China EVs & More MAX Episode #5 (ME) - Elliot Richards, Fully Charged East Asia Correspondent

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. 

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Transcript

CEM MAX #5 Elliot Richards, East Asia Correspondent, Fully Charged
Recorded March 21, 2022

Tu Le:
Hi everyone, Tu Le here, one-half of the China EVs & More duo. Lei and I are always thinking about different ways to bring you, our audience, relevant and compelling content about the China EV, AV and mobility sectors. Especially now that several companies that we’ve tracked over the last 50+ episodes have become global phenomenon. 

China EVs & More MAX is where we bring you special content, in the form of conversations we have with special guests from those sectors. 

Tu Le:
First of all, Elliot, thank you for joining us. We've been fans of yours for a long time. I think, right when you started, I kind of learned about Fully Charged and saw your video. And so I’ve been following you since. I don't know about Lei, but I think…

Lei Xing:
Same here. 

Tu Le:
Yeah, you are kind of, I feel we're all the same. We're all advocates trying to shine a spotlight because it needs to be shined. And I really do think that without people like us, it would be a total shock for Europe and the U.S. to just not be able to see or at least get an understanding of western people that speak English natively, talking about how impressed they are with what's going on in China, in the EV sector. So I think you're doing a great job from the standpoint of highlighting the actual vehicles. So that's really cool.

Elliot Richards:
Thank you and thank you for having me on today. It's an honor for me to go on this podcast with you guys. I think you guys are some of the most prominent experts in the kind of China EV space. 

Tu Le:
Thank you!

Elliot Richards:
I've learned a lot from you guys as well. Because I certainly don't know everything, but you guys have a super in-depth knowledge about what's going on. And usually quick to scoop the stories as well. So it's always good to log into twitter and see what you guys are talking about.

Tu Le:
We make it up as we go along. So I wanted, because of the current situation that we are in, we would normally just ask you to introduce yourself, and then we'd roll right into it. But maybe you can start with introducing yourself first and then tell us what your current situation is at your home and in Shanghai.

Elliot Richards:
Yeah of course. So I'm Elliot Richards. I have been the East Asian Correspondent for Fully Charged for about nearly two years now. And I’ve been living in China for nearly 13 years now. So I lived in Beijing for four years and the rest of the time in Shanghai. I got into the whole EV space by just initially shooting videos by myself about Chinese electric cars and then Fully Charged’s Robert Llewellyn got in touch with me and said, hey, how do you fancy making some videos for us? And then the rest is history really, I went from 2,000 views to 200,000 views in a few weeks. That was pretty amazing. I'm currently in Shanghai. Unfortunately, we are in March 2022, and we are in another COVID lockdown, which two years after the pandemic broke out is a bit of a shock, really, and a bit of a shame that we're still doing this. So I’ve been locked down now for 4 days since Friday. I've done three tests. I've got one more test tomorrow, hopefully they’ll let us out on Wednesday, but we don't know yet. But it's having pretty big ramifications, not for my life so much, but in terms of the industry, isn't it?

Tu Le:
Yes. There's a lot of uncertainty. There's prices being raised by dozens of EV manufacturers, although two prominent ones recently announced that they won't be yet as Lei had eloquently stated in his tweet earlier today or last night...

Lei Xing:
And I've become a hater, already.

Tu Le:
He's made it, he's made it.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, I’ve made it, but, you know, it’s déjà vu right? 2020 Beijing Auto Show, it was delayed and you would never think that the same thing would happen two years later, right? That’s the…

Elliot Richards:
That's what we're looking at, isn't it? We're looking at what the Beijing Auto Show is in 5 weeks, I think, 4 or 5 weeks.

Tu Le:
Four weeks.

Lei Xing:
Pretty much, a month, exactly. Today's March 21, supposed to start on April 21, so.

Elliot Richards:
The chances of that going ahead are so slim at the moment, given that half of Shanghai can’t move, can't leave the city. We might not be able to leave for another two weeks. I think it can't go ahead.

Tu Le:
There were rumors that it was going to get moved to summertime or something like that.

Lei Xing:
June, I heard it was going to be June.

Tu Le:
But there are other car shows, right? Yeah, there are other car shows.

Lei Xing:
Yeah I mean this whole year planning of marketing activities is all messed up because you have product launch cadences and then right?

Tu Le:
And we all know corporate communications people at these EV companies, they must be pulling their hair out, because they've probably planned for these pre-launch bread crumbs up until the auto show. Now they're kind of, sort of stuck in limbo, right?

Lei Xing:
I'm wondering the standalone events, for example, the Jidu Robo Day, they could still go on, right, as a standalone event, right?

Elliot Richards:
Sure. I think they'll switch to a lot of, like standalone events just for the brands, if they can.

Tu Le:
But it's unfortunate for those companies like Jidu, though, because they're still new. So they need the amplification from being around, because NIO obviously doesn't need any auto show to help it. And Xpeng doesn't need any. Li Auto because they only have one product, I would say that they do need that amplification because they haven't been in the news cycle that much, but I think we're maybe getting ahead of ourselves. So can you tell us a little bit about Fully Charged since it’s a global show?

Elliot Richards:
Sure. So I don't know if you guys are familiar with Robert Llewellyn, but in the UK he's pretty well known. He used to host a TV show called Scrapheap Challenge. I used to watch it as a kid and went to junk yards, had a challenge to build a, I don't know, like a three-wheel motorbike to drive over a hill or something, out of scrap metal. He was a host of that for many many years, and then he was also on a cult TV show called Red Dwarf, which is massively popular in the UK, I think, don't know if it got really over to the U.S.

Tu Le:
No. Never heard of it.

Elliot Richards:
It's very niche, but it's massive in the UK, so he was the host of that, and about, it was actually just over 10 years ago, he started reviewing kind of electric cars. So the very first electric car reviewed was the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, didn't have much range, was the first electric car. And there's one charging point in the whole of the UK to charge that car. He started making videos by himself which were only put in his channel, and then it kind of started building a lot of momentum. He got other people on board to help out with the channel. Then they got another like a few presenters to help out. Then it all kind of snowballed into to what it is now. So it's two videos a week. It covers everything from green energy to, everything to do with sustainability, basically. The motto is stop burning stuff. So car reviews are obviously a big part of that, because they really are the most popular, but they try and cover kind of everything, cars, buses, trains, solar panels, windmills, the whole lot. And now they've got these huge events in the UK and they've got an event in Australia, one in America and one in the Netherlands coming up this year. So kind of a live event where brands come along, showcase what they've got, so much cars, but also sustainable kind of products.

And then they have that talks as well from Robert and some of the other presenters. It's kind of snowballed from something very small by one man and a camera to many many presenters all over the world, including me.

Tu Le:
Yeah, that's great. That's awesome, because the UK take rate is actually pretty high, I think, for NEVs. So I think it's over 40% last year, so pretty significant. I think there's over 42,000 charging stations in the UK right now. So it's not insignificant, but Lei, you have a question?

Lei Xing:
One of the events you mentioned, actually, I saw some chatter, I think it was held last year, right? It was in the UK.

Elliot Richards:
That’s right.

Lei Xing:
I remember that chatter. Elliott, were you always a car guy? What were some of your favorite cars growing up? And maybe me and Tu we can share our answers.

Elliot Richards:
So I have always been a car guy since very young, basically. I was, well, before I started Fully Charged, I would have called myself a petrol head, 100% obsessed with cars and V8 engines and anything to do with cars, racing, the whole lot I've been obsessed with. I built model cars when I was younger like a small…

Tu Le:
He decided to be an architect. 

Elliot Richards:
That’s right I decided to be an architect. I think I needed to find a job which paid me money, so I could live out my kind of car fantasy. It kind of didn't really pan out that way. I'm not an architect now. So, yeah, so you built like these small cars, went to races with my dad, and never actually owned decent cars though. My first car was a Fiat Punto which is a kind of a small run around. It was pretty rubbish actually, is was about 60 horsepower, 1.2 liter, two cylinder, it was awful, but it was fine when I was 17. So but luckily, my dad, my dad was quite…

Tu Le:
Was that a “hand me down” or did you buy that yourself?

Elliot Richards:
My parents bought it for me. It was secondhand. It was about £3,000. It's a very cheap car, but it was fine. Got me from A to B, didn't go very fast, which was good. And my dad had, he had kind of nicer cars. So when he was growing up, he had a Triumph Spitfire. And he had like an Opel Monza, I think it's called. And then in recent years I got a Mazda Miata or MX-5, which is quite good fun. I got to drive that as well. So I’ve been obsessed with cars my whole life. Even now I’m still obsessed with just looking at cars, on the internet. It's a bit sad, really. But…
 
 

Tu Le:
How many WeChat groups are you in with petrol heads, and EVs, I’m in at least a dozen just…

Elliot Richards:
Too many, too many. Too distracting.

Lei Xing:
I'll tell you, I haven't always been a car guy. So the first car that I’ve really got to known was the Jeep Cherokee 2500. So my uncle is, one of my uncles was one of the first to get rich in the family, so he bought one of the very first locally-made Jeep Cherokee that was in the late 80s. So I was about, in 1989 or 1990, 12 or13 years-old and I used to ride in the very back, not in the second row, but in the almost like in the trunk. So that's how I got to know my first car. And here in the U.S. I went to high school and college. My sister and brother-in-law, they got their first car was a Toyota Tercel, I don't know whether you've heard of it. It's a hatchback, manual. They bought it for $400. They own it for a few weeks, and then it got stolen. And they were heartbroken, stolen like this. This was in the early 90s, $400 for like a nice little car, that was, awesome. And then the first car I’ve owned, I think, was a used Toyota Supra, I think it was the 1987 Toyota Supra …

Elliot Richards: 
The wedgy …….

Tu Le:
You were a stud, Lei!

Lei Xing:
No I bought it from my brother-in-law, he sold it. I mean they bought a lot of used cars. 

Elliot Richards:
That's good taste. 

Lei Xing:
Yeah, and then in China, when I lived in China, my first car was the first-generation Hyundai Tucson, manual, 2.0L, four wheel drive, manual Hyundai Tucson made by Beijing-Hyundai in 2006.

Elliot Richards:
Quite a varied history there!

Tu Le:
For me, first of all, I grew up in Pontiac, Michigan, I didn't grow up in Detroit proper. Most people will not recognize outside of Michigan in the Midwest. They won't recognize Pontiac, but Pontiac was a brand owned by General Motors, and I lived, if you both can recall the Pontiac Fiero, I lived about a mile away from that factory. So I remember when I was about 8 or 9 years old, my dad had a station wagon, the Catalina, in the back seats folded backwards. And so me and my brother would sit in the back looking out towards the cars behind us. We took that thing to Florida, a 3-day trip to Florida driving, and then we took it like 45 days driving to California, because I have such a big family that my dad couldn't afford to buy us all plane tickets. So we drove like caravan style to California and Florida.

Lei Xing:
I've had that experience as well.

Tu Le:
Yeah, it's great though. It was so fun kind of like looking back on it because we drove through Saint Louis, got to see the arch, Grand Canyon like that was awesome. When you're a little kid, the sense of time doesn't kind of matter. And so the first time I remember kind of seeing the car, my brothers were just out of high school, and they were working, they bought a used Dodge Colt that was rusted out for $200. They spent another $200 to mondo it up and paint it with this red color, but it wasn't shiny red. It was like bando, so it's almost like a matte red. And I remember getting in there, I'm thinking you know it's probably 8 or 9 years old. I'm thinking that's cool. And my leg hits the stick. The freaking rolls down, the driveway, and my brother are freaking out, because there's a car at the end of the driveway and we were about to hit it and they ran back. I just that was kind of my first memory. And then when I was in college, my brother and I shared, I had just hand me downs left and right. My brother had a Firebird SE, the driver's side door didn't work. There was no radio because it got stolen, air conditioner didn't work, one of the lights been broken. So when we went to drive it, we had to crawl through the passenger door. And one time we drove it, we went on a road trip and we didn't check the oil. And it broke down on us in the middle of the highway. We had to call one of my friends, and they called these idiots because there's like literally no oil in the Firebird. So anyways, Elliot, go ahead Lei.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, let me, there's a couple of more. Let's get back on the interviews. What's the best product that you've test driven? I think I might have an answer. But what is the worst? Maybe not the worst, but relatively not as impressive. What would you say?

Elliot Richards:
Should we start with the worst?

Tu Le:
And maybe you can start with the vehicle you own, and then we can talk about the cars you've driven for review. 

Elliot Richards:
Sure, I own an Xpeng G3. So one of the very first ones, it does what it says on the tin. It's fine by me, gets from A to B, decent boot space, decent space for my family, cheap to run. I think it's relatively good looking from the front. I think it's a bit weird looking from the back, but I don't really care because it’s the kind of family car. It came with a free Shanghai number plate, which is the most important thing, and that saved me what, RMB100,000 so that was roughly a quite compelling reason to get the car. I've got the G3, I’ve had that for over 2 years now. So at the end of this year, I would have had it for 3 years. So I’ll probably be looking at changing it then. But we can come back onto that later. In terms of the cars I’ve driven some truly truly dreadful cars, not many I’ve done for reviews, but I think one of the worst is probably the Roewe or what they are called, they keep changing the name. Yes the Roewe, the recent Ei5 saloon car.

Tu Le:
That’s like the taxi in Shanghai.

Elliot Richards:
That's right. They've got this. They got the taxi version which is quite basic spec which is fine, but they've got this kind of I called it the consumer version, which has got this like awful fake leather on the inside, it’s almost literally in purple, and you just know that someone in SAIC said my granny likes that, so let's put it in the car. And it's just there's so many different ideas in there, it's just like what's going on. And then the drive is pretty boring, it’s just uninspiring, right?

Tu Le:
It's an EV, right?

Elliot Richards:
Yeah, uninspiring. It’s just a dull car, there is so many cars for the same price that you could go for, so I just don't know why people and that's why it's only reused for DiDi cars, because no one actually in their mind is going to buy one of those. That's probably the worst, one of the worst, the other one. And I don't want to diss them too much, because I think they're having a bit of a hard time, but the Weltmeister, it just, it’s fine, it's the same price as my Xpeng G3. But I just think the whole packaging, how it looks, the name the brand they just got so many things wrong where Xpeng got them right. Because they were at one point, I know you guys were talking about like the Big Three being NIO, Xpeng and WM because they were comparable in sales.

Tu Le:
Two years ago that was kind of the Big Three, right, supposedly, right?

Elliot Richards:
So apparently, but now they disappeared almost

Tu Le:
Yeah Lei and I have talked about it. They've had a lot of management changes. I think the EX5, is that the one you drove? I think that was, when it came out, I don't think it could compete with the G3 feature wise, and they never really got really aggressive with sales and marketing to the point where they could resonate, because Xpeng was always in the news, NIO was always in the news, and then Li Auto came a little bit later. But NIO and Li Auto should be in the same category, and WM and Xpeng should be in the same category. But Xpeng is light years ahead.

Lei Xing:
It’s surprising that WM Motor, Freeman, he's a traditional car guy. So he's been on the supplier part, but he's been with Geely. So it's surprising that with that kind of a background and experience that this hasn't turned out as well. 

Elliot Richards:
Yeah, it's just so cutthroat, isn’t it, at the moment? So you just fall out of favor so quickly.

Tu Le:
It was just kind of blah, huh?

Elliot Richards:
It's very blah like the tech, the features and, especially the way it looked. In terms of comparing that to say legacy automakers overseas, it was a few years ahead, but I think some of them have already caught up. So like the VW ID. series, I think they would have already caught up with the Weltmeister. So I just don't think they were pushing it, and they kind of just got forgotten about. And then if you ask my best driving experience or best product, it's not something that’s sold on the, you can buy unless you've got very deep pockets. But what do you think? I'm going to say?

Elliot Richards:
I thought you were going to say the ET7 for sure.

Elliot Richards:
Yeah, the ET7 is very good, but, it’s just incredibly competent. And the best EV I think that China brand or China EVs has made, that's the pinnacle at the moment. I think they've done so much. 

Tu Le:
You are going to say the HiPhi X aren't you?

Elliot Richards:
No way. I mean I liked it. It was an amazing looking car and great packaging, but it's just too complicated. And as soon as one thing goes wrong, it’s going to be in the garage for 2 weeks when they're trying to figure out…

Tu Le:
When you say too complicated. Are you saying the screens, the UX or becuase I didn't get a chance to drive it, but I went to the retail store, and he was showing me all the stuff. And I was like, I was kind of blown away, and I was a little confused. And then he walks me to the front of the car, and it does that whole doors open and closing, lights are blinking. I'm like, whoa, what's this?

Elliot Richards:
It's the whole user experiences. They try to do too much. They try to package every single piece of tech they can into one car, even if it's not quite ready. So the screens there, one of them was a little bit laggy. The menus were a little bit complicated. The key is one of the probably worst piece of design I’ve ever seen. It was, to open the doors, they got like six buttons on it and not labeled. You got to double click on the side and the doors open. But if you don't double click, it won’t open and you can't open the boot and it's just, it was way too complicated. Just think just have a simple key with three buttons on it. And that kind of summed up the overall car, great drive, ridiculously fast for such a big car. Back seats were a bit, the third row seats weren't very good, but it was just trying to do too much, I think, as they learn with their next model, hopefully they'll make it slightly less complicated, and a bit more sensible. But we'll see, hopefully later this year when they release that.

Tu Le:
Let me ask you this really quickly, Elliot, about the NIO versus the HiPhi, because they're truly two of the only luxury/premium domestic EV companies in China. Right? Now, would you say HiPhi is more premium or more luxury and NIO more luxury or premium? I mean how would you, like if we're dialing 50/50, what would you say? Because I think HiPhi, although they position themselves as being very high tech, it seems more luxurious than a NIO, right? At least in my opinion.

Elliot Richards:
Yeah, I think they kind of, I would say HiPhi is probably going for more premium market than NIO cause simply that the starting price is what, RMB650,000. Some of the features and the tech, they're going all guns blazing for kind of that super luxury market, whether it works or not, I don't know. But at almost in markets like Shanghai, I wouldn't say NIO is common, but it's a lot more common than the HiPhi X, it’s almost seen as a car for kind of your everyday car that you go about with the HiPhi X is kind of seen as this luxury car, which is you've either got to have, you got to be a big boss, you need that champagne holder in the back, or you've got a big family who needs all of that space in that ridiculous package to go that faster. I think that I don't know if time will tell if they'll actually be able to hold that position. Because what NIO is doing is remarkable. And if HiPhi X can't keep up with the next car, then they’ll quickly slip behind. I think at the moment that they holding that ultra-luxury kind of premium, kind of sector by themselves.

Lei Xing:
So do we have a final answer of the best car? I don't think you've said it yet.

Elliot Richards:
Let me give you two answers. So the best driving experience was the NIO EP9, right? Of course, it’s just such a visceral experience and kind of, let me know that you really don't need a thump in a great big V8 to get that same kind of thrill, the sound of electric motors inside, you can't hear yourself. It's so loud. 

Tu Le:
It's like screaming, it's just screaming, right? 

Elliot Richards:
Yeah. It's screaming, it’s screaming like, I said like a jet fighter, because it's just all around you and you can't, it's just continuously building up by the sound. It doesn't let off. So that was exciting. But if I had to pick a good, my favorite car, I think it’s probably the Polestar 2.

Tu Le:
Which is pretty affordable, I think, right?

Elliot Richards:
Yeah, I think it's around RMB200,00 or RMB300,000.

Tu Le:
I thought you were going to bring up a really expensive car. That's why I mentioned the HiPhi. I drove one (Polestar 2) for half a day, the torque is out of this world, the regenerative braking takes a little bit to get used to, the interior was a little too simple for me. The UX was okay, not a lot of features that half a day that I could kind of play with, that I thought was very clever, but I agree it's a competent car. That's pretty nice, especially for the price, especially being built in China. But it has some challenges selling here.

Elliot Richards:
It's not sold well at all here, which is such a shame because it is, I think it's a very, very good car. Does everything you want it to, it doesn't do anything extra, so the HiPhi, it doesn't have X number of screens or anything like that. The driving experience is fantastic. You can just cruise along the motorway. You can act like a hooligan. I had the performance version for a week. And if you put your foot down, it does fly. And I quite like it in Shanghai because everyone drives a Tesla Model 3 here, everyone. It's like you can't go more than two minutes without seeing a Tesla Model 3 and that's why it kind of really stands out. I suppose it appealed to my European sensibilities, which is why I quite like it.

Lei Xing:
Poststar 2 actually, my wife likes it very much, because before we came over to the U.S. we owned a Renault Megane II that was selling very well in the mid 2000s in China as an import. So she liked that kind of a short trunk style, styling sedan. So the next question, since I’ve asked you your opinion on the best and the worst, when you do these shows, how do you balance criticality versus PR. How can you be too critical? And still…

Tu Le:
I’m going to give you an out, Elliot, because your English, so I think you English people seem to be more proper as Americans, we're just like I'm going to bash this thing right now. This is terrible, awful, but like English people say this thing sucks in the nicest way possible.

Elliot Richards:
It’s so true. It's separated by insulting people, isn't it? We say these comments, but actually means we really hate you, right? So I think it's very difficult because PR companies have their agenda, and I think for what I’m trying to do here, I’m not here to really bash any of the cars because it doesn't really serve the purpose of what we're trying to do. What we're trying to do is to get more people to drive EVs as opposed to drive ICE cars. I don't think it does us any favors to trash any car unless it is truly dreadful. Maybe I’m a bit too positive sometimes, the reactions I have are genuinely real. And then the good thing is we're not financed by the companies, we are not paid by any of these companies to do any of these reviews, but completely independent, so it does give me a kind of a good way out of, I could say, maybe I can say that this thing needs an improvement or this thing needs an improvement. And I think these are companies that are listening and they're willing to make those changes very quickly. So you tell Xpeng that this feature is a bit crap, then they will adjust it for the next version. So we try not to listen too much to the PR guff. And we try and take a very independent kind of view on things. And I think we've managed to do that so far, although it’s always a challenge. And it's going to continue to be a challenge as well. I think the companies do need to be called out sometimes in terms of their, the lack of sustainability, I think that they just throw these cars together without much thought or care about what they're actually doing.

It's like we built an EV and it only cost $6,000 or whatever, well, did you really need to do that if you spent another $2,000, could you've had a more sustainable car that could be recycled or whatever? So we're all on the journey. These cars, the industry is changing so quickly. That kind of reaction time to what people say. It is much faster than back home. So hopefully, that's kind of a good perspective that we can give to these PR companies as well.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, from my experience, I think these startups, especially NIOs, Li Autos, and Xpengs, they're actually very good at listening to the critical comments and making changes very quickly like lLi Auto’s Li Xiang, he's sort of like the Chinese Elon Musk where he tweets out interesting comments that might irk people, but they listen to their customers and they make changes to their features very quickly. So I think it's much easier to talk with these startups in terms of PR and being critical. And they don't mind. But some of the more legacy ones, I think they're still in that kind of a PR…

Tu Le:
There's a couple things going on here, right? Because the companies that we're talking about, they all they were born on social media, right? They got their reputations from social media. And I think I’m not talking NIO or Xpeng per se, but some of these newer EV companies to have Elliot record a 20-minute video about their cars, probably a huge deal, still, right? I think even for NIO, I’m not saying that it's not a big deal for NIO, because it is for you to record such a glowing review about the ET7, but they'll take it and Lei, and you know this Elliot, I'm sure you probably have to deal with it on your side of things, man, it's okay that there might be something that needs to be improved. Right? But the other thing, too, about Li Auto, NIO and Xpeng. A week later, a software update could improve that thing, right? Whereas the legacies it would take the next model year likely, right? Unfortunately, it's just a different world because there are teams of people on the communications. And then they have an external PR agency, right? So they have an internal comms team, and then a PR agency. And sometimes you're dealing with both of them and you're like you know what, I just wanted to talk to this guy, right? Like, because that's the whole thing Elliot. I think the three of us, we're not trying to gotcha anybody, right? It's amazing to see how they want this perfect image when social media doesn't allow for it.

Elliot Richards:
Well yeah, in China, it almost does because I think there's a lot, it's not just China, but there's a lot of pay to play, right? So you've got to pay this influence to whatever amount of money. They said, don't talk about the wonky steering wheel, don't talk about the things that are falling off, right? And so they can.

Tu Le:
Edit that out.

Elliot Richards:
Yeah. So they raise that kind of, that is quite prevalent. So that's why there are a few that kind of try and rise above that. And I think we all kind of try and give out honest opinions as much as we can. 

Lei Xing:
That's the goal.

Tu Le:
Here's a fun question for you. Out of all these cars that you've reviewed for Fully Charged and that you've just seen and driven. What's the craziest feature you've run into that you're like, why would they do this? Or this is totally cool. Every car needs it.

Elliot Richards:
There's two features, actually. I think the first one would be, do you remember the Qiantu K50, the Qiantu? I've got a really soft spot in my heart for that car because as a British person we quite like the underdog. And they've done something that quite a lot of kind of small British manufacturers have done as well. So like TVR, maybe like Noble, they kind of build these small volume sports cars and they have some sort of success. And I think what those guys have done is doing that, but they've also got a massive factory which is kind of their downfall. But I got soft spots for the car and anyway, on that steering wheel, pretty normal steering wheel, they have a big red button, and it says Turbo, and I don't know what it does. But they said, when you press it, so you're doing, let's say you got your foot down on the floor. You're doing as fast as you can, which is pretty quick. They say, if you press the Turbo button, it goes even faster. I said, why have you got a Turbo button on an electric car? Why not just build it inside the acceleration already? Why do I have to press a button? But when I'm concentrating you know going very quickly, press a Turbo button, but then I think it's quite a cool feature, completely pointless, but that's probably the…

Tu Le:
A little cartoonish. 

Lei Xing:
It's like one of those engine star/stop button on an EV right?

Elliot Richards:
Exactly!

Tu Le:
What's like calling the Taycan a turbo, right?

Elliot Richards:
Yeah, exactly!

Tu Le:
One of my constructive criticisms about this Qiantu because they had those coffee shops. Remember Elliot? And I went in there the door like not that heavy, but it was like leaning down. It was like it was creek and like I open the door to get into the car and I was like uh. And then clearly you could see that the paint was uneven. So there's a shiny spot, and there's a dull spot of the paint. So anyway it's, constructive criticism, but they are having some problems, but you were going to say another car?

Elliot Richards:
It has to be the HiPhi X right, with the ridiculous doors, and the light show in the LEDs, I mean who needs that? Why don't they spend 1,000 less hours doing that and 1,000 more hours on fixing the screen on the inside or fixing how the key works. I just think they just daft. That's just weird features that you don't really need. But those gimmicks are things which make themselves sometimes in China, people like those gimmicks, the light shows and your Tesla Model X doesn't have a like an LED screen which shows people walking across it so I’m going to buy you a HiPhi X.

Lei Xing:
Progressiveness. That's the word Dr. Wollenstein (CEO of Volkswagen Group China) used, progressiveness. 

Tu Le:
You know this Elliott living in Shanghai, bling city China, there are a lot of young consumers that are turned on by that here, right? Like see that flashiness, right? Because you live in the flashiest city in China, so.

Elliot Richards:
Those things sell and I think they sell even better in like Guangdong Province, they like a lot LEDs as you can see from all their buildings, which are lit up at night with multi-colored LEDs. But if it's what sells, it sells.

Tu Le:
I have to give you a call once their hatchback, what's the hatchback called, it's called the Z right?

Lei Xing:
Z.

Tu Le:
Because there's LEDs on the outside that you can like turn into words. I don't know if you saw that.

Elliot Richards:
Oh no. I mean as a recipe for disaster, especially in an overseas market, I think you can really tell people what you think when they cut you up on the motorway.

Lei Xing:
So next question on the quality image of Chinese brands, what are your thoughts over the two years that you've been testing these cars? And what are the biggest misconceptions from the West? You being a Westerner in China? What can you say about that?

Elliot Richards:
I think it's going to be the standard thing about quality, longevity, reliability. Can these products from China really stand up to the test of time, will it al fall apart in my hands and very early on, I think we've seen that just isn't the case. This isn't 10 or 15 years ago where you've got Chery QQ with bumpers fall off. Those days are long behind us. And I think that unfortunately, people's kind of perceptions of, as we've seen from the iPhone, most electronic products that are made now are very, very high quality. And that's coming through in the cars even more today.

So I think people's perceptions are changing. I think we mentioned this when we spoke previously, but MG, the famous brand in the UK which had terrible problems of reliability towards the end of its life under British ownership, I might add, has now been reborn as a Chinese company with a British edge. And the cars don't have any reliability problems anymore and it helps that they're all electric or mostly all electric. But I think brands like that have really changed people's perception of buying Chinese, and they have kind of laid the path for the new startups to hopefully have a successful entry into the UK and I think as soon as any consumer sits in, whether it being MG or NIO or BYD you can instantly say this is very different to what I thought it would be, and the quality is up there with the German brands or the American brands. I think that as soon as people see them, they'll change their mind pretty quickly. And I think the with EVs, the whole longevity and reliability thing, it's already been proven that they're very good already. And I think the fact that Polestar which is marketing itself as an European brand built in China says a lot for the quality of what China can produce now.

Lei Xing:
And Teslas made in China, right? And interesting thing you point out, I think one word that comes to mind is probably consistency. And I’m saying that because you've just mentioned the Ei5 from Roewe from the same SAIC Motor that builds this competent MG for export to the UK right? That's the consistency part of it, which may still need some work to do. But overall, it's a different era in terms of quality, right?

Elliot Richards:
The tech is there, relative, I’m going to say relatively simple to do, the batteries, the motor, they know how to do that is just building the packaging on top. Is the interior good enough? Is it going to look good? Is the UX and UI, is that good enough? That's where the focus is now really because battery tech hasn't really advanced too much over the last few years, it's got slightly better, but is that packaging, where am I going to sit, how's the ride going to be? How am I going to enjoy it? That's what's most important.

Tu Le:
But what's ironic guys is that they brought Tesla here for the catfish effect. Now to China, EV companies that are going to be brought to Europe to bring the catfish effect to the European brands and the American brands because they're bringing it, right? They're bringing the battery technology, aside from Tesla, without question China EV Inc. is the one pushing the envelope and the sector forward, right? The BMSs, CATL with the battery cells. So that's the irony because if it wasn't for 12 or 14 brands, Chinese EV brands heading into Europe this year, the ID. series would have the Renault ZOE as competition. I can't think of too many other, on the premium side, there will be some cars, but even then, a lot of those are just remade ICEs, right? They're not truly electric from the ground up.

And so I think that's part of the irony. But Elliot, do you think that the Chinese EV companies, when they get their passport stamp, do you think they've done enough to represent as global? Or do you think that they're going to come over and Europeans are still going to think, generally speaking that these are Chinese brands, I need to learn to accept that they are Chinese brands, because not everybody is a NIO, right, not everybody is an Xpeng.

Elliot Richards:
No. I still think it's going to take a bit of time. I don't think it's going to be instant acceptance unless they can pry something very competitively, which has a lot of features. And it's just an all -round good car. No, I think that a lot of the kind of legacy markets such as Germany, I think they might struggle to accept these incomers because it's going directly up against their own, one of their major industries, so I think that's going to be quite a hard pill for them to swallow and say, if NIO can do it the same or better than us or Xpeng can do it same or better than us. I think that's going to be quite tough pill to swallow for some consumers, some markets, I think UK so we don't really have a much of a car industry anymore. I think it's going to be easier to swallow. I think. I don't think people are going to be too fast. I think if it's good package for a good price, that's what's going to get people across the line. But I don't think it's going to be easy sailing the next 18 months for these brands, I haven't heard from, so who's in Europe now, AIWAYS, BYD, Xpeng, NIO, I've not heard of massive sale successes, or and it's still very early days, but BYD’s been there for 6 months. Now, I think in Norway, I don't really know how they've sold. I think they've shipped another lot 500 out. They sold their first 500. So I think this is kind of their test next 18 months is their test to see what works, what sticks, what change they need to make before really going hell for leather and actually maybe even setting up factories in Europe and building over there, who knows?

Tu Le:
Let me piggyback off that though, Elliot, of the cars that you've driven and reviewed, so maybe you can talk price point as well, so people get a sense of how much it would cost in Europe. Give me two or three that you think that should be a hit that should resonate pretty well with the European market of the 12 or 14 cars that you've reviewed.

Elliot Richards:
This is a good, tough one, but I think I’ll go with my own experience with my Xpeng G3 that really kind of sits in that Ford Focus kind of segment for me. So Ford Focus is one of the best selling cars in the UK and Europe, I think for the part, however many years and it's why I bought it. Before I bought the Xpeng, I was looking for a VW Golf, I was looking at a Ford Focus. In fact, in China, the Xpeng was the kind of natural electric kind of comparison. It was about the same price, about RMB165,000, what's that, £18,000, $24,000, something like that. So relatively affordable, good package, not too fancy.

So for me, that kind of fits in that kind of Ford Focus, kind of segment. And I think that would probably sell quite well. With its upgraded face, I'm not so sure, a bit more awkward looking now, but if people just want to get an electric car and, I think that's a good shot. I think another one which will do quite well is the BYD Han. Because that is a very good looking kind of fast saloon. It does offer a pretty good alternative to like, the Teslas. And again for a reasonable price. I can't remember how much they are of the top of my head, but that's a very kind well rounded package. You've got good boot space, you got good comfort in the back. It's a good driving experience. I think some of the interiors a bit odd, not to my tastes, but as most BYD cars, I think that would probably do quite well as well.

But what I think is going to do the best is probably something like the BYD Dolphin, so that small car under £10,000 or however much it will be, I don't know, so RMB100,000 here.

Tu Le:
That would be like a Ford Festa type car then.

Elliot Richards:
So that Ford Fiesta segment is massively popular in the UK and Europe, especially like France and Spain. If they can crack that, people are crying out for an EV which costs less than £12,000 or $15,000, there is very little in that segment. And you look at the success of the Renault ZOE and Nissan Leaf. People want to buy those cars. And so if one of the China EV companies can go over there with a small super mini, they will knock it out of the park. I don't know which one's going to be there first and which one would be successful, it’s probably not the BYD Dolphin.

Lei Xing:
The Dacia Springo, right? That's made in China. That's been very successful. That is exactly the product that you are referring to.

Elliot Richards:
That's what people want. It's built in Beijing, isn’t it?

Lei Xing:
It's built in JMEV in Nanchang I believe, the joint venture with Renault and Dongfeng

Tu Le:
I remember the ORAs heading to the UK too.

Elliot Richards:
That's an interesting one because they were meant to be coming out in, I think, January, but they haven’t. I think maybe they've been affected by the chip shortage, and they are a bit naughty and putting in the old chip didn't they, got a lot of flap on social media about doing that. So there's been some delays, I think with that release in the UK is meant to be January, but it's not come out yet.

Tu Le:
I would think maybe some homologation issues.

Elliot Richards:
Definitely, so see how that does.

Lei Xing:
Hey let's switch gears a bit. Let's talk about doing the videos themselves. So I’ve been always wondering like, what kind of routine do you go through to prepare? And also the script, like, how do you prepare to the script? Or is it ad hoc? You just go and talk and because you're experienced or what, and talk? Tell us about it.

Elliot Richards:
Yeah, sure. So in terms of the routine, there's kind of two approaches. I think that the first approach is that a car company approaches us and say, do you want to review this car? We say, yes or no, depending on multiple factors, including is it going to go to Europe? Is it of interest? Do we think the video would do quite well? And then the other approach is, obviously, there's a car that we'd like to drive, so we approach the company and say, can we borrow it for a few days? And then in terms of prep, we always try and find an interesting angle. So rather than, so a lot of car reviews, literally just review the car, which is fine. I look at those videos and I find them interesting. But we try and tell a story, find an interesting angle that we think might be engaging with the European or U.S. audience, and then we kind of build the story around that. 

So usually about a week before we get the car, I do a little bit desktop research, maybe I’ll go to the showroom, have a look round. Write the outline of a script. I have like an intro and outro. Maybe some points that I want to hit on during the drive or once I walk around the car. But then I actually leave a lot of it up to the day, because for the NIO ET7, I didn't know what it was going to be like. I had an idea that it was probably going to be quite good. I had seen it in the showroom, I had gotten close to it. But until actually I got there in the day, I didn't know what the driving experience would be like. I didn't know what the interior would be like. So I kind of leave those things up to the day. I've eased my kind of my framework of a script, and then I fill it with what I see on the day and it usually works.

So I used to do everything unscripted, which was probably a bit of a disaster. This was before I did the Fully Charged stuff. I think that's why they were a lot of ums and ahs, and now it's a little bit, there's still a few hms and ahs, but it's a bit better now, but it always depends on where we are shooting, what we're shooting, how far advanced we know, because some PR companies they say, by the way, we've got this car for you tomorrow, right? Okay, I'll try my best. If we're trying to shoot something a bit different, like with a BYD Dolphin, we went to a farm to try out the V2L capability. We got to set up a few weeks in advance and it kind of makes for a richer story, but sometimes you only have a few hours, then you have to rush around the car, the kind of a more traditional car of you. That just depends on the context.

Tu Le:
How big is your crew.

Elliot Richards:
I wish I could say it was, we've got three camera cars, we've got a director…no, we’ve got one video guy, that's it, for me, in China. The crew of Fully Charged in the UK is slightly bigger, but not much. They got two or three people maybe for a shoot. But here in China, at the moment, we've just got one guy, my videographer Brian, who does everything.

Tu Le:
It's a lot of GoPros and DIY?

Elliot Richards:
Yes, it is. What we use mostly is we try and use the professional kind of camera on a gamble, which is like a Sony or a Panasonic on it. But then like the tracking shocks, we use a DJI Osmo Pocket, one of the best cameras I have.

Lei Xing:
I have one of those.

Elliot Richards:
I bought it, I'm not paid or anything to promote it, but what an amazing camera of taking it on holiday, so easy to edit clips together, producing like 4K video is fantastic, and fits in your back pocket. We use that a lot. We use a lot of drones, I've got a drone myself, the Mavick II S so I like to do a few shots as well.

Tu Le:
Those drone shots that you have are amazing, except you would not be able to do them in Beijing.

Elliot Richards:
That's a good point and it's getting hard to do in Shanghai, in fact filming in general in Shanghai is almost impossible now. In the downtown area you're standing like, number one, you got to find a place to park the car, which looks good, which is in the car park so that's impossible. Number two, you get out of a car with a big camera, and you're a foreigner filming and people like what's going on here and then the security guard comes over. You can't do that here. Can't do that here. So it's a real challenge shooting in Shanghai. So we try and go out on the outskirts or away from Bao’ans and security guards.

Tu Le:
They're everywhere though.

Elliot Richards:
They are everywhere.

Lei Xing:
What is your work cadence like? Do you have a fixed schedule of video shoots that you do per month? Or does that depend on?

Tu Le:
Hey Lei, I guess he was planning on coming in four weeks to Beijing.

Elliot Richards:
Yeah, it was, might still be stuck in my house in Shanghai at that point.

Tu Le:
I would have hosted you too, Elliot, it’s unfortunate.

Elliot Richards:
Oh thank you. Yeah, and it really depends like we have quiet months, and we have busy months, around about now, we get into the busy time of year, auto shows. So all the car companies releasing things, the ET7 just came out, I think with the Lotus is being unveiled this month, the Type 132 SUV.

Tu Le:
Next week, 28th I think.

Elliot Richards:
So we try and aim for about one, one and a half, two videos per month. And it's not just cars. So I did one on the bullet train, should be coming up this week. In fact, I shot that a couple of weeks ago, like a month ago, we try and you do a good mix of interest stories about China and infrastructure, mixed in with the car reviews sometimes just come up ad hoc, or that HiPhi will probably reach out in a couple of months: do you want to try out a new car? And so sometimes I’m shooting every weekend for a month and then nothing for three months. But we try and release from China about once a month at the moment.

Lei Xing:
And you would only be doing China related products or events, is that correct? Like you wouldn't do a review, let's say, of an ID.4 in China, is that correct?

Tu Le:
You did do a BMW right? 

Elliot Richards:
We went to the Brilliance factory in Shenyang.

Lei Xing:
So you do foreign brands as well, but not as much.

Elliot Richards:
I wouldn't rule it out, but obviously the focus is on the Chinese brands right. But actually, when I started with Fully Charged, the idea was I would be going around Asia, so I’d be going to Japan, South Korea, India. But in fact, obviously, that's not happened. I'm still not being able to go to any of those places, because I know that we definitely want to see what's going on with Japan. What on earth are they doing waiting for to produce a battery electric car, waiting all this time? So we kind of want to cover a bit of that, I want to go to India to see what they're doing, they got some amazing kind of startup.

Tu Le:
Elliott, I can offer you this if you make it to Taiwan and Singapore, I know the Gogoro guys, and I know a couple of moped guys in Singapore, too, that I can hook you up with.

Elliot Richards:
So love to go over there and feature that battery swapping with the electric bikes, that looks amazing.

Tu Le:
So, Elliot, do Chinese people recognize you? Are you that famous yet?

Elliot Richards:
I'm battling away when I get to the airport, there's thousands of people with their waving and yet signs. No, they do, especially at auto shows. I have a lot of kind of industry people coming up, even car people and company coming up and say, you, Elliot from Fully Charged, would you like to review this car? Would you like to review this car? I’m like sure, and add me on WeChat and we can talk about adding, I've only had it once: a girl came up to me and said, I’ve seen you on the internet, can I get a selfie? I was like this is the first one. And in fact, that was the last. So yes they do recognize me, but not very many at the moment.

Tu Le:
So actually that kind of dovetails into this question and we're supposed to ask it earlier, but we have a lot of mutual friends that are all kind of in this. I wouldn't say we're media but kind of knowledge people, right, 42HOW, our good friend from China Driven? How do you differentiate Fully Charged besides being a bit more mature, bit larger than some of these other guys that are coming up that are also trying to create content and stuff like that. Are you that famous yet?

Elliot Richards:
I think for us, we were trying to take a bigger picture view within the NIO ET7, for example. And I'm talking NIO so much because it's the most recent review we did, but we were talking about that in terms of the bigger picture with legacy automakers. So rather than just walking around the car and doing reviewing of the car, which was part of the video, obviously. But it was more about what impact that car might have in Europe. What is that going to do to BMW, Mercedes? So we try and take that kind of wider view and we kind of always try and tell a story. And one thing we are always aiming to do is, to have a higher production quality always, the editing team in the UK, so they do all the editing in the UK, are outstanding.

And so they can turn all of the raw files that we turned over into some absolutely beautiful videos, I think. One of my favorites and it still gives me goose bumps is the Xpeng P5 video that we did. So we went to the Great Wall. So I know that Xpeng has set up this kind of camping site to do like KOL stuff. And I said no, I used to live in Beijing. I want to go to the Great Wall, I haven’t been there for 10 years. I'm going to drive it to the Great Wall and the PR people are like, fine, just go and take it there. And so we got some utterly amazing shots of the Great Wall. We got to try out the camping bed and all that stuff. And so we were trying to do something a bit different, trying to tell a different story and always with a try to do a quite high kind of production value. It just even with just one person. So that's kind of how we're differentiating ourselves. But I think yeah, like you say just a few years ago, there was not really anyone talking about this.

Now there's quite a few and you got Will, and 42HOW, I think the more the merrier, I think that everyone should have their own voices on China EVs. I think it's great that people overseas get to learn more about China, learn more about the cars that it’s producing and kind of demystify a lot, because I think that's really important. It's good to have different angles and different voices on the subjects.

Lei Xing:
That's a great point.

Tu Le:
I noticed that your ET7 video that was just uploaded just over a week ago has over 100,000 views. And then your BYD factory tour has over half a million views. So what's the makeup of your audience? Is it a lot of Brits or is it pretty global?

Elliot Richards:
It’s actually not that many Brits. But I think Brits only account for about 10 or 15% of the audience. Think a huge percentage come from Europe, another huge percentage come from America. And the rest are from Australasia. So that's why they're doing the live shows in those countries, basically where the biggest audiences are. So some of the UK, the show in the U.S., the show in Australia, the show in Europe. Europe is a very big audience for us. I think that we get a lot of our views from that audience.

Tu Le:
Lei go ahead, do you have any final questions for?

Lei Xing:
I was just thinking about how the industry has transformed, but how people view and consume content has also changed, has also transformed. And all three of us know that personally, right? Us doing this podcast, you doing videos even I myself, I’ve learned doing video editing during the pandemic using this Chinese software called Jian Ying. Have you heard of it? It's like, it's just so easy to learn that, and you can everything's you can just generate the subtitles, English or Chinese automatically, like it just makes your job so much easier and that's why I did some video of my Tesla rental experience. And sometimes I do in Chinese because I have an audience also learning trying to learn what's going on here. And I think just trying to bring kind of the content to the relevant audience. And all these tools are making it much easier to deliver content, right? I think we're all very lucky to be in this time, really.

Tu Le:
I'll be the first to tell you guys this was never like 2-3 years ago when I started the consultancy, this it wasn't like I’m going to be a content guy. I'm going to be a media guy. No, that was not, but this is the best way to reach people, right? And I think that I'm assuming that since we're all doing it, that we all either saw a hole where we thought there needed to be some content, or we saw people just totally misread the China market from the UK, from Germany, from Detroit. They had no idea. Yet they're the only ones being listened to because they're the only ones talking about it. So I think part of it was just you know what guys. I'm scared for you guys. So I'm just going to try to educate you on this stuff. So that's how I felt.

Elliot Richards:
I think for me exactly the same as well. It's just like 3 or 4 years ago, I thought why is no one talking about this massive car market? There was like one website, carnewschina or a couple of websites like that corner

Lei Xing:
Carnewschina.

Tu Le:
And it was terrible. Yeah it wasn't really it wasn't great.

Elliot Richards:
And I thought why is no one doing anything about it? So that's why I started. That's where you guys started. And I think we all just want to showcase what China can produce and demystify it for people because I think it's seen in the media a lot, not always in a positive light. So it's good to shine the light on what can be produced and some of the amazing progress that's been made over the past 2 or 3 years.

Tu Le:
Right on, right on.

Elliot Richards:
So what do you guys, I'm not letting you off that easily, what do you guys think, or what are you most looking forward to in the next 18 months, in terms of China EV space, what do you think is going to have the biggest impact or what’s the most exciting?

Tu Le:
I'm looking forward to Europe’s and the U.S.’s responses, that's what I’m looking forward to because I live here. So I see the stuff. I'm a little numb to it. Because if it wasn't for Lei, I'd have a hard time keeping up. Because a lot of the brand stuff that you hear about is mostly in Chinese. And my mandarin is okay, but it's not great. Having the podcast, I'm able to keep up with probably 30, 40, 50% more information that I would not normally think to look for. But I think once the ET7 hits the autobahn, it's going to hit like a brick in the German market. And people are going to be like, woh! I believe Elliot, but I didn't really believe Elliot, but now that I can touch it and feel it and kick the tires myself, he was telling the truth. Because I want competition, that just means that hopefully prices go down, more innovation. But to your point, it can't just be four-wheeled electric passenger vehicle, it's got to, be everything, right? So.

Lei Xing:
I am really looking forward to the day when I can, if I'm still in the U.S. when I can order a Chinese brand EV, and own it and drive it. Because having seen Zhou Guanyu yesterday, was the first Chinese F1 driver to get a point in his first race, and as a Chinese, I'm very proud of that. And when that day comes, when you can buy, let's say, a BYD or NIO, and drive and own it. I hope it's coming, I’ll be the first to order a NIO or a BYD, really.

And the second thing I really want to see is being here in the U.S., I kind of root for the legacy automakers like GM and Ford. I want them to speed up a bit, but at the same time, I really wish these Chinese smart EV startups slow down a bit. It's very competitive in the Chinese market, some of the crazy things, the progressiveness, but when you look at, having attended the Mercedes event and seeing how much of a kind of a dinosaur they are, in being the conservativeness, both the good and bad. But I wish to see some kind of a balance, the Chinese companies slow down a bit, but the legacies, they speed up a bit. That's what I want to see. But as I said the EV at least in China, the tipping point has gone passed, right? Whereas in the west here in the U.S., it's still a bit slow, and just not so much political or geopolitical turmoil. That's what I want to see.

Tu Le:
Lei, you got to also tell Tesla slow down a little bit, right? Because they're the ones pushing everybody. And the other thing, too, is there's probably going to be a Vietnamese car in the United States that you can buy before a Chinese car. 

Elliot Richards:
That's incredible.

Tu Le:
They move quick, man. And I think, good god bless them whether the car is going to be successful is still up for debate, but it'll be on the roads soon. 

Elliot Richards:
Good luck to them.

Tu Le:
For sure. That would be a car company that you could go visit in Hanoi, right?

Elliot Richards:
I quite like to go to Vietnam and visit them, but I have to wait for the borders to open.

Tu Le:
Any other questions, Elliot?

Elliot Richards:
No, that was it! I just want to kind of get your flavor of what's going to happen in the next 18 months. I think it's going to be an exciting time. And I'm really looking forward to being part of it as you guys as well.

Tu Le:
Let me offer you this since we're both in this country and we can't really leave. If you ever do like a Top Gear episode, Top Gear-like episode where we go to Shenzhen and turn an electric bicycle into a lawn mower, something like that, then have to drive it up to Shanghai, count me in!

Elliot Richards:
You're in!

Tu Le:
We are big fans of your work. Next time you're up in Beijing or I'm down there, I will get in touch, we’ll share a beer and thanks again for joining us!

Elliot Richards:
Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Lei Xing:
Thank you, Elliot. It's fascinating to learn some of what you do.

Lei Xing:
Hi, your co-host Lei Xing here. I loved how Elliot used the word “demystify” to describe the aim of his shows, helping to shine a light on the amazing progress that China has made as far as EVs are concerned. This resonates very well with what Tu and I are trying to achieve here at China EVs & More, which is to educate the Western audience and help them understand more about the China EV, AV and mobility space. And like Elliot pointed out, our goal is not bash or trash anyone but rather give credit where it’s do and criticize where its warranted. We appreciate all the work that Elliot and the folks at Fully Charged are doing, as well as many more people in the industry doing the same thing, this really inspires us. 

Tu Le:
Lei and I will be sharing more of conversations with the men & women around the world moving the EV/AV mobility sectors forward as part of this China EVs & More MAX series. Some folks will be instantly recognizable, but some will just be people that are doing amazing in the space that we think deserve to be highlighted. 

Don’t worry though, Lei and I will continue to host our live weekly China EVs & More Twitter Spaces room that summarizes that week’s most important news coming out of the China EV, AV and mobility space. For those that can’t catch the live show, you can find the China EVs & More pod on all major platforms or wherever you normally get your podcasts. As EV adoption reaches its global tipping point, it will be even more important to stay updated on everything that’s happening here.

Lei and I are confident that China EVs & More is the best resource to do that. Until next time, as always, thanks for listening!

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