales in China. 

Tu closes the podcast out with a few updates on Detroit and the unveiling and rebranding of the old train station into the new Michigan Central that is supposed to concentrate and put a focus on all the innovation that's happening in the city / state. 

This podcast starts with a discussion on the NEV take rate hitting 52% and Tu points out that it's a massive number that is also getting help from the steep dropoff of ICE sales. 

They also both take a few moments to discuss the softness in demand that Tesla is feeling and how its likely adding pressure for them to continue to cut prices in order to keep the factory running and keep factory utilization high.

They then also scrutinize Li Auto's original aggressive 2024 sales forecast and how that's been dialed back as well. 

Tu again reiterates that within the next couple years, Chinese IP will be in European branded vehicles both sold in China and Europe. The conversation then shifts to the potential additional EU tariffs on Chinese imported EVs and which brands and products will likely be affected and retaliated on. 

Tu closes out the podcast with a summary of a Reuters interview of Carlos Tavares, Stellantis Global CEO. 

Tu and Lei start the podcast out by debating about the recent increased tariff announcements made by the Biden Administration and whether its all politics or if there is some real fear about the US Three not being able to compete. 

They move that discussion over to BYD having its first global launch of a passenger vehicle outside of China. It turns into a broader discussion about their products, how they're suited (or not) to foreign markets and how said products could possibly perform outside of China.

Tu flips the script and pushes the conversation from tariffs to subsidies on the US side and points to Tesla being a major recipient of them. 

They both agree that battery swapping isn't a flash in the pan and is something, at least in China, is a viable option for electric vehicles. 

The podcast ends with a discussion on some of the latest announcements and unveils by Baidu Apollo with the RT6 L4 robotaxi and Pony's pilot pushing into Beijing's CBD area. 

Tu and Lei spend the first few minutes of the show recapping their overall feelings about Auto Beijing 2024 (the show) and how it was a bit different from Auto Shanghai 2023. 

They both reflect on what the legacy automakers revealed at the show and how the legacies presence in Beijing this year was much different than what it was for 2023 in Shanghai. There's a pulse. 

Tu talks about when he bumped into the GM management team while being interviewed by CNBC's Eunice Yoon at the Chevy booth. 

They both then spent a bit of time reflecting on their 3-day trip from Beijing to Shenzhen in the XPeng G9 Performance including the performance of X-NGP and their thoughts on charging infrastructure during their trip. 

Tu moves the discussion over to his experience attending the 500K production vehicle for NIO that was held at their Hefei headquarters. 

The podcast closes with Tu and Lei's experience spending a few days in Shenzhen and getting to do some other memorable things while there. 

First, Tu and Lei recorded this episode while driving from Beijing to Shenzhen in an XPeng G9 Performance. XPeng kindly lent it to them for the three day trip where they stopped into Zhengzhou & Changsha before hitting their final stop - Shenzhen.

For most of the trip (>90% of the miles which were a total of ~1.5K), they used XPeng's intelligent driving system called X-NGP. The purpose of the trip was to test the X-NGP system and get a feel for the charging infrastructure in China. 

They also recorded a video of their conversation and posted it to their newly launched YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnQkkMqjpoFs0yHmqmKitNQ

Tu and Lei spend a few minutes talking about Elon's visit and rewind back to just arriving to China and what they've been up to since they arrived. The two also give some of their initial impressions and takes on the auto show. 

They then move to their trip so far, talk in more detail about the EV they're driving and their experience with charging. 

**Tu and Lei were NOT paid by XPeng to do the trip and XPeng had no editorial control over anything they posted or said.**

The podcast ends with their thoughts on the connected vehicle world bifurcating with the possibility of EV companies needing a tech stack for China and a tech stack for the rest of the world. 

Tu starts off the podcast with an update on what he's been up to the last few days including visiting Jiyue and getting a sneak peek of the Jiyue 07 and attending the launch event for the Zeekr 009 Grand, a 4 seat executive MPV.

Tu also had a chance to get a close look at the Xiaomi SU7 in the flesh. That transitions into a full discussion about Xiaomi and what they need to do to build on the success of the SU7.

Tu and Lei then pivot back into a detailed discussion of the 009 Grand and their expectations for the super luxe vehicle. The segment closes out on Tu and Lei talking a bit about the new Li Auto L6, their smallest EREV in the lineup, but still a clone of the others. Lei lists out all the debuts that will occur during the lead up and at the auto show. 

Tu and Lei kick this podcast off by going over March sales numbers and move into discussing some of the recent incentives that have been offered by EV brands in order to keep sales momentum going. 

The detail some of the challenges that contibute to the ongoing price war and how Tesla has fated during a price war they initiated. They then contrast that with Xiaomi's sales momentum since launch and how that stands out and hasn't lost any steam.

The last big topic the two tackle in this podcast is the upcoming Beijing Auto show and what their expectations are and what they hope to see there.

Tu quickly discusses some of the challenges that Ford and Stellantis brand Ram are starting to see in the US market with truck sales and the pod closes out with their thoughts based on current conditions of Tesla being able to find any growth in sales this year compared with 2023. 

This podcast begins by dissecting the Reuters article about the Tesla Model 2 being cancelled as a passenger vehicle.

The conversation moves over to Tesla sales in China, predictions about total sales for 2024 and what Tesla could do to boost sales in 2024. They pivot over to a quick discussion about Porsche's struggles in China and what it'll take to turn its sales around in the China market. They also spend a few minutes discussing Xiaomi's continued sales and XPeng's struggles. 

Tu then talks briefly about Janet Yellen's visit to China and her emphasis on overcapacity in China. Tu then specifies that the overcapacity is much more prevalent on the ICE side, not so much the EV side but that there would nonetheless be pressure to export due to the price war and the inability for many Chinese EV brands to gain any sustained sales traction. 

The episode closes out with what Lei and Tu are looking forward to when they both travel to China for Auto Beijing 2024. 

Tu and Lei get right to the Xiaomi SU7 launch. They talk about Lei Jun's showmanship and the popularity of the Xiaomi brand in China which all helped to build excitement for this product launch.

After an extended discussion about ALL THINGS Xiaomi SU7, they move the conversation over to Lei's trip to the NYC Auto show. Lei talks a bit about the World Car of the Year awards and who ultimately won. 

Lei also happened to visit a Rivian store and was able to see the R2 for the first time in real life and instantly fell in love. 

Li Auto adjusting their Q1 sales guidance downward was the first topic of discussion in this week's podcast. Of the three WeiXiaoLi triplets, Li Auto has been the darling of Wall Street but their sales have very suddenly hit a wall 

Tu then gives a short lesson on master production schedules, ordering parts and lead times and how any sudden change in that schedule can complicate things and lead to issues with the supply chain and inventory levels. 

Tu and Lei move back to a conversation about Xiaomi and their staying power and the power of social media in China and how it can help and hurt you in a very fast and severe way.

Lei moves the discussion over to the annual press conference from BMW and how they also would like to continue with free markets for Chinese imports into the European market. 

The podcast closes out with some quick hits about some photo ops between CEOs, the EV100 and Nvidia GTC conferences, who spoke at them and what they said. 

Lei headed over to Germany for Porsche's Annual Press Conference so much of the podcast was dedicated to what Lei learned about during his visit and led to a broader discussion about Volkswagen Group and what Tu thought about VW Group's annual press conference and how important Porsche is to Volkswagen Group's global goals. 

After a detailed discussion on Germany's largest automaker and one of its most important brands, the discussion moved over to NIO and their reaching 40M swaps. Tu and Lei also talked a bit about NIO's mass market brand Onvo and how it'll be positioned alongside the NIO premium brand and the yet to be launched Firefly brand. 

The podcast ends with a discussion on not counting VW Group out just yet, although the mountain they need to climb to get back into the driver's seat in China seems insurmountable at this time. 

Tu also briefly discusses some of the initial quality challenges some BYD vehicles are having in the export markets, but doesn't see anything out of the ordinary or that shoud be cause for alarm just yet. BYD is new to those markets and their products will react to each of the climates differently but it's a learning process that should help them strenghthen the future quality and reliability of their global portfolio. 

Tu and Lei start this podcast out with going over the latest news on the tariff situation on Chinese EVs in the US and EU with the EU now also seeming to lean towards increasing protectionism. 

Lei then moves the discussion over to the R2 launch from Rivian, the follow up to their R1 and emphasizes the affordability factor with the R2. This turns into a broader discusision about Rivian and what it will take for them to ultimately be a successful automaker. 

Their attention turns to the Two Sessions, the Chinese government's largest conference that sets the economic priorities for the year and has most automotive CEO's attending. Lei dives into some of the details of the policies that are being considered at the conference. 

The podcast closes with Tu discussing the recent investments by legacy OEMs as well as BYD & Great Wall into Brazil and South America and how their powertrains differ from the battery electric vehicle. He believes that this is one of the next big potential growth opportunities and the investment into the sector illustrates that.

Lei begins this podcast with a brief explanation of the effects of the Lunar New Year on passenger vehicle sales traditionally. 

Tu points out BYD's social media campaign about how 'electric is cheaper than gas' after they'd cut prices of their already low priced vehicles, so much so that they are cheaper than ICE vehicles from Volkswagen and some of the other foreign automakers. 

Lei predicts that Li Auto may be the next EV startup that emerges from the pack in 2024 as others continue to struggle with price cuts and vehicles that aren't as popular among Chinese consumers. 

Tu and Lei then spend a few minutes to share their opinions on the US goverment's connected vehicle investigation and let's just say that both seem skeptical. 

The podcast ends with a discussion on potential HiPhi partners or acquirers including a look at Changan who have been rumored to be kicking the tires recently.

Tu begins the podcast talking about how the price war still has legs and will likely last through the end of this year into 2025. BYD has been leading the way with price cuts on their more popular vehicles daring their competitors to do the same. 

Tu then talks about the Buick Electra E5 EV that has just gone on sale for ~$23K and wonders out loud why they can't sell that in the US for a similar price. 

The discussion shifts to the technology companies that have entered the EV competition, in particular Huawei, Xiaomi and Baidu via Jiyue. With Jiyue's sales struggles, they openly wonder what is too much technology and whether Xiaomi can come up with the 'just right' approach to stuffing their EV with tech features. 

They then point out how many legacy automakers have announced dialing back its EV ambitions and the challenges they still have to overcome. They focus on the German automakers and reveal that one of their next MAX guests is Daniel Kirchert, former BMW executive who also co-founded BYTON.

The podcast ends with Tu hoping that there's another price cut for the Model Y in the US since it may put him over the top for buying it himself. 

Tu and Lei start out the podcast by wishing each other 'Happy New Year' and discuss a bit about the holiday and their traditions and how it's celebrated by their families.

Lei then moves over to discuss the Chinese Opinions on NEV trade cooperation and both of them add their opinions about how the language and roll out of the opinion piece should be interpreted. 

Tu then spends a few minutes discussing how the premium used passenger vehicle market has changed and is now more of a buyers market.

He then talks about being a guest on Autoline and some of the topics they discussed including Chinese brands entering Mexico. 

Tu and Lei then transition to the news that Ford has a skunkworks team in SoCal working on a profitable small vehicle and unpack their thoughts on that.

The podcast closes with news that HiPhi may be about to close its doors for good and others that have likely built their last vehicles. 

Tu and Lei start the podcast out with some of their family traditions for Lunar New Year. 

They then move onto unpacking January sales numbers and emphasizing the MoM comparisons not that important due to Lunar New Year being in January last year. 

Tu anticipates what we should see in March and beyond depending on how panicked the OEMs will be coming out of the New Year break, likely around late February. The goal of course is to keep the metal moving at a brisk pace of course. 

Tu and Lei then move over to the discussion about Evergrande, the Chinese real estate development company being forced into liquidation by a Hong Kong court and how that will affect Hengchi, their EV brand. 

Tu then talks about the impact that could be felt from the just announced partnership between Didi and CATL. 

The podcast closes with a brief clarification on export numbers and who the actual leader in global exports for passenger vehicles was in 2023. 

Tu and Lei begin with briefly discussing their latest MAX episode with Gansha Wu, Founder & CEO of UISEE - an autonomous driving startup based in China. 

Tu and Lei then transition over into a detailed discussion about Tesla’s earnings and the role that the China market plays in their earnings and operations and how most analysts miss how important the China market is to everything that Tesla does. 

Lei then changes gears into a discussion about the recently unveiled Porsche Macan EV that still doesn’t have pricing for the China market announced. Tu gets into the recent challenges that Porsche had in the China market and how this could really be a catalyst for the resumption of growth in the China market for Porsche, but it’s going to have stiff competition now. 

Tu and Lei close the show on the announcement that DJI will have, none other than BYD, as an investor and partner for their ADAS systems which should help make ADAS a common feature in mass market vehicles in China sooner rather later.

Lei throws a curveball to begin the show and talks about some of China’s societal challenges, namely the aging population and shrinking number of babies born. Tu chimes in with his experience coming to the US at a very early age. 

They broaden the discussion out a bit to bring in a few more noteworthy challenges to round out the discussion. 

Tu & Lei get into some of the discounts that were announced last week and get into the forecasted export numbers and some of the surprise automakers that could be exporting out of China in 2024.

Tu points out that each year that the China market breaks sales records makes the following year even tougher to top. And the combination of a tough Chinese economy, high interest rates and the slowdown in the US & EU all point to a more challenging 2024. 

Tu shifts the conversation to the Lotus Emeya and what brands and products it may be going after and whether or not they should be nervous. 

The podcast closes on the news that TuSimple is exiting the US market and how EV related IPOs aren’t likely going to find many takers in 2024. 

Tu and Lei dedicate this episode to the sights and sounds coming out of Las Vegas CES 2024. Lei spends the first half of this episode unpacking all that he saw and thought about the technology he experienced and the people he spoke to. 

Tu and Lei then go onto some of the macro sales numbers that came from China for 2023 and unpack what they all mean, including GM's slide since 2017. 

Tu closes out the podcast by telling Lei he's considering buying a used Tesla from Hertz now that they've put a number of them on sale. 

Tu and Lei begin the podcast out with a look back at how Tesla ignited the price war in the beginning of 2023. 

They move onto a discussion about Xiaomi and CEO Lei Jun's strategy for entering the market and building up excitement for their first vehicle that's due to launch in the next year and finally making guesses on what their vehicle's price will be once announced. 

They move the conversation over to how difficult it is for the legacy automakers to keep up with the constant barrage of new brands, products and endless refreshes in order to not lose pace in the China market. They acknowledge that most automakers aren't able to keep up which could lead to even more challenges in the future. 

Tu and Lei briefly discuss making sure to follow the people that are out there getting it done and visiting the countries, trying out the vehicles and meeting with the executives. 

They end the podcast with their review of 2023 and a discussion about which events shaped the year. 

Each year this episode is HIGHLY anticipated and is ALWAYS one of the most downloaded epsiodes of the year. If you want to hear what they think of 2024 in China and around the world for the EV, battery and mobility space, you have to listen to this episode. 

Tu and Lei begin the podcast and take quite a bit of time to share their thoughts on NIO Q3 earnings and how to look at the numbers. They back out of the earnings to briefly review the announcements that NIO has made over the last several months.

Tu moves out a few thousand feet to talk about the China market and some of the players in it and then the discussion quickly moves over to the Stellantis announcement regarding their partnership with Silicon Valley battery swapping startup Ample. 

Tu and Lei push on to a discussion about the final language for the Inflation Reduction Act that was released last Friday and how it may affect the market and the strategies of all involved in the EV space. 

The last two topics touched on were Tu's attendance and thoughts on the Mary Barra fireside chat and her answers relative to EVs, batteries and Cruise. 

He then pushes into the rumor that Tesla is ready to double capacity at ShanghaiGiga from about 1.2M to over 2M units of capacity. 

Tu and Lei start out the podcast with a quick review of the November sales and a broader discussion about the difficulty of and pressure on the EV makers to grow sales in an ultra competitive environment.

They both then spend a few minutes unpacking the announcement & implications of  VW developing an EV platform called the China Main Platform (CMP) based on the MEB platform for the China market ONLY and how that's likely to do.

Lei gets Tu's thoughts on Elon mentioning that in the future the Top 10 EV makers will be Tesla with the other 9 all being Chinese.  

The podcast shifts over to discussing all the latest moves by Huawei, who both agree have been very aggressively moving into the connected, EV space over the last couple years with a goal to grow revenues from this new division significantly over the next several years.

The podcast ends with both discussing NIO's expanding swap partnerships in China, now including Geely. 

This episode starts with Tu and Lei unpacking the significance of NIO partnering with SOE Changan to expand it's swapping services. 

After a significant deep-dive into the NIO swapping news, Tu then asks Lei about the announcement that Stellantis will use CATL to supply them batteries for the EU market. This in addition to the recent investment that Stellantis had made in Chinese EV company LeapMotor. 

The conversation transitions over to the US and Tu and Lei's thoughts on how the final IRA language is going to shake out and how it may affect the automakers that manufacture inside the US which is just about all of the non-Chinese legacy automakers.

Tu and Lei then get into their experience in LA, both going to Faraday Future's Investor Day and then to the LA Auto show and watching the Lucid Gravity unveil. 

The podcast closes out with Tu and Lei discussing the popularity of extended range electric vehicles (EREVs) 

Tu & Lei begin the podcast with an explanation of what Single's Day is in China and how some EV brands are participating, namely by launching promotions to help sell their vehicles. 

They both then begin to talk about Q4 and the mad dash by all the automotive players in the China market to finish out the sales year on a high note. Q4 alone can sometimes make or break a brand's annual sales. 

The podcast moves to a discussion on Li Auto's MEGA and XPeng's X9 MPVs and how they compare with one another and the both company's different approaches to market them. 

Polestar begins the next topic of conversation and it evolves into a broader discussion about Zeekr and Geely who owns both brands, specifically what Li Shufu is trying to get out of the spate of IPOs for his companies with the Zeekr still on the way.

The podcast ends with a brief discussion about the mobile phone connection with EVs and then whether its the right time for a Chinese EV company to be IPO'ing in the US.

Tu and Lei begin this podcast by discussing the layoffs announced at NIO and how this could help them and why it was potentially overdue. 

Tu and Lei educate on what Single's Day in China is and how even EV brands have gotten in on promotions during the biggest digital commerce day in the world. 

Tu and Lei give a quick update on BYD sales for 2023 and posit that they are really the ONLY company that's continuing to grow it's already substantial sales in China and starting to build sales momentum ex-China. 

They both then take a few moments to talk about their experience at a Zeekr Track Day event they both attended just outside of New York City at the Monticello Motor Club. 

In addition to the Track Day, Lei also hosted a fireside chat with Ganesh Iyer, current US Head for NIO later in the week. He discusses a few notable things Ganesh had to say.

The podcast closes out with a chat about what's expected to be a mad dash by all automakers to finish out 2023 with a sales bang. 

Tu and Lei start out with the big news of the week. Stellantis acquiring a stake in Chinese EV / EREV maker - LeapMotor. Tu asks Lei to give a brief history lesson of DaimlerChrysler / FCA / Stellantis.

They then both dive into the transaction, giving more background about LeapMotor and the opportunities and challenges ahead for both sides. 

The conversation shifts over to the events happening in Beijing / Shanghai at the time of the live show hosted by Zeekr and Jiyue, one company a Geely brand and the other, Jiyue using Geely as a contract manufacturer. 

Lei shifts gear to discuss the latest on the UAW negotiations with the US Three. Tu goes over what is an estimate of hourly costs for a typical UAW worker. This discussion evolves into why the US is having difficulty selling EVs vs. China. 

The podcast closes out with the accident by a Cruise robotaxi in SF that injured a bystander. 

Tu starts with a brief update and discussion with Lei on Tesla in China and the overall slowdown in the EV space around the world. 

The conversation quickly moves to Bill Ford's comment about Chinese EVs 'coming to our shores' and a brief discussion on Ford's recent moves. 

Tu and Lei move onto discussing European brands Citroën, Peugeot and Mini and how they continue to be built in China and in Mini's case, will be built in China and exported to the rest of the world. 

Tu then asks Lei if he likes the recently unveiled Li Auto Mega MPV. They spend a few moments discussing the vehicle's merits. 

The podcast ends with Tu and Lei giving an update about the Chinese government restricting graphite for export. 

The pod starts with a brief update on the UAW & US Three situation but moves quickly over to a brief disussion about Li Auto's openly stated and ambitious goals of selling 3M vehicles in China by 2028. 

Tu then pushes the chat to Porsche and the struggles they may beginning to see in the China market, a market they've only seen growth in since entering in 2001. 

Tu and Lei move the discussion over to Great Wall Motor's Haomo.ai announcing a very inexpensive ADAS system that starts at less than ¥10K and how LiDAR and overall sensor pricing for ADAS systems will quickly move into commodity territory as Chinese providers continue to try to compete on price. 

Tu brings up how GM has offered to unionize its US battery facilities as a carrot in the ongoing UAW negotiations and they both talk about how the LG & BYD partnership could be used to skirt the Inflation Reduction Act restrictions. 

The podcast ends with Tu talking about his trip to SF and and both of them talking about WM's bankruptcy filing. 

Tu and Lei begin the podcast with a brief discussion about the double holiday being celebrated in China - National Day & Mid-Autumn Festival.

Lei then transitions the discussion to September sales and it wasn't very pretty for many EV companies. Tu reminds everyone that new vehicles were just launched by some brands and that those sales vehicles sales wouldn't be reflected until Q4'23.

Tu and Lei key in on XPeng and NIO to disuss their particular situations and move onto a few other surprise EV companies whose sales numbers stood out including BYD's continuous solid monthly numbers.

Tu and Lei turn their attention to the US market, the current UAW situation and the low take rate that has created more EV inventory than expected for US automakers. 

Tu and Lei end the podcast with a discussion on the recent Cruise accident in SF and US EV startup INDI EV's bankruptcy that further complicates Foxconn's entry into the EV contract manufacturing space.

This week's podcast begins with BYD jumping Ford to become the 4th best-selling automotive brand in the world for the month of July which should be a wake-up call to Ford management, if they've not been woken up yet.

Tu jumps on his soapbox to explain how the narrative about the foreign legacies entering the China market is incorrect and does his best to set the record straight about the real risks & rewards for the legacies that did decide to enter decades ago.

Their chat briefly revisits the Merc NIO collaboration and why it's folly for the automakers to think that they can become really good at SW development without some help. Tu emphasizes that good is one thing, but to be able to compete with Apple, Google, Amazon and the Chinese EV & tech companies is on an entirely different level. 

Tu gives his take on who to look out for in 2024 for both good and bad reasons. 

The podcast ends with Tu and Lei discussing the Tesla announcement that they will begin to sell their vehicles on e-commerce platforms in China in order to expand their reach and Tu talks about who is better positioned in the US to lead the EV transition. 

Tu and Lei start this podcast out with a brief discussion about the Chengdu Motor show. Both comment on the trend towards plug-in hybrids and MPVs which includes the Li Auto MEGA that was announced that week. 

Tu and Lei then have a broader discussion about how hybrids weren't being focused on until Li Auto's success and now there are EREVs being launched by BYD's Yangwang, JAC, GAC, Geely and others. 

Tu briefly talks about WeRide's ambitions to IPO in the US and the current status of their application and then moeves onto the announcement that BYD is looking to partner with a Korean company to build battery cells in South Korea.

This week's pod ends with Tu talking about the potential for EVs in the Indian market and a discussion about what they are looking forward to when they both head to Munich for IAA Mobility. 

Tu and Lei begin with a discussion about all the recent moves made by XPeng and whether it moves the needle for them or not. 

They turn their attention to August sales, specifically the top of the leaderboard which sits Li Auto, XPeng and NIO, the three US publicly traded Chinese EV companies who also happen to get the most attention by western media. 

The conversation moves over to the significance and reasoning behind BYD's acquisition of Jabil's Singaporean operations which includes two factories in China. 

Lei then looks back at his visits to Li Auto and NIO retail locations to compare and contrast the atmospheres and highlights the 'no pressure' environment of the NIO Houses, which could be a reason they are revamping their sales teams and tactics. 

The pod ends with a discussion about the appropriate number of NIO swapping stations in the EU and how to determine that appropriate number. 

The podcast starts with Lei being a bit nostalgic about leaving Beijing after visiting for the last 2 months. 

It quickly moves to a discussion about XPeng earnings with Lei summarizing the earnings call and Tu giving his readout on what it all means. 

This discussion evolves into a broader discussion about the price war and overalll economy that continues to struggle in China with both Tu and Lei having spoken recently with friends living in China and how they feel everything that’s going on there. 

Lei starts his discussion about his trip to NEO Park with a brief history lesson of how it came about and what all the acronyms and codenames mean when talking about the park. Lei also talks about the largest NIO House being open inside NEO Park. 

Tu and Lei then move onto a story about how BYD had shared a supply of chips to NIO during the chip crisis to keep them from shutting down their factory. Tu summarizes that in the tech sector things like that happening aren’t that unusual. 

Tu and Lei pivot to a brief conversation about the Fang Cheng Bao brand from BYD and who its likely competitors are. 

Tu closes out the pod with details about his visit to Our Next Energy for a technology update. 

Tu & Lei had such a great response from their MAX episode with Founder of carwow James Hind it ONLY made sense to sit down and chat with Philipp who's running the show for carwow in Germany. 

carwow is an online marketplace for buying and selling new and used cars and started in the UK but have since launched in Germany in 2016 and Spain in 2018. 

For those of you outside of Europe that aren’t yet familiar with carwow - in 2022, there were over 109 million visits to carwow sites with over £5B worth of cars bought and sold on the carwow platform. 

But not only does carwow make it easier for buyers and sellers to transact, it has the largest automotive YouTube channel in the world providing some of the most compelling and entertaining automotive content on the interwebs. 

The carwow YouTube channel which was launched in 2014 has over 2.6 billion views from it’s more than 8.2 million subscribers and growing. 

Philip takes us through his career progression, how carwow works in Germany, tells us how Germans shop for cars, and most importantly he gives 🇨🇳 EV Inc some advice for entering the ultra-competitive German market. 

With IAA Mobility Munich being held this week, there wasn't a more appropriate time post this conversation Tu & Lei have with Philipp - Enjoy!

Lei kicks off the podcast with how he randomly bumped into Frank Wu at the Jidu, now JiYue Experience Center in Beijing. 

Tu believes that after seeing the features on their first vehicle, that if executed properly - could push the entire sector into the smartification phase of the EV transition. 

Tu moves the conversation over to Zeekr’s price cut while Lei then talks about their recent subscription service. 

Tu stops the podcast to congratulate BYD on building their 5 millionth NEV. Both Tu and Lei marvel at the speed at which they got to the last from 1 million to 5 million units. 

Lei broadens out the discussion to talk about China recently hitting 20 million NEVs built in China and what a massive accomplishment that was. 

Tu addresses the BYD haters by pointing to the fact that Toyota, widely considered one of the best in the biz, is using BYD tech for the China market. They wouldn’t be doing that if they thought BYD product were inferior. 

Lei updates about some recent news about Huawei and Tu talks about a recent announcement by the Chinese govt effectively doubling down on hydrogen technology as a viable powertrain option and how till now, very few OEMs besides one or two Japanese OEMs seem to be committed to it. 

Tu and Lei close out the podcast with an announcement about their latest MAX episode with Philipp Sayler von Amende, Co-founder & CEO of carwow Germany which will drop the week of IAA Mobility Munich.

Lei sits down with autonomous vehicle pioneer, Gansha Wu who's autonomous driving startup is competing against heavyweights in the robotaxi space. 

But it's not just robotaxis, Gansha's team is also working on last mile delivery, cleaning and logistics vehicles that are being used at shipping ports. That's why we've differentiated the autonomous vehicle and autonomous driving. Because they're building a stack that can be used in multiple use cases, with some having the potential to generate immediate revenues.  

For those in the autonomous vehicle / driving space this is a MUST LISTEN. Gansha goes in depth on his decision to focus not just on robotaxis and the differences between each of the use cases UISEE.

Lei starts this pod out with a brief history lesson about Vitesco which was spun off from Continental’s powertrain business that had some roots at Siemens.

Lei pivots to talking in detail about his time behind the wheel of the new-ish XPeng G6 including letting the City NGP function take over for parts of his journey. 

Tu then points out that as the price war has heated up, more and more complaints have arisen from customers who are purchasing these EVs. Tu takes a moment to differentiate between fails vs. (too) complicated design and how the latter can still be categorized as a fail. 

Lei moves on to a discussion about Xinzhou Wu, XPeng’s head of Autonomous, leaving XPeng to join Nvidia in the US. Lei outlined the numerous reasons this could be and they all could’ve contributed to his leaving XPeng. 

The pod then shifts over to a discussion of Pony and Toyota co-investing $140M in autonomous vehicles. Toyota had already made an investment in Pony and this just deepens their partnership with Toyota hoping that Pony can be their ADAS / AV solution for China. 

Tu and Lei close out the podcast with a discussion of the rumor that Jetta was looking at LeapMotor to advance its EV situation by licensing their EV platform, similar to Audi’s partnership with SAIC. If we are keeping score, that’s three major deals for the VW Group with a Chinese partner if we include the VW + XPeng investment as well. 

Tu and Lei take the bulk of the pod talking about Volkswagen Group's investment in XPeng. They go over the why's, how's and what's and whether it ultimately makes sense for Volkswagen and what it should say about their situation in China. Lei believes it will go down in Chinese Automotive history as one of the most notable ever. 

They also give a brief history on XPeng and how they got to where they are including a brief discussion about their newest product, the G6 which XPeng hopes will pull it back into high sales growth. 

The pod ends with Tu asking for Lei's reaction on BYD getting the Heisman from the Indian govt about a $1B investment to build a factory in India. It seems to be BYD's first real hiccup over the last several months. 

Lei gets right to it with his update that 13 ministries have combined to initiate measures to boost auto consumption as the economic growth is China has still gotten past its Zero COVID funk. Tu and Lei then take a few minutes to go over some economic data over the last few months. 

Tu and Lei then move the discussion over to whether Audi can turn it around even after the announced partnership with SAIC for its EV platform.  Tu then broadens out his discussion to all of ABB (Audi, BMW, Benz) and their chances to turn it around in China. 

The discussion moves over to BYD and their ambitions in India and the challenges that still lie ahead of them as they make are looking to manufacture locally there. Tu spends a few minutes to give a history lesson the automotive sector's previous inroads into India.

Lei closes the podcast with a summary of NIO's Power Day. Tu and Lei share their thoughts on the statistics and accomplishments that were communicated for both the NIO charging infrastructure and swapping stations. 

The pod begins with the announcement that China EVs & More (CEM) had gotten it's 25K download - Congratulations to us!

Tu moves the discussion over to the rumors about Audi kicking the tires on an SAIC EV platform in order to try and catch up with Tesla and the other China EV Inc. and a broader discussion about how Audi got here. 

Tu points back to when he said every automaker is going through a 'Make vs. Buy' decision on every strategic (large) software / hardware move they make due to the lack of a tech culture at their companies but in a broader sense, in Europe in general. The discussion also focuses on the lack of speed at each of the European Legacy automakers and how that contributes to their inability to catch up.

Tu pushes the conversation over to Li Bin being quoted in an FT article that the US should open their market to companies like NIO rather than put up protectionist measures that make US entry more difficult. 

Lei then takes a moment to discuss what he's been up to while he's been in Beijing including a visit to Baidu Apollo, trying out the WeRide autonomous vehicle. and trying out the ADAS system on the Avatr 11. 

The podcast closes out with charging in China and how that experience differs from the US. 

The pod starts with a review of June sales with Tesla and BYD dominating the market while many other brands breaking sales records including Tesla and BYD.

Tu points out for the EV purists that BYD beat Tesla for sales of BEVs in China for June. He also points out that breaking sales records are fine but the real test is whether monthly & quarterly sales are growing faster than the market. 

Lei moves the discussion over to the pledge by 16 automakers that they would play fairly and vow to not continue the price war. Both Tu and Lei think it’s nothing more than lip service. 

Tu and Lei jump to VW and their complaints to the Chinese govt about the ongoing price war and the current competitive environment. Lei goes further by summarizing some of Volkswagen Group China CEO - Ralf Brandstätter’s comments at the China Auto Forum going on this week.

The pod moves over to Tu’s trip out west and his update on what he sees while visiting Vancouver, BC and Seattle, WA. 

The pod ends with Tu giving an update on China’s credit system for ICE and NEV manufacturing. It is a system China uses that was largely based on California’s years before.  

Lei kicks off this episode with his experience going to a Beijing Guoan game - Beijing’s professional soccer team. 

Tu then talks about the pollution blanketing MI with the smog coming from Canada and how it reminds him of his time living in China. 

Onto a detailed discussion about the XPeng G6 which just began delivery this week. Tu and Lei agree about how important this vehicle is for XPeng and the high expectations for the vehicle. 

Tu emphasizes that the Chinese economy has not fully recovered from Zero COVID and that it will be important to keep a close eye on what the Chinese govt is doing to try to jumpstart it and that vehicle purchase is one of the levers to try to do that. 

Tu and Lei compare and contrast XPeng’s strategy and results so far against Li Auto and their success over the last few quarters with new vehicle launches and debate whether Li Auto can achieve 1.6M sales by 2025 that Li Xiang outlined as a goal for the company. 

Tu moves on to give a brief history lesson about how automotive companies used to acquire and develop brand portfolios in order to follow a person’s journey through life with a brand / products for your first job and then having a luxury brand for when you are older and an executive. It looks like some of the EV companies that are launching multiple brands want to also try to use that strategy as well. 

Lei talks about how he’s still getting used to seeing brands and products that he’s not yet seen or heard of while Tu reassures him that he had trouble keeping up with all the news, brands and products that were consistently coming out each week. 

Tu closes out the pod with a summary of some of the news he highlighted in this week’s SAI Newsletter. 

In this episode, Lei broadcasts for the first time in Beijing and Lei talks about his immediate thoughts about being back while Tu reflects on some of his experiences driving in Beijing and China. 

Tu and Lei then shift the discussion over to the China NEV purchase tax exemptions and the announcement that they’d be extended but capped while also being reduced over time. Both Tu and Lei expected this announcement while Lei throws out how much the exemptions have totaled to date. Tu expects that we should know by the beginning of Q4’23 whether the exemption extension helps boost sales.

Tu shifts topics to Volkswagen’s Capital Markets day and Tu and Lei spend a few minutes unpacking their thoughts and interpretations about what was announced. 

Tu then asks for Lei’s thoughts on the $700M investment from the investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government totaling ~7% of the company. 

The podcast ends with Tu discussing some of the things that he thought were interesting this week that he wrote about in the SAI Newsletter. 

Lei starts the podcast a deeper dive into the NIO price cuts and a bit of commentary on the quick after effects.

Tu poses a few questions to Lei about whether the ¥30K cut was enough to build positive momentum.  Tu thinks that the price cut will offer a temporary positive push but that NIO still needs to reconcile its product and business strategy to ensure that the gains are longer term.

Tu moves the chat over to Li Auto's bullishness and whether Li Auto will be able to outsell ABB. 

Lei doubles down on his thoughts that the China market will reach 9 million units including exports. 

Tu jumps on his soapbox about what he believes to be the misperception of German engineering being best-in-class after Dieselgate & their current challenges with EV products. 

Tu and Lei spend the last few minutes answering questions from listeners about NIO. 

Tu and Lei discuss the recent policy announcements in China to encourage the purchase of an NEV in the lower tier cities. This includes forecasts for higher numbers of PHEVs sold in the coming months. 

Tu moves the conversation onto the NIO ET5 Touring that’s aimed squarely at the Zeekr 001 customers. Lei and Tu agree that folks should be looking out for Zeekr sales numbers getting a boost in the coming months now that the Zeekr X Job #1 has rolled off the line. Tu anticipates that the Zeekr X could do some damage in Europe as well. 

Topic of discussion moves to Ford in China. Tu heard that layoffs started happening but this starts a discussion about what Ford products will still be sold in China including the Bronco and Ranger. 

Lei & Tu touch on the Volvo X30 being recently unveiled and share their thoughts on it. 

Tu closes the show with a few of the articles he highlighted in his newsletter this week. 

Tu & Lei have a chat with James Hind, Founder and CEO of carwow.

carwow is an online marketplace for buying and selling new and used cars and started in the UK but have since launched in Germany in 2016 and Spain in 2018. 

For those of you outside of Europe that aren’t yet familiar with carwow - in 2022, there were over 109 million visits to carwow sites with over £5B worth of cars bought and sold on the carwow platform. 

But not only does carwow make it easier for buyers and sellers to transact, it has the largest automotive YouTube channel in the world providing some of the most compelling and entertaining automotive content on the interwebs. 

The carwow YouTube channel which was launched in 2014 has over 2.6 billion views from it’s more than 8.2 million subscribers and growing. 

James talked us through his background and how he founded the carwow platform. I learned a lot about how his platform works and how they’ve developed their stickiness. 

James also talks to us about the trends he’s seeing the UK and German markets and how aspiring companies that are new to the automotive space can build their awareness and make a big splash. 

James has built carwow into a key resource for new brands and a key tool for directly engaging potential car buyers. Don't miss this terrific conversation!

Tu and Lei talk May EV sales and Lei calls the top group BATL BYD, GAC AION, Tesla, Li Auto are clearly the front runners consistently outperforming the rest of their competitors, specifically NIO.

Tu and Lei also anticipate Li Auto to continue their strong sales with Tu spotlighting Zeekr to be potentially a future sales leader once the Zeekr X ramps. 

Elon, Tesla and China - The discussion moves over to Elon’s recent visit to China and Tu briefly reads an excerpt from this week’s newsletter that summarizes his take on Elon’s visit. Lei sees Elon and Tesla as an example of the better parts of the challenging US & China diplomatic relationship. 

Tu then compares and contrasts Nvidia’s need for the China market vs. Tesla’s need for the China market and how they differ quite substantially. 

The topic moves to BYD and its brand strategy as Yangwang and the F brand establish themselves in the next several years. They discuss whether it makes sense to launch a new brand and who it might work. 

Lei discusses why he’s in Cali and that’s to cover the ID.Buzz event. 

The pod closes with Tu and Lei discussing which EV startups are on life support and which should actually be able to weather the storm. 

Tu starts this podcast off with his thoughts on the latest reorg of Volkwagen Group's Cariad software group wondering why they installed another 'car' guy to run Cariad when Blume had a real opportunity to catalyze real change at the division.

He then compares and contrasts that with the recent hire of Mike Abbot by GM to run their software team. After Tu's take, Lei spends a few minutes giving his counterpoint on Tu's thoughts.

Lei transitions the conversation over to two product launches, one by BYD and the other by Wuling that caught his attention due to the price reductions both launched with. 

Lei briefly talks about Li Auto's product portfolio over the next few years and how its different then their competitors. 

The podcast closes out the podcast with Lei giving a brief history lesson on the Geely & Changan relationship and a bit of speculation on how they've moved past their differences and may work more closely together to help each other. 

Tu and Lei recap all of the big, 'watershed' moments of the last few weeks with the latest being VW rumored to be in talks with Huawei about a potential partnership in China. 

The convo then moves onto the latest news about Tesla and a larger conversation about what's next for them besides the Cybertruck, where will it happen and how much will it cost? If Model 2, how will it do now that BYD will be a significant competitor in most of the markets they'd likely launch the MIC M2 in?

Tu and Lei then briefly discuss how China became the #1 passenger vehicle exporter in the world in CQ1'23 overtaking Japan. 

Will battery swapping work in the US - Tu and Lei compare NIO battery swapping to Ample, a startup that's champion of battery swapping for the US, who just intro'd their latest generation battery swap station. 

Tu closes the podcast with his concerns about EV adoption stalling out in the US due to the lack of viable, competitively priced EV products for the foreseeable future. 

Tu and Lei start the pod with a brief discussion about April sales the surprises and the disappointments. 

Lei then moves the conversation to Jim Farley outlining Ford’s updated strategy for the China market with exports being a primary business priority and exiting certain segments in the market. 

After closing out the April sales, Tu talks about the last week and a half of his return to China including going into detail about his visit BYD and riding DeepRoute and Pony AI robotaxis in Shenzhen. 

Tu follows up with Tu’s adventure from Shenzhen to HK and challenges he faced getting there. Lei and Tu close the pod with a discussion of some of the main differences between traveling in China vs. the US. 

This episode is a complete download from Tu & Lei re: 2023 Shanghai Auto show. It's also Lei unpacking his experience returning to China after 39 months away. 

There was so much to unpack, it took them over an hour! This is a for certain not to miss episode!

Lei kicks off the pod with his feelings on heading back to China after more than 3 years away. Tu then talks a bit about how much China has changed in that short amount of time. 

Lei moves the discussion over to his trip to the New York auto show and highlights the RAM EV truck that was unveiled. Tu comments on the massive size of the battery pack for the RAM. 

This gets them into a discussion about what the OEMs and the US need to do in order to create a real EV revolution in the US starting with producing affordable EVs, particularly below the $50K price point. 

They then begin to talk about why range is such an important consideration for Americans because of the desire to haul or tow things behind their vehicles and the challenges it poses to automakers who are challenged with providing sufficient range for vehicles when towing. 

Tu and Lei then briefly chat about the challenges being faced by the foreign legacies in China and Tu points to the hey days of them being market leaders is over.

Tu and Lei end the pod with a discussion about Tu’s newsletter post unpacking GM’s announcement that it’s not going to support Apple Car Play anymore. 

The pod begins with Tu recalling the ordering process for OEMs to suppliers and Lei and Tu discussing the impact of the emissions standard update in July on the pricing and sales of ICE vehicles, specifically those that do not meet the new emissions requirements. 

Tu and Lei then move the conversation over to BYD and their export ambitions, recent earnings and overall outlook as they expand further into international markets. 

Lei then moves the conversation over to Huawei and they both discuss Huawei’s ambitions, their partners and what they think will Huawei’s ultimate path to success.

The podcast closes out with a discussion on Faraday’s strange Job #1 announcement and their continued struggles. 

In this MAX episode, Lei has a sit down with Tom Fennimore, CFO of Luminar Technologies. 

Luminar is a US technology company that specializes in developing LiDAR for autonomous vehicles. It was founded in 2012 by a then 17-year old Austin Russell and went public on the NASDAQ via a SPAC deal on December 3, 2020. 

For those unfamiliar - LiDAR is an acronym of "light detection and ranging” or "laser imaging, detection, and ranging.” It is a method for determining ranges or distances by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected light to return to the receiver. LiDAR is also commonly used to make high-resolution maps.

Some of Luminar’s current customers include: Volvo, Mercedes, Mobileye and Polestar and is considered a leader in the very crowded LiDAR space with further expansion plans into the US, European and Chinese markets. 

The LiDAR space is forecasted to grow to well over $3B by 2028 w/ averaging a compounded average growth rate of 18.4% of which Luminar is poised to take a big chunk of with it’s Iris LiDAR sensor and Sentinel self-driving HW/SW stack. 

The podcast begins with a brief discussion on Ford's accounting of EVs for China and China operations in general. 

They move their discussion to XPeng's earnings report and take some time to unpack what their troubles were in 2022 and what they're doing to address them now. 

Lei then summarizes Geely Holdings and their numerous brands and how they all fit together some of the history of a few of the brands that westerners might not have heard of and they both take a few minutes to update on Zeekr. 

Tu and Lei then give updates on the continuing price war and how it's affected some of the weaker players and foreign brands in particular. 

Lei pushes the discussion over to Nvidia and how they are likely the largest beneficiary in the push towards more AI use in apps, software and business. 

The pod closes out with a talk about the struggles of Kia/Hyundai in China and how they still are trying to make headway into the market with the recent announcement of new products. 

Tu and Lei start out the pod with a discussion on the latest price cuts that take the current price war deeper into the hole. 

They then talk about the VW unveil of the ID.2all and how it may not be that competitive if it was to enter the Chinese market, which currently it’s not set to do.

Lei puts the focus on Skoda and their shrinking sales in the China market and how they are doing in other regions. He anticipates that they may ultimately leave the China market due to their continued struggles.

Tu updates about the EU’s version of the US Inflation Reduction Act which is called the Critical Raw Material Act or CRMA.

The pod closes out with the UK not making the cut for location for the next BYD factory. They didn’t even make the semi-finals and BYD blamed uncertainty in long-term business conditions due to BREXIT as the primary reason. 

In this MAX episode, Lei sits down with Marco Kollmeier, former Executive at Benteler, an Austrian tier 1 supplier that makes it’s bones providing components and modules for the automotive industry, in the areas of chassis, body, engine and exhaust systems as well as future technologies such as system solutions for electric vehicles. 

A couple of years ago, Benteler’s EV Systems business unit that Kollmeier led developed an EV platform and in an effort to separate the traditional business from the new opportunities in mobility and EVs, last November Benteler spun off that EV Systems BU and the Holon brand was created with Kollmeier peeling off to head that company. 

For those wondering, HOLON comes from the greek and means something that is both a whole and part of a whole. HOLON recently unveiled its first product at CES, the L4 capable ‘MOVER’ that is based on the EV platform that looks to compete with Cruise, Waymo and Baidu in the robotaxi space. Lei talks to Marco about HOLON and a whole lot more. 

Tu and Lei begin the discussion about the brutal price war that's currently going on in the China automotive sector including where the foreign automakers, SOEs (state owned enterprises) and startups all fit in and how they think it'll affect everyone long-term.

They both also discuss the annual Two Sessions meeting that the Chinese govt has each year and try to read between the lines with what's being said and what's actually meant. 

 The chat moves into a chat about February sales and Tu talks about how western OEMs don't put enough weight on how much the China market means to their success. 

Tu then moves onto a discussion about the importance of China Battery Inc to the foreign automakers, but not only in China but in their home markets because it's really the only game in town for reliable, competitively priced LFP battery cells.

The pod ends with Tu providing a history lesson on the battery cell sector in China and how it built itself out. 

The podcast starts with Tu and Lei having a long discussion about their takeaways from Tesla's Investor Day. For Tu it was all about the ambitious numbers that stood out. Lei thought it was notable that Tom Zhu came out to present. 

Lei then moves the conversation over to his attending Luminar Day and they both reflect on how important the China market is for Luminar if they're to hit on any of their lofty sales and install goals. 

The pod ends with Tu and Lei briefly touching on February sales as the sales numbers were beginning to trickle out and what's surprised them so far. 

Tu and Lei talk about the recently announced Leadership change at Ford China and Tu takes a few minutes to give a brief history of Ford China, where he worked briefly in the early 2010s.

Lei then shifts the conversation over to letting us know what he learned from the Mercedes Benz digital strategy and OS update in Sunnyvale, CA. This evolves into a broader discussion about Merc's global rollout strategy and how they'll work out the US vs. China vs. EU markets. Tu also points out that Merc will be partnering it's way to a complete HW/SW stack for connectivity and ADAS which is much different than a VW and other legacies who still want to keep most things 'in-house.'

The pod closes with a discussion on the new Galaxy brand that Geely unveiled in response to BYD's Yangwang premium brand and they both briefly talk about the differences between Chinese and American's tastes in connected features. 

In this latest MAX episode, Lei catches up with Silvio Angori, CEO & MD Pininfarina SPA who took over at Pininfarina in 2016.

For many in the automotive sector, Pininfarina is the epitome of automotive design. Originally established in Turin, Italy in 1930, Pininfarina was a coachbuilder who built cars for companies like Fiat, Rolls Royce and Cadillac. 

Pininfarina over the years has branched out to provide design services for consumer products, architecture, furniture and e-mobility solutions. One of their recent designs for German startup called Holon was unveiled at CES 2023. 

Silvio shares his thoughts on the sector, Pininfarina's partnership with Holon that resulted in the L4 capable robotaxi called the Holon Mover and how China is factoring in to all of this upheaval in the space. 

Lei gets right to it by starting the pod out talking about the HUGE Ford + CATL deal, first giving some background and then unpacking what it all means for Ford, CATL and others. 

Tu prompts Lei to give a download about Geely's new brand - Galaxy (?) and Tu wonders how or more appropriately where it'll fit in their portfolio.

Tesla becomes the next topic of discussion, specifically Tesla shutting a line down at ShanghaiGiga to retool for the rumored refreshed MIC M3. Tu also congratulates Tesla for overtaking Toyota for vehicle sales in California, another huge feather in their cap. 

Charlie Munger's CNBC video interview made a big splash so Tu and Lei spend a few minutes debating whether what Charlie said about BYD rings true. Short answer - YES!

Tu and Lei then close out the pod revisiting some of the Ford issues in China. 

Tu and Lei begin this week’s pod with a discussion and what led up to Hesai’s recent IPO and capital raise of $190M. Tu speculates that there are likely companies that have traditionally been suppliers to the OEMs that, due to the current disruption will look to move upmarket to compete directly with the OEMs.

The discussion moves over to the launch of the 5-seat Li Auto L7 and what the prospects are for the vehicle and company. Both Tu and Lei seem to be bullish on Li for now due to their entirely (very similar looking) revamped lineup.

Reflecting on the market results for 2022, Tu tries to quantify how much market share the legacies have lost in China over just the last few years with Ford Motor’s by far being the most unsettling. Tu goes as far as to state that Geely and BYD are poised to overtake their foreign legacy competitors in sales volume very soon.

Lei moves into a review of the January sales numbers and how it seems the price cuts from Tesla worked as their January sales rebounded but other normal and Lei highlights a few EV companies that saw dramatic drops in sales in the CNY shortened January.

Tu closes the pod with news that Tesla overtook Toyota to take the #1 spot in vehicle sales in California in 2022. 

In this latest MAX episode, Lei catches up with Junwei Bao, Co-founder & CEO of Chinese LiDAR startup Innovusion while they both attended CES. 

Junwei was one of the now many former Baidu mafia that left to start their own technology company whose LiDAR just happens to be part of NIO's HW/SW stack.  In 2022, Innovusion delivered more than 50,000 image-grade long-range Falcon LiDAR units for the NIO ET7, ES7 and ET5. 

Junwei gives us his thoughts on the exploding LiDAR space and why Innovusion is built to last. 

This podcast starts with Lei’s headlines but because of the break, there was ALOT to update. 

Tu then moves the convo over to January sales and they both agreed that it’s hard to tell who did well because the month was shortened by CNY but NIO’s numbers were a pleasant surprise.

Tu and Lei then talk a bit about expectations for Tesla and what it’ll take for them to regain their sales growth I China outside of cutting prices on the MIC Model 3 & Y. 

They move to discuss the recent hiring of Wang Fengying as President of XPeng and what that points to. XPeng along with several other EV makers are in dire need of getting better control of their operations and this is XPeng’s way of trying to do that. Similar to Tesla’s promotion of Tom Zhu, someone with the reputation of managing the teams to be more operationally efficient. 

Tu closes the podcast out by talking about the current charging situation in the US and what it will take for the infrastructure to be robust enough to support many more EVs and whether swapping would work there.

Tu and Lei start out this pod with a brief discussion on China's economy and what the govt may do after Chinese New Year (CNY) to stimulate the economy if they see any signs of weakness including re-upping on subsidies for NEVs. 

They then spend a few minutes reminiscing about their earlier days in China and the wild CNY celebrations that included many fireworks usually in the middle of high traffic'd roads. 

The conversation moves to speculation about who else may follow Tesla to slash the pricing of their products. 

Lei takes a few minutes to explain all of the different sales numbers that are being used to describe 2022 China NEV sales since it's a bit confusing to many people. 

The pod ends with a brief discussion of the growth of exports coming out of China likely to grow significantly into the EU with a big exporter likely to be BYD. 

Lei and Tu start the podcast out with a brief celebration of hosting their 100th episode. They then move to reflecting on 2022's final China sales numbers. 

Tu articulates how amazing it actually was that China was able to achieve sales of >6.7M units despite all of the challenges including a complete shutdown of Shanghai, the automotive market's single largest market. 

The convo moves over to Tesla's price cuts, why they did it and what it means for them and their competitors.

The pod ends with Tu discussing the current status of the US's Inflation Reduction Act is, what it means and who it will benefit. 

Lei begins the episode with his experience so far at CES including updates on the BMW & Volkswagen unveils and the media events he attended.

Tu and Lei speculate that due to the huge number of LiDAR companies in the space, there will be consolidation in the near future. They will not ALL be winners.

Tu jumps on his soapbox to complain about how he thinks SDV - software-defined vehicle is a terrible acronym that's being thrown out nowadays to describe the connected vehicle. 

Tu and Lei close the show with a recap of the final sales numbers for China for 2022. 

In this latest MAX episode, Tu & Lei chat with Zack Anderson, Co-founder & CTO of ClearMotion. 

ClearMotion's mission is to transform the quality of time in motion and its solution uses a combination of hardware and software to drive comfort, productivity, performance and safety to new limits for modern vehicle platforms.

Zack shares with Tu and Lei his journey from Darpa Grand Challenge participant as an undergrad all the way through to his current role as CTO of ClearMotion and why he thinks now is the right time for their company. 

He tells a great story and gives a blueprint for how tier 1s can evolve to become major players in what's become the largest-ever disruption of the transportation space by embracing software, technology and data. And yes, all roads lead to China.

Tu and Lei begin their 100th episode with a discussion on the muted Guanzhou auto show and how it was affected by COVID. 

After a long discussion about all the happenings at the Guangzhou auto show, Tu and Lei move onto a discussion about NIO Day and how NIO seems to be one of the few automakers outside of BYD that is looking forward to 2023.

After a chat about NIO, Tu and Lei give out their end-of-the-year awards to the good, bad and ugly companies that made news throughout 2022. 

Tu and Lei close out the room by answering some questions from listeners of the live show. 

Tu and Lei start the chat with a discussion on Tesla's major fall in 2022 and give their opinions on whether or not Tesla should've ever been a $1.2T company.

Tu then talks briefly about a happy hour he attended and gives his reflections on what's happening in Detroit and the US after having spent the last 4 months there.

Lei moves the conversation over and outlines what to expect from the upcoming NIO Day. 

Tu and Lei they then unpack the ECarX IPO and what it really means for the IPO market for Chinese EV/AV/mobility related companies.

They close out the pod with a discussion on some of the SAI newsletter posts including CATL's German factory producing its first battery cells. 

Tu and Lei start out the podcast with a discussion on rumors of Ford building a battery factory that CATL would use to fab cells for Ford vehicles. This evolves into broader discussion about CATL & Huawei's ambitions.

Lei then talks the broader China economy for 2023 and how exports will likely continue to be strong next year.

Tu and Lei move the pod over to Li Auto's ambition and current sales of the L8/L9. 

Tu and Lei then discuss some of the topics they discussed for their Deutsche Bank investor call including how they would rank who would be the most successful in 2023 out of ABB (Audi, Bimmer, Benz).

Tu ends this pod with a brief update on the product rollout for XPeng in 2023 with three new or refreshed products on their way.

The pod starts out with the latest news on the ground in China re: COVID and how it's ripping through the country since the Zero COVID strategy was abandoned. 

Lei then transitions the conversation over to what he anticipates December sales to look like. Tu details how competitive the sub-¥300K segment is in China and warns any EV makers about entering that segment. 

Both Tu & Lei move their attention and conversation to Tesla and their reads on Tesla's current situation in China including the rumor that Elon has found a new CEO to replace him. 

The pod ends with Lei talking about seeing a stimulus from the Chinese govt in 2023 to spur consumption and help get the Chinese economy out of its slump. 

Tu and Lei begin the podcast with a discussion on the complete turnaround by the Chinese govt. on COVID policy, how it's completely changed everything on the ground, how long it might take for COVID to spread throughout the country and if it'll have any damaging effects on business. 

Lei reflects briefly on Jiang Zemin's death and the impact he had on China's modern automotive sector. 

Tu and Lei quickly move over to a broad discussion on November sales and what caught their attention including a deeper analysis on China's Big 4: Li Auto, XPeng, NIO, and BYD. 

The podcast ends with Tu and Lei talking about the latest developments in the global autonomous vehicle space starting with Cruise Automation's 100 robotaxis recently being deployed in San Francisco and contrasting that with the strategies for Baidu and other China AV Inc. 

The podcast starts with a brief update on the COVID situation in China and how its affected production this time around. 

Tu and Lei then move onto a BYD update - namely the news that BYD will be increasing the price of their products and the rumors of BYD launching production sodium ion battery cells early next year. 

Tu then brings up the announcement by Mary Barra that GM will be launching 10 electric vehicles by 2025 in China that will all be built off the Ultium platform.  Tu emphasizes that this is what's called a 'blitz.'

The conversation moves over to Polestar reaching 100K production units which Tu and Lei both congratulate Polestar for achieving.

They move onto an update on Baidu's Apollo program and that both Pony.ai and Baidu received approvals from the Beijing govt for (Phase 2) robotaxi services where the safety driver can be in the back seat. 

Tu and Lei close the pod out with why they are thankful this Thanksgiving. 

The pod begins with Lei having just returned from LA while Tu was still  there after they'd spent the last few days doing a NorCal & SoCal trip.

Tu and Lei begin with a detailed discussion about their (two) rides in the GM - Cruise Automation's driverless robotaxis in San Francisco.  They went from Japantown to Sunset at ~10pm in the evening.

Tu and Lei move onto congratulating Henrik Fisker and team for getting the Fisker Ocean to Job #1 in Austria (with a lot of help from Magna) and then Lei highlights some of the people that he & Tu caught up with at the LA Auto show events. 

They then have a broader discussion on the LA Auto show and some of the breakout rooms and events they attended during that week including the Motor Trend documentary 'Coding the Car' and Tu shares his 'review' of the documentary.

Tu chews on the latest EV startup to throw its hat in the ring - BeyonCa. Lei and Tu take the first several minutes of the show discussing in detail how the company came about and how Weiming Soh, the current Renault China CEO & BeyonCa founder, was able to pull everyone together. 

The conversation then moves onto two China-fornia companies having problems in the US, TuSimple and Faraday Future. Tu and Lei discuss what they'd heard which has now mostly been substantiated by the recent articles about the two company's challenges. 

Tu and Lei end this week's podcast with a discussion on what it takes to be successful in the global EV space, something they feel that only two companies can really claim for now - BYD & Tesla. 

Tu and Lei start the podcast out with a discussion on NIO's Q3 earnings and bullish Q4 outlook, specifically what it'll take for NIO to hit 20K units for the month of December. 

The discussion moves onto Geely's big week that started with the Farizon commercial vehicle launch moving onto the Geely & Renault powertrain tieup, then the Volvo EX90 unveil to finally the Radar RD6 camper launch. 

Tu pushes into a deeper dive about Renault and their announcements that week including its doubling down on the Google partnership and how they will become digital, connected and electric via their Ampere entity. 

The podcast closes out with Lei talking about pricing inflection point where NEV sales volume drops off significantly and what it says about the China market. 

In this latest MAX episode, Tu & Lei catch up with former journalist and current author Henry Sanderson whose recently launched book, Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green - is one of the most compelling and insightful books about the previously little known rare earth metals that are key for building the battery cells that power electric vehicles and which are forecasted to be in much higher demand as the world begins its massive transition to EVs. This book is a must read for anyone that’s in or follows the battery or EV sector. 

Just over a year ago, Henry left the Financial Times after over 7 years of covering commodities and mining and is now the Executive Editor at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, one of the leading providers of data and information on the battery industry.

Tu and Lei begin the podcast with their thoughts on the Jidu Auto ROBO-01 production model unveil. They both seemed pretty impressed and detailed that Jidu Auto is going directly after Tesla customers once the ROBO-01 hits the streets in 2023. 

They then get into how fast Jidu Auto has been moving in order to get their product into production and think it's even faster than what is commonly known as 'China speed.'

Lei then asks Tu - Lotus Eletre or Polestar 3? A discussion follows on about Geely and the two competing brands within Geely's own stable.

The discussion moves to Argo closing up shop - some Monday AM quarterbacking is done as to why it happened and why now.

The show closes on unpacking how Tesla slashing prices on its MIC Model 3/Y will affect the rest of the market and which companies are likely to follow suit.

The pod starts with Tu and Lei talking about Tavares' comments about doing business in China and how Europe should place import tariffs on Chinese imported EVs into Europe. They discuss whether his comments were controversial or not. 

Lei then takes a few minutes to discuss his time at the Paris Motor show and the Chinese brands that both directly and indirectly attended and how it seems that they've infiltrated the. market already.

Tu talks about his trip to San Francisco and the panel that he sat on regarding China US trade and IP rights. 

The pod ends with a discussion on EV sales and the pricepoints that dominate the volume for China's record sales year that still has almost a full quarter left. 

In this latest MAX episode, Tu & Lei chat with John Voelcker, one of the most well-known & respected US journos and one of the first to cover hybrids and EVs in the US while he was  Editor in Chief of Green Car Reports for over 9 years.

John talks about car reviews, EV test drives, domestic & foreign competition, China EV Inc coming to the US and his newest venture, the Tempting Fate Tours. 

Tu and Lei immediately get to the biggest news of the week - the Volkswagen Group investment in Chinese chip design startup Horizon Robotics.  They both articulate what they believe the implications are from this transaction, especially at this sensitive time. 

Tu moves the discussion over to the increased restrictions posed on China for chips and chip making equipment by the US govt and what this does to US employees working for companies currently working to support Chinese chip design and fabrication companies.

Lei then shifts the conversation over to September sales which bleeds into the Polestar 3 unveil which they debate the merits on and whether it will be competitive in the two markets where it will be manufactured - the US & China. 

Tu and Lei end the pod with a brief discussion about Li Bin's ambitions to be a top global automaker by 2030. 

The podcast starts with Lei asking Tu about his thoughts on the NIO event in Berlin launching its products into 4 European countries. Lei and Tu discuss their thoughts on the subscription pricing that NIO announced during the event.

The discussion shifts to BYD and their pricing announcements for the three products being introduced to the European market as well as the partnership announcement between Sixt and BYD. 

Tu and Lei end the podcast unpacking the news of Gotion and Our Next Energy (ONE) investing to build factories in Michigan to manufacture battery components/cells for electric vehicles.

In this latest MAX episode, Tu & Lei welcome Dr. Jun Pei, Co-founder/CEO of Cepton, one of the world's leading LiDAR companies. Jun talks about the personal journey that led him to co-found Cepton, how they were able to get that design win with GM and how Cepton's LiDAR technology is different from their competitors. 
 
**We apologize for some of the audio issues with portions of this recording.**

Lei starts this pod out by talking about the MOVE America Conference in Austin, TX that he and Tu attended the previous week and move that onto their chat with Hesai at the conference. 

Tu then highlighted a discussion they had with a representative for Culver City who attended the conference in order to learn more about technology and startups that would be able to make his city safer. 

Lei moves the conversation over to BYD and NIO's moves into Europe. The unpack why they think William Li, NIO's CEO/ Founder is out in front for NIO's European launch. 

Tu and Lei close out the pod with a discussion on some of the lesser known Chinese EV companies that are taking share as a few of their more well-known counterparts continue with sales growth challenges.

In this episode, Tu and Lei start the pod out with a brief recap of their time at the Detroit Auto show with a quick pivot to reports that Chinese battery maker Gotion (Guoxuan) will be investing up to $3.6B in western Michigan. 

Lei moves the conversation over to GM's Durant Guild that is set to import higher end GM brand vehicles into China including the electric Hummer with the conversation moving quickly over to the XPeng G9.

Tu was able to join a call where President/Vice Chairman - Brian Gu and head of Autonomous Driving - Xinzhou Wu and updated the participants about the current G9 and its City NGP and how they will combine it with Highway NGP in 2023 to create XNGP.

The pod ends with a discussion about Li Auto and their product lineup and the quick response to customer requests and the recent additional responsibilities added to Ford Motor's Doug Field. 

In this episode recorded at TechTown Detroit, Lei heads to Detroit to meet Tu in person for the first time!

They spend the busy week participating in both auto show and non-auto show related events. 

Tu and Lei start out the podcast with a final recap of August sales and the 16 EV makers that made up a large percentage of total sales. The broader lesson is that the EV sector keeps chugging along despite all of the continuing challenges with BYD leading the way into a likely record 4Q. 

They then move to NIO earnings and the disappointing guidance for 3Q but the extremely upbeat 4Q sales forecast. NIO is looking at ~70K 4th quarter. Tu is skeptical and believes that Bin Li is calling on his Ops/Manufacturing team to step up and deliver NIO a recording setting quarter driven by ET5 sales. 

As an aside, Tu & Lei unpack the surprise announcement by Mobileye using NIO ES8s to test in Detroit and all of the implications of that announcement happening on the eve of the Detroit Auto show. 

Tu then switches over to a discussion about GM’s new import division that’s launching the Durant Guild in the Chinese market. 

Lei closes out the pod by talking about his upcoming trip to Detroit and being able to meet Tu for the first time in real life!

Tu & Lei start off the podcast with a review of August sales numbers,  the pleasant surprises along with the disappointments. 

Tu and Lei then take a step back and talk about the global EV market, how the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) should help the US EV sector and how some Volkswagen customers in Europe have gotten so frustrated with their ID Series vehicles they're returning them.

Tu then moves the discussion to the recent restrictions placed on Nvidia and AMD that limits the chips they can export to China and Russia which leads to a broader discussion about the restrictions by both countries that have given them advantages historically that have manifested into companies that are leaders in the space currently.

Tu and Lei then move to unpack Baidu's Robin Li who said that most companies would likely skip L3 and go straight from L2 to L4 autonomy with their vehicles and systems. 

They close the pod with a brief discussion about some of the challenges ahead for the foreign automakers that they'll need to overcome in China vs. their domestic counterparts if they are to ultimately succeed there.  

Tu & Lei start this podcast out confirming their prediction that the State Council would extend the NEV purchase tax exemption was correct. They then take a few moments to compare and contrast the speed and amount at which announcements and news comes out of the China market vs. the US & European markets. 

The conversation moves on to how China EV Inc collectively is investing in vertical integration in order to compete against one another, but to compete globally even if they're not profitable. 

Lei moves the discussion over to the XPeng earnings call and some of the notable takeaways from it. Tu then poses a question to Lei - When does he think the China market will reach 50% take rate on NEVs.

Tu and Lei take a few minutes to discuss the launch of the electric Dodge Charger and the controversial artificial engine noise that's digitally produced when the car is accelerating. 

Tu and Lei close out the pod by chatting about the Detroit Auto show and where they'll be specifically that they'll be attending a happy hour at The Brakeman off of Woodward Avenue in Detroit on September 12th starting at 5pm. 

Lei starts the pod out with the announcement that China EVs & More reached its 10,000th download so both Tu and Lei took a moment to reflect, thank their listeners but also look forward to what’s up next for the podcast.

Tu then moves over to discuss his adventures getting back to the US including detailing his multiple layover flight that included the screeching halt of the plane he was in headed to JFK. 

Lei then moves the conversation back to this week’s biggest news and summarizes a few of the battery related announcements with a specific focus on CATL. 

The discussion moves to Li Auto earnings, especially the Li management admitting that they’re seeing more cannibalization of the Li ONE from the L9 than they’d originally forecasted. 

Lei then unpacks XPeng’s event announcing their super fast charging that should be available in volume by the end of this year for all new XPeng vehicles.

Tu and Lei move the conversation over to the significance (highly) Li Keqiang’s visit to BYD and the broader implications of continuing the NEV purchase subsidies in China. Lei’s prediction was that it would continue through 2023 and Tu agreed. 

The pod closes out with a brief chat about what to expect from the Chengdu Motor Show. 

Tu starts the pod out by talking about the last time he was in the US and his plans to head back to visit next week. 

The conversation then moves on to July sales with both Tu and Lei giving their take on the results. Lei then pushes the discussion to the XPeng G9 unveil and subsequent reservations that suggested that Chinese consumers are excited about it.

They also discuss the AVATR 11 and Tu talks about his visit to the AVATR pop-up to see the 11 in real life, 

The pod ends with Tu and Lei sharing their opinions about the recent US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

In this special episode Tu and Lei unpack the dismissal of Herbert Diess, former VW Group Global CEO and the promotion of Oliver Blume, current head of Porsche to replace Diess.

The 2nd half of the episode focuses on Tu's experience testing out a number of electric vehicles over a two week period with Inside China Auto's Mark Rainford.

The electric vehicles they tested or tried out:
Polestar 2
Li Auto L9
Evoke Motorcycles Urban Classic
Zeekr 001
XPeng P7

They also made a special visit to Baidu Apollo to check out the just unveiled RT6, Apollo's 6th generation Level 4 capable robotaxi. 

**We apologize for the audio quality issues.**

Tu and Lei start out the podcast talking July sales and deep dive into a few EV startups that are having challenges ramping and consistently increasing their MoM sales - Lei ranks China’s Big EV Three.

Tu moves the conversation over to his experience riding Baidu Apollo’s robotaxi and how its progressed since the last time he rode it. 

Lei then moves onto a discussion about BYD and how they’re continuing their tear with no end in sight. How far can BYD go? Tu and Lei discuss what makes BYD different from everyone else.

Tu’s quick takes this week include a shout out to Innoviz and landing the VW whale as a customer for their LiDAR equipment and he highlights an article that details the companies that likely have access to your driving/location data if you’re driving in the US. 

Tu and Lei close out the show with their announcement about sponsoring a happy hour on the evening of September 14th during the week of the Detroit Auto show. For those in town that week, don’t forget to RSVP for it!

Tu & Lei begin the pod with a discussion about the unveiling of the RT6 - an Baidu Apollo branded, Level 4 capable robotaxi that will be hitting the streets sometime next year at the cost of ¥250K (~$37K) and the greater implications of Baidu's mobility strategy. Tu speculates that we could see announcements from Baidu about pilots launching outside of China next year.

Tu moves the discussion over to battery cell manufacturers and how they're likely being approached by the legacy automakers with the opportunity to globally supply cells in the US + China + the EU(where applicable). Lei talks about Ford's bold announcement about a partnership with CATL.

The topic of discussion then moves to Didi, its massive fine and what's next for them. 

The podcast closes with Tu & Lei briefly discussing the current foreign / local JV situation, Li Auto's 'spring-gate' and Tu's quick takes of the week. 

Tu starts the episode with an update on the ground and then quickly moves to his visit to Baidu headquarters to get a sneak peek at the Jidu Auto Robo-1 concept vehicle. Tu talks a bit about the overall shape, feel of the interior and thoughts on the single long coast to coast screen that makes up most of the front console. He notes that the lack of buttons and knobs really stands out and that the UX and UI needs to really be strong in order to pull the Human Machine Interface (HMI) off.

Lei points out the UX may be behind the complaints about the Zeekr 001 and the reason Zeekr has decided to upgrade everyone for free while NIO said it would be too costly for them to do it, indirectly poking fun at Zeekr for the smaller number of cars they have on the road compared to NIO.

Tu believes that our vehicle infotainment / touchscreen expectations are built on our experience with our mobile phone/tablets so any latency issues or general buggy-ness could lead to a bad UX. 

Tu and Lei then begin to discuss the 1st half sales and how the 2nd half is poised to be much larger and could possibly push full year sales to 6M units. They continued to game out that if 2023 saw >50% growth, the China NEV market could be over 10M units!  

Lei then switches the topic over to Geely’s newest brand Radar that will specialize in electric trucks and both Tu and Lei share their reactions to the RD6 vehicle concept pickup that was unveiled and the changes of the brand’s success.

In this latest MAX episode, Tu & Lei welcome Frank Wu, Head of Design at JIDU. Frank leads the award winning JIDU Design team who recently won two Red Dot awards for their concept - the ROBO-01 concept vehicle & ROBO-01 charger. 

Part 2: Frank tells us what it's like to work at an EV startup in China, gets into more detail about the design decisions he made for the ROBO-01 and what the most important details are about the car to him.  He also provides some hints at what will stay on the production version, as well as a "sneak peak" for the second production vehicle. 

**We apologize for some of the audio issues with portions of this recording.**

In this latest MAX episode, Tu & Lei welcome Frank Wu, Head of Design at JIDU. Frank leads the award winning JIDU Design team who recently won two Red Dot awards for their concept - the ROBO-01 concept vehicle & ROBO-01 charger. 

Part 1: Frank opens up about his personal journey, what's influenced his career decisions and compares and contrasts the design processes between the different companies he’s worked for including how he was recruited and why he ultimately decided to take on the Head of Design role at JIDU.

Frank was VERY open and conversational so we've split our conversation with him into two parts. Part II will drop within the next 48 hours.

**We apologize for some of the audio issues with portions of this recording.**

 

Tu and Lei start out the pod with a brief review of June sales numbers and both agreed the market seemed to recover well with the major automakers all rebounding from low April / May sales caused by the lockdown in Shanghai. 

Tu and Lei spend a few moments to discuss the latest news about Covid in China including steps the Chinese govt is taking to restart the sector again. 

Lei that discusses the controversy about the claim of BYD outselling Tesla for the 1st half of 2022 since BYD sells a combination of PHEVs & BEVs while Tesla sells ONLY BEVs. 

The next topic of discussion is about the city of Shenzhen opening parts of the city up to L3 capable vehicles. 

Lei reviews all the numbers that were revealed during NIO’s Power day likely to dispute the short report that came out on them last week. Tu counters the NIO numbers with some Tesla numbers of his own, specifically about the number of superchargers that have been installed in China.  

Tu then pulls back the discussion to what the US needs to do to really help speed up EV adoption in the US including a laser focus on rolling out more EV charging infrastructure. 

Tu & Lei close out the the pod with a summary of the VW battery manufacturing announcement. 

Tu starts this week’s pod with a quick update on what’s going on on the ground in Beijing. Lei then moves on to NIO’s challenging last few weeks, first starting out with the tragic accident at their Shanghai headquarters that killed two people to this week’s bombshell short report accusing NIO of fraud, specifically for their accounting of battery swapping revenues.

The next topic that Lei & Tu tackle was the unveiling of the Volkswagen ID.Aero, Volkswagen’s entry into the premium electric sedan category that’ll start shipping next year from its Chinese factory. 

They give their initial reactions from the unveil, look at the market segment it’s competing in and predict what challenges they anticipate the Aero having in the China market. 

The next topic is the Chongqing auto show and specifically the Avatr brand which is a joint venture between Huawei and Changan Motors, an SOE based in Chongqing. 

In the final segment, Tu summarizes what he thought were some of the most interesting news from the week including TSMC likely overtaking Intel on revenues to become the largest chip manufacturer in the world, Polestar’s IPO and Tesla incentivizing customers to trade in their ICE vehicles for discounts on Tesla vehicles.

Tu and Lei start the pod with their thoughts on Li Auto’s big unveil for this year, the L9. The conversation evolves into a broader discussion about Li Auto’s future ambitions and how they compare to their domestic competitors who are more focused on the international markets.

The discussion moves over to some recent moves by Volkswagen and Mercedes that points to their continued emphasis on the China market.  They discuss how one makes sense but the other may do the opposite of what is intended. 

Tu and Lei then talk about the challenges that Volkswagen faces in the China market and what they should be doing to prep their local team for long-term battle and fight to maintain share even as the players around them seem to be moving faster with better products.

The next topic Tu and Lei discuss is the Qilin battery announcement from CATL that’s going to be in customer’s vehicles next year. 

Tu spends the last part of the pod listing out what he thought were the most interesting things that he thought happened during the week including news about Tesla in India & China, Foxconn/Lordstown Motors, ELMS, NIO in the news for the wrong reasons and DeepRoute’s move to short haul, autonomous trucking.

Tu and Lei start out the conversation with a brief summary of May’s sales and agree that things are looking better but that its still a fluid and delicate situation. 

Tu and Lei then move on to the discussion about the NIO ES7 and Lei poses two questions to Tu about his preferences if he had to choose between certain new vehicles. They spend a good deal of time discussing the ES7, how NIO is doing overall, and what they expect and hope to see from NIO moving forward. Let’s just say that they define success for NIO as having well over 20K units/month in sales by the time 2024 rolls around.

Tu moves over to some of the events that took place that he wanted to highlight. Lei highlights Geely introducing its new pickup brand Radar. They spend a few moments discussing Geely and move on to the announcement that Voyah will be launching their products in Norway and close out the pod with BYD confirmation that they will be attending next year’s CES. 

The pod starts out with Tu and Lei unpacking what Lei calls the biggest China smart EV reveal this year, the unveil of the Jidu Robo-1.

Tu gives an update on the status of Covid restrictions in Beijing including a bit of what’s opening up then Lei transitions over to an update on May sales numbers and how things are beginning to recover from a very poor April. Lei expects June to move towards normal as the OEMs are now more capable of dealing with COVID as being part of the 'new normal' for operations.

The dynamic duo spend the next several minutes dissecting NIO’s earnings and what you should look for later this year from them with important launches still on the calendar that will almost double the number or products they have on offer.

Tu summarizes a few pieces of news which segues to a broader discussion about BYD, and how they’ve surpassed VW Group this week by market capitalization. Lei and Tu then discuss the announcement this week that BYD will supply Tesla with batteries. 

Lei starts the pod talking May sales. Overall better numbers across the board but Lei was disappointed a bit in BYD’s sales. Lei then moves to explain the stimulus package that’s been announced for vehicle purchase and who it’s targeting. 
 
 This triggers a broader discussion about the economy and Shanghai & Beijing beginning to open up and the implications of this along with the subsidies. 
 
 Lei moves the conversation over to WM Motor’s planned IPO and some of the history of the company until now and also talks about Buick’s latest announcements from last week and the recent weakness in China of the GM brands: Chevy and Buick in particular. 
 
 Tu contrasts that with the popularity of the Wuling Hongguang Mini EV which should provide GM would a treasure trove of data that can be used across their brands and products to increase sales for the China market.

Tu and Lei close out the pod talking about NIO’s ES7 and the recent announcement by Ford about investment in Michigan.

Tu and Lei start out with a discussion about the challenges of China’s overall economy and some of the stimulus that the Chinese govt. has announced they’d provide in order to get it jumpstarted. Shanghai is finally opening back up on June 1st, so factories should begin to product more product consistently in June and beyond but Tu cautions that any outbreak could jeopardize the recovery. 

Lei then shifts the conversation over to May sales numbers and how he expects BYD to be much further along in their sales volume than the other EV makers. This opens up a broader discussion about BYD including their boldness in entering the ultra luxury market with a vehicle launch later this year that’s supposed to be in the ¥1.5M price range but they both question whether BYD is stretching themselves too thin?

Tu shifts the conversation over to Jidu and their impending vehicle unveil scheduled for June 8th. Jidu is the brand that was created by a collaboration between Geely and Baidu. Lei laments that their messaging is a bit confusing, specifically the claim on being a ‘autorobot’ and he wonders if Jidu is overpromising what the product can deliver?

The pod moves onto the news about the strategic investment Bosch made into WeRide the Guangzhou based autonomous vehicle startup and the possible reasons for the investment and how they could provide each party access to an area that they currently lack or that isn’t available to them.

Tu and Lei close out the show with a brief discussion on ECarX, the software intelligence startup owned by Li Shufu aka Eric Li, the founder of Geely and then a quick chat about XPeng’s earnings as well as who they believe may be moving to the US market first. 

In this latest MAX episode, Tu & Lei welcome Omer Keilaf, Co-founder and CEO of Innoviz, which designs and develops. LiDAR and perception software for ADAS systems & autonomous vehicles. 

Omer talks about the early days in the Israeli military, starting Innoviz six years ago, why he is confident that this is the right time to enter the Chinese market, his views on LiDAR competition, technology, the difficulties in achieving mass production, and how Innoviz is tackling these issues with unique approaches. 

Lei and Tu take a few minutes to reflect on a year of hosting the China EVs & More (first) Clubhouse room before moving to Twitter Spaces and finally evolving to this podcast. 

Lei begins this week’s update with news that the Chinese govt is looking at introducing a stimulus package to jumpstart car sales. Tu moves the conversation to the current situation on the ground in Beijing and the challenges he’s had with trying to purchase a plane ticket back to the US.

There were some product introductions this week that Lei goes over including one from Denza, the joint venture between Mercedes and BYD. For the sake of those unfamiliar with Denza, Lei gives a history lesson on the company and how they got to where they are today.

Tu then pulls out the discussion to the broader MPV (or multi-purpose vehicle) segment and why it’s an important segment in China. 

Tu and Lei close out this week’s podcast talking about QCraft who introduced a ¥10K L2 stack for use with passenger vehicles. They both go into a bit of QCraft’s history and how they’re part of the 2nd wave of autonomous vehicle companies. 

Tu starts this episode out with a quick Covid update on his situation in Beijing. 

Tu & Lei have a discussion on the production challenges and sales slides for the automakers in April. Lei opens up a bit about what he's heard about Tesla's doubling down in Shanghai and all of the help that they've been offered to get ShanghaiGiga but up and running. With the additional capacity that's anticipated in Shanghai, Tu coins the term Tesla City for the Lingang area where ShanghaiGiga resides. 

The conversation shifts to NIO getting listed in Singapore and the chances that they will be booted off of the NYSE. Tu then asks Lei for a history lesson on Qiantu who had just announced that they'll be going public via a SPAC merger later in 2022. Tu and Lei think it's a pretty peculiar move for them due to the negative shift in sentiment in SPACs.

Tu closes out the pod with a bit of speculation on where any excess capacity coming out of ShanghaiGiga will go - he believes more vehicles will be shipped to Japan, South Korea and parts of SEA.

We apologize for technical issues we had recording this episode. 

Tu starts off episode 65 with an update on his status in Beijing and the latest news about auto manufacturing in Beijing and Shanghai including the shutdown of ShanghaiGiga due to a shortage of wiring harnesses. 

Tu and Lei them move onto BYD’s Changsha problem that has nothing to do with Covid. Due to protests from local neighbors of the factory, BYD was forced to close it factory while an investigation is underway to determine whether or not they’re permitted to be there building cars. 

Lei shifts the discussion over to LI Auto’s earning that were just released and highlights the announcement about making an even more affordable EV similar to NIO who also had more information leaked recently about their mass market brand targeting the 200 - 300K RMB market segment. 

The podcast moves onto what Cadillac is doing to prep the market for the Lyriq launch and some of the new vechicles launched by Denza, Arcfox, and LeapMotor that all make bold claims about redefining their market segments. 

Tu moves the focus to Volkswagen’s announcement about reviving the Scout brand and Lei weaves in his takeaways from the FT’s Future of Mobility conference that featured fireside chats with Elon, Ola, and Herbert and they go into a deeper dive about Elon’s interview and some of the contradictory statements he seemed to make about ShanghaiGiga.   

In Part #2 of this MAX episode, Tu & Lei welcome Steve Levine, global citizen, adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and editor at The Electric - a premium newsletter that specializes in the EV & battery spaces. 

Steve talks about the journalism journey that brought him to cover EVs & batteries, the challenges he sees ahead including consolidation in the automotive space, and how he thinks things may shake out in 2030 and beyond. 

Tu & Lei start out the pod with a discussion on how the current April sales numbers look to be shaping out. It doesn't look good for most of the legacy OEMs with the exception of BYD. 

Tu gives a Covid update for Beijing and what he expects to see in the next few weeks.

Tu transitions the conversation over to the China autonomous vehicle update and they both share their thoughts on all of the announcements that came out last week from Pony.ai, Baidu Apollo, Momenta and WeRide, who partnered with Pony.ai for the latest investment round of OnTime, a mobility platform whose other major investor is GAC Group. 

Tu shifts the discussion over to Volkswagen (VW) opening a China office for their software division, Cariad and moving over a Volkswagen veteran to over with strong ties to China to lead the group. Tu and Lei spend a few minutes debating the merits of the moves and the leadership appointed to launch the team in China with, surprise, Tu being a bit skeptical of the moves and whether or not it'll get VW where they need to be with SW development in the timeframe they need to do it in. 

Tu wraps up the pod with a few quick updates on CATL's swapping station, BYD's substantial increase YoY from Q1 sales, and finally a comment on Elon's purchase of Twitter and whether he'll be pressured by the Chinese govt. to promote a more positive tone on the platform.



 

In Part #1 of this MAX episode, Tu & Lei welcome Steve Levine, global citizen, adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and editor at The Electric - a premium newsletter that specializes in the EV & battery spaces. 

Steve talks about the journalism journey that brought him to cover EVs & batteries, the challenges he sees ahead including consolidation in the automotive space, and how he thinks things may shake out in 2030 and beyond. 

Tu and Lei start the pod out with an update on which manufacturers have been affected by the lockdowns and Covid outbreaks throughout China - Which are running and which aren’t, areas to keep an eye on, and what to expect in the next few weeks. 

Tu explains what happens normally if there are supply issues at a factory, all of the parties involved, how accurate data needs to be, and how everyone has a timeframe to do it in order for the factory to continue to build. 

This leads to a discussion about Tesla’s earnings call and how impressive they continue to be. Tu and Lei agree that ShanghaiGiga needs to get back online sooner than later if Tesla is to reach their goal of >1.5M units for 2022. 

The conversation shifts over to BYD’s announced partnership with Horizon which BYD also happened to invest in. 

Lei summarizes the five EV debuts that came out within two days of each other - ALL coincidentally from the legacy automakers. Tu gives his opinion on these concept vehicles, one, in particular, that’s he specifically critical of. 

The podcast ends with a deep dive on the F150 with both Tu & Lei pointing out how inspirational it is for an Asian woman to be the Chief Engineer of such an important product for Ford.  

Tu & Lei go over March sales and BYD’s continued strength despite all the prevailing headwinds and challenges that the other EV makers seem to be running into. 

Tu explains that the China EV space is being told in chapters starting with Tesla is coming to the current chapter of BYD begins to dominate. Lei continues on with a brief history of BYD and the important milestones in its brief but eventful history and how each inflection point in its history builds up to the announcement that it’ll no longer build ICE vehicles. 

Tu also points out that the current direction of the auto sector, investing heavily to bring in-house battery cell R&D & chip design, BYD has been a pioneer in those two areas. 

Lei then turns to some of the challenges that BYD faces and what they still need to confront if they’re to continue to build momentum, gain share and finally enter foreign markets with their passenger vehicles. 

Tu and Lei move the talk over to Geely and how they’re trying to turn past issues with Chinese build quality on its head by building Smart, Lotus, and Polestar brands in China for the foreign markets. 

Tu and Lei close the pod by talking about what they expect and how severe the lockdowns in Shanghai and Jilin will be to the automotive sector in Q2’22. 

Tu and Lei start this podcast by highlighting a WeChat moment post by He Xiaopeng, founder of XPeng warning that if issues can’t be contained and resolved production for the entire month of May could be lost. 

They then move on to review the March & Q1 sales and registration numbers.  

Tu takes a few minutes to explain his prior experience working on the supply chain side back in the US and dealing with production disruptions in the automotive and high tech spaces. 

Since they talked about Q1 numbers, Lei dives deeper into the brand sales numbers that were reported. Lei points out that for the first time, Ford China reported March sales numbers for the Mustang Mach E. Most brand sales numbers were down from Q4’21 which is no surprise. 

Tu and Lei agree that the Volkswagen ID Series sales numbers continue to disappoint and Tu takes a few minutes to explain that the opportunity to build sales momentum starts when the product is launched when you have a marketing budget that’s supposed to build excitement for the product. 

One year into the initial launch of the ID.4 and sales are still hovering around 10K/month which points to a lack of overall enthusiasm for the products. Tu stresses that it’ll be difficult to ignite any real excitement for the products after having been in the market an entire year already. 

Tu takes a few minutes to rant about Newsweek’s article about automotive disruptors without any mention of Tesla or any Chinese EV makers. 

Lei then talks about his trip to the New York International auto show and how Hyundai and Vinfast seemed to be the BIG news along with a few American EV startups that he’d not heard of until that event. 

Tu and Lei start this show out by paying homage and giving a big shout-out to their friends that live in Shanghai that are currently on lockdown. 

After the headlines, Lei gives everyone a lesson on the EV100 Conference that is normally held each January but was delayed and finally put online last week. One highlight of the EV100 was the announcement from Horizon Robotics about licensing their IP to OEMs so that the OEMs could piggyback off of their existing chip technology in order to design their own SoCs.

Tu shifts the conversation over to compelling design takes a happy marriage between hardware and software and one without the other would likely make for a bad UX.

The discussion then shifts to XPeng earnings. Lei summarizes the ‘flagpoles’ that XPeng is planting this year likely hit their margins in 2021. The momentum of the P5 & G9 should help them build on their margins as XPeng only needs to focus on marketing these vehicles and launching them on time and on budget. 

Tu then shifts to talking about the launch of the Lotus Eletre and the reactions on social media from the various interested parties. Lei discusses how surprised he was about the Lotus’s extensive sensor kit for ADAS/AV and how now LiDAR and premium sound have become qualifying features in the near-premium/premium segments. 

Tu closes out the pod with his take on Vinfast and their aggressive moves into the US market including their recent announcement of building a factory in North Carolina. 

The episode starts with a discussion about Li Auto loaning a Li One out to Tu for a week in order to get his feedback on the SUV. The conversation moves on to NIO being one of the last EV makers to raise prices and Tu points out why NIO may have a bit more flexibility than their competitors that are building their own vehicles. 

Still talking about NIO Tu & Lei go over NIO’s earnings and evolves into a longer discussion about NIO’s current situation, their strategy, and where their announced investments, including increasing the R&D staff to 9K people could lead them in the future. 

Lei then talks about his experience with the Mercedes Tech Day that he attended in LA and gets into a broader discussion about how its new EQS will be one of the first vehicles to offer Level 3 (L3) autonomous and what conditions need to be met in order to activate that function. Tu and Lei get into a detailed discussion about what needed to happen for the L3 feature to be used on the roads in Europe and what would likely happen before the end of the year when the feature will be launched in the US. 

Tu closes out the podcast by moving the discussion to BYD’s just-announced partnership with Shell. Lei pulls out the discussion to a broader look at how these traditional petrol companies are now rebranding and reinventing themselves to maintain relevance during the cleantech push. 

Lei begins this podcast with announcements from the OEMs of record profits in these tough times and the cognitive dissonance of profiting the most during the most challenging times. Tu updates on the current situation on the ground in China with regard to the Covid situation and where the lockdowns are currently taking place and what he thinks will happen with the Beijing auto show that’s scheduled to happen in just over a month’s time.

Tu takes over for Lei to make the announcements this week since Lei was traveling. Tu lists all the cars brands in China that have raised pricing of their vehicles, it’s a long list. Tu highlights a Financial Times deep dive into VW Group’s reliance on the China market. A fascinating piece for those that follow VW Group closely.

Tu and Lei move on to a conversation about recently announced vehicles that’ll soon enter the China market, with a few of them also likely to be exported to a market near you.

Tu and Lei then discuss the recent rumor that Didi is getting int car manufacturing, a Didi Motor Company perhaps and whether either of them thinks it makes sense. 

The topic moves to TuSimple and what looks to be a planned split between their US and China entities. This turns into a broader discussion about the AV sector including what could happen to US/Chinese hardware developers. All indications point to a similar hard look at how they will be treated by each country. 

Tu and Lei close out the pod with a discussion on how the short-term increase in EV pricing may initially scare off US consumers and whether or not that’s a good or bad thing for legacies. 

In this latest MAX episode, Tu & Lei invite Elliot Richards, the East Asia Correspondent from Fully Charged, a YouTube channel dedicated to promoting all things clean energy.

Elliot has spent the last two years test driving and reviewing many of the electric vehicles from the Chinese EV brands that Tu and Lei talk about each week on China EVs & More. 

In this fun and relaxed episode Tu, Lei, and Elliot trade stories about how they got 'into' cars and much more. Does Elliot really think these cars can compete with the Germans, Americans, Japanese, and Koreans? What's the best car that he's driven? How did he get into this role? 

For anyone that wants to get beyond how some of the China EV Inc cars look, this is a MUST LISTEN TO episode. 

The podcast starts with Lei giving us an overview of the annual, and critically important 两会 or Two Sessions conference that sets the agenda for the year’s governmental priorities. NEVs have been a major priority of the Two Sessions for the last several years for instance and it was no different for this session.

Tu then talks about how the number of new brands being established in China has really pushed a significant increase in the level of competition there and how the Chinese government has begun to take a step back to allow all of these brands across the different market segments push the market forward, drive innovation to make these cars more feature rich, yet affordable. He is doubtful that the few EV startups in the US alongside the legacies who’ve begun to pivot their products to clean energy are enough of a critical mass to quickly get sales to that same tipping point. He is curious and hopeful that as the US govt begins to take a more active role in the sector that there will be a number of startups that enter the market to challenge the established brands. 

The discussion transitions to Lei reflecting on what Stephan Wöllenstein meant when he said that ‘Chinese brands have made it’ during China EVs & More MAX episode interview with him. Lei talks about how desirable Chinese EV products have become with Tu and Lei both agreeing that 500K RMB automobiles built by Chinese companies would likely NOT have been considered by a Chinese consumer just 4-5 years ago but are now redefining premium in China.  

A prime example of what they’re referring to is the interest on Twitter that the NIO ET7 launch received worldwide. This was excitement neither Lei or Tu had seen in some time and it was for a Chinese EV brand. Lei insists that NIO is due because they’ve been out of the news for sometime since this is their first new product since the ET7 was unveiled 14 months ago. 

Lei heads to California for a family vacation so Tu takes over for this week’s headlines.

Tu and Lei kick off this week’s pod by talking Faraday Future’s pre-production vehicle that was unveiled earlier in the week. Lei moves the conversation over to the news that NIO is getting into mobile phones and how this is a trend that other automakers and technology companies will follow. Tu broadens the discussion on NIO and the implications of the increased capacity coming online later this year for them. 

The discussion heads over to the brewing Tesla vs. BYD biggest EV maker in the world title that both are vying for with their recent announcements of increased capacity. 

Tu talks about how the west has not only begun to pay attention to China EV Inc but also China Battery Swapping Inc with the news that CATL will be launching a battery swapping service. Where does battery swapping fit into the charging infrastructure conversation and who will end up taking on that technology? Tu explains why battery swapping lends itself so well to the China market.

Lei closes out the pod detailing his experience renting a Hertz Tesla Model 3 for a week in California. It looks like Tesla has another convert!

Tu starts out the pod talking about Rivian’s marketing and pricing missteps with Lei reminding everyone that the EV startups will run into these types of challenges as they gain footing into the market. 

Tu then shares his thoughts on Ford’s announcement this week about splitting the company into Ford Blue, the division focusing on ICE development & Ford Model e, the division that will build out Ford's EV & mobility services strategy and why it was such an important move to hire Doug Field and let him take on the lead role for Ford Model e. 

Lei moves on to discuss Stellantis' China strategy which is was part of his overall strategy review. Stellantis China will take on an asset light approach to China leaning on brands like Jeep, Citröen, and Peugeot.  

February sales was due to be a slow month due to Chinese New Year but BYD & Tesla seemed to buck that trend they continue with their expectations for BYD for 2022 and its likely consistent sales of >100K / month starting in March as long as long as they can continue to manage supply chain issues so that they don’t affect production in any significant way.

Lei moves the conversation over to Li Auto’s earnings their grand ambitions and how they’ve contrasted themselves vs. XPeng and NIO.

Tu talks about Lotus's new electric SUV that’s to be unveiled at the end of March and how Lotus is following the playbook of Porsche, Bentley, Rolls Royce, and other sports car brands that eventually launched SUVs. 

Lei closes out the pod with his experience of spending a week driving a Hertz Tesla Model 3. 

In this MAX episode, Lei gets the chance to ask Dr. Wöllenstein for his take on the challenging 2021 VW Group had in China and what his outlook for the company is for 2022 and beyond.

In particular, Dr. Wöllenstein gives us his take on how the ID. Series will perform here in China in 2022 and beyond, what he thinks of his Chinese competitors, and his outlook on expanding VW Group R&D in China. 

He also talks about how "China has finally made it" in terms of the domestic Chinese players finally catching up to (and even surpassing!) the foreign automakers in terms of market share and innovation, and that foreign automakers need to treat China as a "two-way street" (both as a market and innovation powerhouse) rather than a "one-way street" many years before when they simply imported technologies and anything would sell on the the market.

This might be one of the last extended interviews that Dr. Wöllenstein gives about the China market before he heads back to Germany in August so don't miss out on his thoughts!

China EVs & More turns 1 year old! Tu starts the podcast out by summarizing the first week of the MOBILIT/E Conference and Tu & Lei discuss some of the highlights of the week.

Lei details his interview with outgoing Porsche China CEO Jens Puttfarcken and Porsche's amazing streak of 20 years of growing sales in China. 

Tu and Lei move on to how large and complex a company BYD is and how they're well-positioned to take advantage of the global pivot towards EVs and then discuss the news about Volkswagen Group rumored to be acquiring Huawei's autonomous vehicle group. 

They both discuss Baidu Apollo launching its robotaxi service in Shenzhen, becoming the only AV company with pilot programs in each of the tier 1 cities. 

Tu and Lei close out the pod by talking about how Diess has been a polarizing figure to a normally low-key Volkswagen management style and how NIO management has targeted BMW as THE competitor that their vehicles are going after. 

Tu & Lei start out this week's pod going over January sales numbers which have been slow to trickle in. They move on to a discussion about BYD & Tesla and how they could get to their 2022 sales targets.

With the Beijing winter Olympics going on, the news cycle in China for the EV/AV space is a bit slow but Tu & Lei believe this to also be the calm before the Beijing Auto Show storm. With 11 weeks until the show, they both expect announcements to begin to increase significantly leading up to the show.

Tu talks about how to really measure strength when looking at 2022 by looking at an automaker's growth vs. the market growth. The way to measure individual OEMs' success is by looking at them compared their contemporaries in the same segment. 

Tu & Lei move the discussion to the latest China EVs & More MAX episode with Maxwell Zhou, CEO of DeepRoute. 

They end the pod talking about the MOBILIT/E Conference that Sino Auto Insights co-organized and kicks off this week. For those interested in learning more about the conference, you can head here: https://mobilit-e2022.climatetransformed.com/

Tu and Lei speak with Dr. Maxwell Zhou, CEO of DeepRoute.ai, a 3-year-old 2nd wave autonomous vehicle (AV) startup.

They ask Maxwell the recent $10K AV system that DeepRoute launched using solid-state LiDAR, when robotaxis will be ubiquitous, and why Tesla doesn't use LiDAR?

A very candid, entertaining, and informative guest, Maxwell answers those questions and much, much more.

Tu & Lei kick off the pod with a brief overview of their chat with Aiways EVP - Alex Klose, Head of Overseas Operations, for Episode #2 of China EVs & More MAX.

Lei and Tu unpack the >$1B Great Wall Motors investment in Brazil to build hybrids and BEVs. Tu transitions this into a broader conversation about the three independent Chinese companies and how they seem to be even more ambitious than their SOE peers/brothers and how they think the current JVs will evolve and who will stand pat with their stakes in the JVS and JV partners.

Stellantis seems to be premature on their increased investment in the Stellantis GAC joint venture and points back to the history of challenges that the JV has had and how it’s created opportunities for Chinese domestic automakers, Great Wall in particular. 

Tu excitedly transitions the conversation over to the $7B GM investment in Michigan facilities and talks about his 1st job experience working at GM after graduating from university. 

Tu & Lei close out the pod talking Tesla’s earnings call this week, specifically how very little was said about China operations. 

Tu and Lei discuss the significance of CATL's launch of it EVOGO battery swap solution, the first major blockbuster news in China's EV, AV and mobility space in the new year. In particular, what it means to NIO and other OEMs as well as  the challenges that CATL could confront as it expands from a B2B battery supplier to a B2C battery swap solutions provider.

They then talk about Jidu's new logo and concept teaser, and close out the pod discussing policy updates on EV subsidies and purchase tax exemption. 

Tu and Lei speak with Dr. Alex Klose who led Aiways into 10 European markets over the last couple of years  ...during a pandemic! 

They ask Alex about the success factors for selling into the EU, who are Aiways customers, what their retail and charging strategy is, and much, much more. 

For those who want to understand what it takes to sell a Chinese EV in Europe, Tu and Lei talk to the guy that's doing it!

Lei starts off with a hammer, throwing all of the mindblowing numbers from China EV market from 2021. Tu & Lei marvel at how it really was an amazing year for EV adoption and growth. 

After the long discussion and unpacking of the statistics, Tu and Lei talk briefly discuss the history and catalysts that helped get the sector to where it is now. Inflection points like Tesla entering the market, NIO & XPeng launching, transitioning to Tesla then launching ShanghaiGiga and manufacturing vehicles locally. 

Tu moves onto how western media still tends to lump all of China EV Inc into the same bucket and argues that since the sector is market-driven, a more nuanced discussion needs to take place that includes, pricing segments, features, and positioning. 

Lei moves to discuss the media interview with current Volkswagen China CEO, Dr. Wollenstein, and his post-mortem on 2021. 

Lei and Tu then talk about the announcement of BYD and Nuro partnering to deliver autonomous delivery vehicles to be manufactured in California by BYD.

They close out the pod discussing U Power, an electric vehicle platform developer looking to find partners that can develop top hats for their platform and takeaways from U Power's keynote.   

In 2022's first episode of the year, Tu & Lei start out the pod with their thoughts on the mobility announcements that came out of CES. Tu believes that the rest of the world has finally woken up to China EV Inc.

Lei takes a few moments to opine on how the autonomous vehicle sector has really been pulled back into the spotlight and Tu adds that due to the dramatic reduction in costs of sensor HW, robotaxis could really become a 'thing' before 2025, or within the next 3 years. 

Winner in all of this - The chip companies: Mobileye (Intel), Nvidia, Qualcomm.

Lei moves on to December sales numbers with a brief explanation of why historically December numbers in China always seem to spike in good years. Despite the chip & battery shortage, most EV and traditional automakers hit record sales numbers. 

Tu ends the pod by listing his predictions for 2022 while Lei spends a few moments debating the 'whys' and the 'hows.' They both take the final few minutes of the pod to discuss how the elimination of JV requirements for foreign automakers and the new possibilities that could shape 2022. 

Tu and Lei start the pod with a discussion about the Waymo & Zeekr partnership announcement. 

They move on to a discussion about the elimination of the previous requirement by the Chinese govt. of foreign automakers to have a JV partner to enter the Chinese market and implications on what could happen in 2022 and beyond. It basically opens the market up to all different types of mashups between foreign and local players.

Lei discusses the overwhelming amount of news that's been generated over the course of 2021 and gives an example of all of the announcements for just the month of January 2021. 

Words that start with the letter 'S' played a strong role in the 2021 passenger vehicle market and Lei lists those terms which include: Shift, Software, Strategy, Speed, Smart, Sales, Service, Struggling, Small, and others.

Tu introduces the three categories that EV companies should be placed in moving forward. 
- Traditional Legacies
- EV first companies
- Tech players

Tu then summarizes his 12 most significant events of 2021 and Lei goes over his list. They then move on to a discussion on the battery supplier landscape. 

Lei closes out the episode by talking about what he expects to see in 2022. Tu will reveal his thoughts on 2022 are on in Episode 48. 

Tu and Lei start off this episode with a brief discussion on all of the news from NIO Day 2021 including their initial reaction to the ET5. Tu believes that the Tesla MIC Model 3 could have some serious competition between the NIO ET5 & the XPeng P5 in 2022. They then move on to the subscription services and AR/VR glasses that were announced at NIO Day and how it could enhance NIO's future offerings.

They move onto CATL's dominance in the battery cell manufacturing sector and how its competitors could create opportunities for themselves to compete with CATL in the future. 

Finally, Lei & Tu talk about how Huawei has moved even closer to building their own EVs with the AITO M5 being built by Seres and close out the pod talking Haomo, the latest Chinese AV startup unicorn that was spun-off of Great Wall Motor and still has a very close relationship with. 

Tu and Lei start this pod with a discussion on CAAM numbers and outlook for BYD & Chery. They then take a look ahead to 2022 and how the OEMs will deal with the current battery constraints and how they may bleed into 2022. 

Tu & Lei then give a bit of background on Niutron and its CEO, founder of NIU, and his colorful past which then pushes them into a broader discussion about the technology companies who've announced plans to enter the EV space.

Finally, Tu & Lei discuss the 9.98% stake that BAIC has in Daimler, how it got to that point and the significance of two Chinese OEMs owning almost 1/5 of one of Germany's most important companies. 

They close out the pod with a discussion on NIO Day 'Hello World' and speculate what you may see as part of NIO Day. 

Tu & Lei start this week's discussion about the recent Volkswagen Group news including new China CEO-elect Ralf Brandstatter joining in mid-2022 and the challenges ahead for the organization. 

They then move onto November & 2021 EV sales numbers for China and the US and China's projected 2022 sales numbers. And put to bed whether we've reached the tipping point for EV adoption in China. The answer is a very confident - YES!

They move onto the Ford Mustang Mach-E delays potentially causing the excitement and hence sales momentum from building. 

Tu notes that battery supply constraints could push battery prices up until supply/capacity has increased which may not happen until well into 2022.

Tu and Lei start the show with their thoughts on November sales. They also have a discussion of next year's predicted sales of up to 5M unit sales of NEVs and any constraints that could cause a hiccup to the continued growth.

They move on to how Pony and Baidu/Apollo were the first in China to receive the licenses in Beijing to charge for their robotaxi rides. A big step forward for both companies in the race to be first/best but also a big step forward for the city of Beijing beating Shanghai to be first.

Lei then unpacks Li Auto's Q3 earnings while discussing whether or not China's Big 3 (NIO, Li Auto, XPeng) would need to delist in the coming years due to the new rules for foreign companies listing in the US.

The last topic Tu and Lei discuss is news about Factorial Energy's recent partnership announcements with Mercedes and Stellantis and a broader discussion on the state of solid-state battery development.

Tu & Lei spend most of this episode unpacking all of the launches and news that came out of the Guangzhou auto show. 

They discuss the new EV brand from Great Wall Motors - Salon and its concept, the Mecha Dragon.

They also spend time discussing the:

- XPeng G9
- BYD Destroyer
- Voyah EMPV (Dream)
- Maxus MIFA 9
- Buick GL8 Concept
- Cadillac Lyriq
- Ford EVOS
- Lincoln Zephyr
- BMW iX
- Audi Q5 e-tron
- Mercedes EQA & EQB
- Toyota Corolla Cross
- Nissan e-Power

They close out the podcast with a discussion on XPeng's Q3 earnings and Q4 guidance, the Xiaomi EV, and the ID.3 battery leasing program that was just launched. 

Lei starts out the pod with how his trip to LA went along with his visit to the Rivian retails store in LA, he then moves onto the brands and product launches from the LA Auto show including the Chinese presence there. Tu and Lei discuss their 2,000th episode and their launch of China EVs & More MAX series with Henrik Fisker. 

Tu and Lei take a few moments to talk Foxconn’s MIH platform then Tu moves into XPeng’s domestic brand refresh and what he think it means for the company. They then take a few moments to chat about when you may see Chinese brands begin to invade US markets and how Vinfast, the Vietnamese car company is likely going to beat most of the Chinese brands on entering the US market.

They wrap up the pod talking about Baidu Apollo’s aggressive expansion plans for China, Always move into the Spain and Portuguese markets, Vollkswagen’s continuous China woes, and a hearty congratulations to Lucid Motors for winning the Motor Trend Car of the Year.

Lei sits down with Henrik Fisker to discuss his thoughts on charging, LiDAR, solid-state batteries, AV, China, and more...

Lei starts out the show with a number of announcements from the week including Rivian's IPO and his EQS test drive.

Lei & Tu talk about what they're looking ahead to at the LA & Guangzhou Auto shows. They then take a few moments to explain AVATR, Changan's new premium EV brand that both Huawei & CATL has invested in. 

Tu & Lei take a few minutes to review the automotive attendees of the China International Import Expo and then dive into October sales numbers and take a minute to debate what the low domestic Tesla Model 3 sales number means, if anything. 

Finally, Tu & Lei help introduce the HiPhi Z Digital GT and spend the rest of the show talking about what to expect for November & December sales numbers.

Lei declares that this is the 'Week of Big Bets!'

Tu and Lei unpack various automakers' September sales numbers and the overall outlook of the China EV market. They take a close look at Tesla reconciling sales vs. capacity and where they go next.

They then move onto NIO's move into Norway and how asset-heavy it seems to be. Tu and Lei close out the pod with a chat about Geely including Polestar's ambitious growth plans. 

Tu & Lei take the first few moments of the show to talk about VW's battery systems factory investment in Anhui Province and move on from there to also talk about NIO's announcement about their Iron Lithium hybrid battery.

They then discuss the highs and (current) lows of China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle group and what they expect may result from the parent's debt struggles. They then move on to discuss how Faraday Future has gone from a startup on the brink to one that seems fairly well capitalized and close to getting their flagship product, the FF91 finally on the road.

This episode starts out with a brief detour with Tu describing his trip to the newly opened Universal Studios. Tu & Lei then move on to unpacking how the XPeng P5 introduction will affect the mass-market (<300K RMB), smart EV segment. 

The discussion then transitions to electric vehicle consolidation that although hopeful, isn't likely to happen in any significant way for quite a while. Tu & Lei then talk about Foxconn's bold moves with MIH & Foxconn's own EV brand - Foxtron. 

The pod is closed by updating everyone on the current China Evergrande situation. 

Tu & Lei spend the first part of this episode briefly touching on August sales numbers and spend a bit more time on their thoughts on Tesla's sales and their export strategy - is Tesla crazy like a fox?

They then spend time discussing the products the re-branded Frankfurt Auto Show which was moved to Munich and is now called Internationale Automobil Ausstellung (IAA) Mobility because it now includes other forms of transport. The big announcements still came mostly from Germany's big three. Tu steps on his soapbox to explain that mobility does NOT mean more cars, whether they're EVs or not!

Finally, Tu & Lei briefly touch on what's behind XPeng's unicorn and Ford's hiring of Doug Fields from Apple. 

Tu & Lei start the show off with a recap of XPeng Q2'21 earnings and the effect of NIO's accident on He Xiaopeng's discussion about their ADAS solution during the call. They also go into how the launch of the XPeng P5 should affect XPeng's strategy and sales volume.

Tu & Lei briefly discuss the launch of Volkswagen's subscription services and then move on to a deep dive into China's state-owned enterprise (SOE)  premium 6 brands. Lei gives a quick history lesson on the 6 SOEs and how they've evolved till now.

Lei & Tu go through the week's major announcements about investments in the EV/AV space including with Cruise, Waymo, and Hesai. 

Tu also goes through the announced investments into EVs from the legacies and the implications from those announcements. 

Tu & Lei get into details about the struggles that Polestar and VW are having selling their EVs in China. 

***We apologize for the technical challenges we had recording this episode.***

Lei and Tu go over August sales numbers for China's current Big 5 of NIO, Li Auto, XPeng, Neta, and Leap Motor. 

Tu & Lei then move over to Li Auto's Q2 earnings and how the EV makers are starting to broaden their product portfolios with some moving up-market and some down covering the 150K-500K RMB band or what's the 'meat' of China's passenger vehicle segment. 

They spend some time to go over what was or wasn't unveiled at the Chengdu Motor show with Lei giving a bit of a history lesson on how important Chengdu the city and the Motor show has been historically to China. 

Finally, Tu & Lei discuss the seemingly constant stream of new brands being established in the EV space and how they think it may affect the sector. 

In Episode 27, Tu & Lei take a few minutes to unpack the July sales numbers from the CPCA & CAAM and the roots of the NEV sales surge. Tu & Lei also spend a few minutes to discuss Tesla's surprising numbers for July. 

Lei summarizes the most significant news coming out of NIO's earnings calls including the confirmation of a mass-market brand as well as 3 new products scheduled for launch before the end of 2022. 

Finally, Tu and Lei summarize the policy announcements made regarding utilizing OTA to update autonomous driving features as well as the restrictions on data collection and sharing.

In this episode, Tu & Lei unpack all of the announcements that came out of the Baidu AI World Conference. 

They also discuss NIO's recent ES8 accident that involved NIO's version of an autonomous driving system - Navigation on Pilot (NOP). Are the names for these L2 ADAS features misleading - they have an important debate about that. 

They finally have a discussion on Tesla's NHTSA investigation into their Autopilot feature.

July sales numbers have been released so Tu & Lei go over them and discuss the standpoints and the headscratchers. There is word that BYD & Tesla have been talking about working together and BYD supplying their blade battery to the US EV maker.

Finally, the US is finally making its pivot to EVs and is bringing it's ambitions to match with a 50% of total sales by 2030 goal. How will unions play a role in achieving that goal, they discuss that as well.

Lei & Tu spend the first part of this episode talking about Stellantis, NIO, and VW Group's electrification strategies and how China will play a major role. They also try to make sense of all of the aggressive 2025 sales targets being announced by some of the major OEMs.

They spend the last part of this episode deep diving on Leap Motor and discussing what's happening at WM Motor, an EV startup many thought would be a difference-maker.
#ChinaEVandmore #SinoAutoInsights #NIO #VWGroup #Stellantis #2025 #NEVs #bignumbers #LeapMotor #WMMotor 

Tu & Lei get busy this week with XPeng finally launching specific pricing for it's recently announced P5 sedan and there is a lot for them to debate. Mercedes closely follows VW last week with their electrification plans and when they plan to be ALL-electric.

Tu & Lei also take some time to talk about the drama that has historically followed founder of Faraday Future, Jia Yueting, till this week when Faraday became a US publicly-traded company. Now the hard work begins for them!

Tu & Lei talk about the media outlet that crashed a BYD Han which caught fire after 48 hours and BYD's reaction to the news hitting Chinese social media. They also debate whether the Huawei exec that made a controversial statement about Tesla should be fired or not. 

Finally, they unpack the sodium-ion battery that CATL made an announcement about this week. Will this ultimately help them with sales in the near term? Is it a game-changer?

In this episode, Tu & Lei talk about how the Tesla recall may actually have benefited them in China. They also unpack the monster ambitions that Great Wall Motors has laid out via their 2025 sales forecasts. Finally, Tu and Lei break down what to expect from the Didi US IPO and all the excitement that's been built up because of it.

In this episode, Tu and Lei break down what's really happening with the Didi situation and what this could mean to other ride-hailing firms as well as smart EV companies. 

Lei goes over June sales numbers and the expected sales growth for the rest of this year and finally, Tu talks about attending AutoX's Gen 5 launch in Shanghai.

In this episode, Tu & Lei debate VW brand's current sales struggles in China and Audi's Bold 2033 EV announcement that excludes China. 

They also bring in Will Sundin from China Driven to discuss Tu & Will's visits to Baidu's Apollo robotaxi depot in Yizhuang - What they did, saw, and overall thoughts of the technology.  

Finally, Will and Tu take us through their time at Evoke Motorcycles, an electric motorcycle startup based in Beijing, and their chat with Nathan Siy and Sebastian Chrobok, the founders.  

In this episode, Lei and Tu talk autonomous vehicles. They discuss Pony.ai, Didi, and break down the current partnership landscape between the AV startups, manufacturers, and ride-hailing companies and talk through how these partnerships are going to work. 

Lei highlights how the local chip startups could compete and ultimately dominate the local China market.

Finally, Tu takes a few minutes to discuss the potential challenges ahead for Foxconn as they get into the automotive manufacturing business as they partner with Byton, Fisker, Faraday Future, and others.

In this week's episode, Lei discusses the surprise shuffle and newbies entering the top 5 in sales, Tu & Lei give an update on Jidu Auto (the Baidu & Geely partnership), and the Three Child policy and how that may affect the automotive sector.

In this episode, Tu and Lei talk about what to takeaway from the rumored Apple meeting with Chinese battery suppliers BYD & CATL. Tu also discusses his time participating in a live Mobility panel in Shanghai with over 40 people in attendance. 

Finally, Tu and Lei also take a few minutes to discuss some China EV CEO's comments during an automotive conference and prospects for the Didi (China's Uber) IPO.

Lei & Tu get into more detail about the upgraded Li One and Li selecting Horizon Robotics as their future chip partner. They also discuss the announcement by Tesla to open their own data centers in Shanghai and the lack of a data strategy from other foreign OEMs. Finally, Tu & Lei add commentary on the Ford (+) strategy and how their China strategy was left out of the announcement and much more...

In this week's episode, Tu & Lei go over April's EV sales numbers for the China market, one that has historically been a slow month. 

They also discuss Tesla's continuing sales struggles, the recent data security standards administration, the Qihoo 360 & JD.com partnership, and finally XPeng March earnings. 

Tu & Lei have some fun with the latest on the Tesla protest-gate at #AutoShanghai2021 and talk about whether NIO way to Norway could be their way to the rest of the EU. 

They also discuss Skyworth, the Chinese brand known for TVs in China, entering the EV sector.

In a Labor Day shortened show, Tu & Lei unpack all the news that came out of 'NIO' Day in Norway and Tu talks about his domestic travels in China during China's 5 day Labor Day holiday. 

Tu & Lei analyze and the numbers from CQ1'21 China auto sales before getting into the vehicles that were launched and the buildup to #AutoShanghai2021. 

In this episode, Tu & Lei discuss how packing technology into EVs becomes the norm in China and play out how the Chinese tech companies change the EV game for the OEMs & EV startups.

Tu also discusses his trip to Changzhou to visit Niu, China's most innovative electric moped company. He deep dives a bit about the market, tries out their new products and visits their brand new factory.

For this week's episode, we talk Shanghai Auto Show focusing on announcements and product reveals from the foreign automakers.

In this week's episode, Tu & Lei continue their talk about the Shanghai Auto Show focusing on announcements and product reveals from the domestic automakers, technology companies, and EV startups.