Episode #74 - Tu's Sneak Peek of the Robo-1, Projecting 2022 Full-Year and 2023 Sales, Geely's Radar

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.

Sirva Soundbites
Explores the latest trends and topics on global talent mobility and the future of work.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Transcript

CEM #74 Transcript
 Recorded 7/14/22

Tu Le:
Hi everyone and welcome to China EVs & More where my co-host Lei Xing and I will go over the week's most important and interesting news coming out of the China EV, AV and mobility sectors. What Lei and I discuss today is based on our opinions and should not be taken as investment advice. If you enjoy this room, please help us get the word out to other enthusiasts and tune in again next week.

My name is Tu Le. I am managing director as SinoAuto Insights, a management consultancy that helps organizations bring innovative and tech-focused products and services to the transportation and mobility sectors. I write a free weekly newsletter that we pull many of our discussion topics from. You can sign up for it at sinoautoinsights.com, which I encourage you all to do. Good evening, Lei. Can you introduce yourself, please. 

Lei Xing:
Good morning Tu, and good evening from my side. My name is Lei Xing, I'm your co-host and former Chief Editor of China Auto Review. This is episode #74. So basically, June sales continued, Geely’s RADAR launch. Before we begin update us on your, things are on the ground and your recent visit to check out the JIDU ROBO-01.

Tu Le:
Yeah, so.

Lei Xing:
How was that?

Tu Le:
Let me give you guys a quick update on the situation here. Parts of Shanghai are in, let's just say there's partial lockdowns in Shanghai, and so I think there is a bit of uneasiness across the entire city. It has not affected any production that I've heard of. And you can also comment on that with your insiders Lei. But for now, there are parts that have been locked down for a little bit, but I had conference calls with two companies yesterday. They're in their office. No one's wearing mask because I could see them on the zoom calls and stuff. So it's a little bit weird to be quite frank. And then in Beijing, they things are pretty normal here, although if we want to stay in Beijing, your life is not going to be too uprooted, but it's summertime. Families want to go out on vacation and families like me would normally go to the U.S. or go abroad, but we're limited to domestic travel. But certain cities have different COVID restrictions. So that makes it a little bit tricky as well. 

But onto this week's trip to Baidu. I'd never been to Baidu headquarters. And Jidu, who's located down in Shanghai, had sent up one of their ROBO-01s for the employees to kind of have a look at. And so if you can think of a Chinese version of Google's campus in Mountain View, that's kind of what, it's much more conservative. It's not as flashy as the Google headquarters, but that's kind of the feel that you got. And so I was really impressed. Google has or Baidu has a huge campus up in Zhongguancun. There's a kiosk in the common area in between all of the buildings. And inside this kiosk is the purple ROBO-01. And there's two people that are there, they have scheduled times for employees to go in and learn about the car. No, you're not really supposed to sit in it or touch it or doing anything like that. But I cheated. I feel pretty lucky because I think I was one of the few outsiders that, and I don't really consider myself media, to get and take a look at it while it's in Beijing. And initial thoughts about the ROBO-01. It's big, it's 5 meters long, so it's not the size of an X3. It's big. And the first thing I saw was that purple, the purple that you see in the pictures and the videos don't do it justice. You could dive and swim into this purple. It's much better in person, looks much deeper in person than the pics. I think there's a certain maturity to the design, because there's curves, but there isn't this gaudy jewelry that you'll see on EVs in general but also in for Chinese EVs because there's just not a lot of creases, there's not a lot of additional for lack of a better way of saying it, jewelry.

And you could tell there was a lot of restraint to the design so that the user or the driver can focus on interior wise on the voice commands and that coast to coast screen. For me, the lack of physical knobs and buttons really, really stood out, because it's just that screen, a steering wheel and a center console that is really minimal as well. So as an older person, it was a little uncomfortable to see just reliance on the screen. But I’m probably on the fringe of what their target market is. And that just means that hardware and software integration that you and I talk to Frank about needs to be on pint if the UX the user experience that Frank and his team has designed, is really going to come through, right?

Lei Xing:
So by the way, two things, one is, unlike Silicon Valley, where these tech companies have their own campuses, Baidu, I think Sina, Sohu, a couple of others, they are in this area called the “houcahngchun,” which is it's like a special area for these tech and portal companies.

Tu Le:
Xiaomi is there.

Lei Xing: 
Vertical portal companies, and two, we are finalizing the editing of our MAX episode with Frank Wu, who will talk more about some of the design philosophy of, you know the no button, and obviously what’s going to make it into the production vehicle, he gives some hint as well. So stay tuned for that. I guess we'll try on publish on Monday, is that correct?

Tu Le:
So first of all, my apologies to Lei, So yes, and a couple other things. The interior is massive. I think one of the things that we can kind of confirm that you and I had talked about already was that the suicide doors weren't going to make it into production.

Lei Xing:
That was obvious.

Tu Le:
Yeah, it was a great way to show how large the interior is. I don't think the rear bucket seats are going to make it into production either. So let's see how the rear interior changes because of that.

Lei Xing:
Anyways, so it's nice that you got to look at the concept, at least in person. And how's the concept in terms of, I know we shouldn't be talking about build quality on a concept, but was it, did if feel, I don't know if you got a chance to touch and feel. 

Tu Le:
So I'll give you an example. There's, so I walked in with probably 12 employees, Baidu employees, and they gave us this 5, 6, 7 minute overview. This woman, she kind of gave us a good grounding and understanding of the concept, the actual vehicle. And I understood about 70% of it. So it was great. And then they all left. And I got to stay for a little bit, taking some pictures, taking some videos, and they showed me there was a use case of a man. Let's say it's a man driving the ROBO-01 from work to home. That screen, it was basically just a video of all the changes and everything that was going on in the vehicle, but acted out in the screen.

So I recorded that and I will post it and that's what I was asking you about the “zimu” or the subtitles Lei. Because I think, again, even the UX on the coast to coast green was very seamless where I think earlier iterations and tries for that stuff is a little clunky, but in the voice command, the voice command has to work in order for this to get where they needed to be.

But to answer your question and, I’m sorry, I’m rambling a little bit. The build quality was actually really good. So nobody was in there. And I was like trying to lean my hand in my arm in to take a picture of the IP from the rear they were. They're like you're not supposed to go sit in it, but glad and get in. I got in there and I was just touching and feeling stuff, and even for a concept, it was very delicate, but for concept, it was pretty solid. So I think they're, Frank said they're pretty close to almost being production ready. So I saw and felt that in the car, the panel gaps were pretty consistent. And I checked, the paint was consistent because even on production vehicles, when I’ve gone into a NIO and stuff, go ahead.

Lei Xing:
Now I'm just saying it's a concept car, so we really shouldn't be talking about these things, but still, I’m just trying to get a feel of just the quality, because some concepts I’ve seen at auto shows, they're poorly…. 

Tu Le:
So poor, you can see the glue. But I think that's Frank's experience working at a major automaker, a foreign automaker, and probably not accepting those types of small details and mistakes, right? 

Lei Xing:
Yeah, and perhaps we can go into you remind me this is another topic we can talk a little bit about which is the HMI that whatever, this part of the competition is really cutthroat. And I guess the quote of the week was from William Li, CEO of NIO saying, responding basically to ZEEKR’s free upgrade of the 8155 chip. And he just bluntly said in that group chat, and he says, we have 200,000 customers, and it's going to cost us RMB2 billion and I just can't afford to do it. Whereas the ZEEKR, they just paid, they just absorbed that RMB300 million cost and said we're going to upgraded for free. And the reason being is the first customers, there were a lot of complaints on things not working as smooth because of this cockpit interaction and it was slow, right? Certain apps or touching the screen and swiping the screen things like that. So this was a big chatter, I think last week on how tough, how competition is just, the Chinese word is “juan,” which is involuted, that people get sucked into this competition. If you don't do this, then the expectations like why, because a few episodes ago, we talked about the 2022 versions of the three existing models of NIO, but you have to pay a little bit to upgrade to the newer chip, right? 8155. So I had thought that was interesting, and just how competition is just… 

Tu Le:
For our new listeners, let's give a history lesson on that ZEEKR 001, because it wasn't a ZEEKR. It was a LYNK & CO car to begin with. And the second thing is that it's Geely. So Geely is not a tech company. William Li started a tech company. So he looks at these things completely differently than the product team at ZEEKR. You can hire software people and tech people, but if it's the process or product development process is being driven by car people, the car is going to be different for sure, right?

Lei Xing:
And that's why is this a chip problem? I don't know. I don't think so. I think it's more of integration and manufacturing/built problem. Because there's others that also have this older Snapdragon chip for the cockpit and they work fine. So ZEEKR it’s a new brand, a new performance kind of positioned EV so now this is where customers’ expectations are so important nowadays that if you don't, if you don't meet certain expectations, they will revolt against you.

Tu Le:
Yeah, and that old saying you get one chance to make a first impression, right?

Lei Xing:
And so ZEEKR, I think, made it up by paying RMB300 million to get that kind of reputation back. That's how it is. And William, he’s like we can't do it.

Tu Le:
And that was a poke, that was definitely a poke that wasn't him being modest. That was him poking as ZEEKR. The other thing that I really want to quickly mention is our expectations are set by our mobile handset and tablet ecosystem. So we get instant latency or instant reaction and feedback on our tablets and our phones. So the same expectation, and I don't think customers will think I should expect something different while I’m in the car versus when I’m using my phone. But it's the car company's designers’ jobs to bridge that difference, right? And if they're not doing a good job of it, then they'll know about it very quickly.

Lei Xing:
And there's also some other recent issues stemming from what were promised on paper versus what were actually delivered, causing some complaints from customers of other brands, right? So these things they happen.

Back on sales, I think we pretty much talked about sales last episode, but right, these recent numbers that came out from CPCA and CAAM, just kind of solidify my believe that the China’s NEV market is strong, it's resilient, it’s you can't underestimate it, really, always surprises you how strong it can come back. And that's what happened in June.

Tu Le:
This is, so setting aside the lockdown and the production issues and the lumpiness on some of that stuff. This is, the strength in the market is a combination of the diminishing subsidies, but also the competition, the products. And if there wasn't a lot of competition, a lot of products to choose from, there wouldn't be pricing pressure to keep prices affordable or competitive. So if there are only a handful of EVs in the market, they could price them pretty high and not feel the pain of a competitor undercutting them, but the competition is so fierce across different segments. So that along with, I think the subsidies play a little role, but the incentives for goosing the market because of the lockdown, I think that's also helping. But generally speaking, it's those two or three levers.

Lei Xing:
And this year in particular, we have the extra, though, quite a few or a majority of the brands have raised EV prices. At the same time, I don't think, we talked about this, that this is not going to affect demand. And we have this extra stimulus nationally and locally on purchase of NEVs. And although the ICE purchase tax, half of the purchase tax policy is in place that'll take a little bit of share away, but it's, EV sales, they're going to remain strong until the end of the year. And we saw some of the penetration in the Chinese brands. I think there were like 40% or something already very high. And in particular, that long photo of the rankings based on different price segments, I think that was a perfect, that was done by NIO, by the way. So that gave you a quick look, at the kind of the competitive landscape, and you look at those price segments where the foreign legacy, either the mass brands or the premium brands are, they are just right that their way behind and the RMB200,000 and below, if you look at those models, there is not a single foreign brand in there. I think those were the top 10 or 15 brands. And then, especially the HiPhi that they posted, right? We had some discussion with Abe, and also the RMB400,000 and above, right? NIO has two on the list, leading that one. And if you look at the Audis and the Mercedes in the few hundred units, right? So that they have so much to catch up if they want to be in the top three or top five.

Tu Le:
And let's not forget that they've never been behind looking at someone's back trying to chase them in the China market generally. So this is a completely different position for the German automakers because let's be real. The luxury automakers have been dominated, the luxury market, the premium segment has been dominated by the German carmakers for the last 25 years here in China, the “ABB” right And so this is completely new and uncomfortable territory for them. And they've just been generally caught flat footed. Because, as you pointed out, if we look at different price points, the top three or four are normally going to be occupied by Chinese domestic brands. And if you think about it, the premium segment above RMB500,000, you would think that's what they would own. But it's HiPhi that is number one for at least June, right?

Lei Xing:
So I think also the pace of either these new brands or new models that are launched is just relentless, that the foreign brands they can't keep up. Look at right these past few weeks, what have we been talking about?

Tu Le:
This is probably challenging for the foreign automakers because they're global. So the cadence at product development and new features in China outpaces what is probably the right speed in Europe and the U.S. So maybe it's, I anticipate perhaps the opposite problem. The Chinese EV first companies entering Europe and the U.S. and having to slow down their constant updates that they need to. So working at two speeds and multiple different regions is really challenging, I think, right? From a management standpoint.

Lei Xing:
Yeah. And I think just today with the news that let's say the Nissan Leaf is going to be discontinued, and also the possibly the EQC might be discontinued, right? You saw that, right? I think the only, let's say, in the RMB200,000 to RMB300,000 range, I know the ID.6s are respectable, a few thousand units. Other than that, the Mustang Mach-E, when that number came out, 3,500 units for the first half of 2022, wasn't what we were expecting.

Tu Le:
No. I think that's extremely low. And I don't think it'd be, I don't think it's a production issue.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, I mean there's chip supply problems, but I don't know. And then you have BYD is supplying some of the batteries. But BYD is also got to take care of your own.

Tu Le:
Speaking of BYD, in August, they're going to be increasing monthly output to 300,000 units a month.

Lei Xing:
That's a number I can't even fathom. Because…

Tu Le:
That is a wild wild number.

Lei Xing:
Because 300,000 units, a few years ago. China sells 300,000 units NEVs a year.

Tu Le:
I'd sent you the link to that article where the Minsheng Securities analysts said that for the foreseeable future, until likely we get into a 50% penetration rate in China for NEVs. Now, again, NEVs includes PHEVs, BEVs, and FCEVs, generally speaking, he said that we’ll continue to see double digit growth. So that bodes well for BYD because if we're at 50% penetration, that means that almost 11 million vehicles a year are going to be NEVs right? Before the market slows.

Lei Xing:
The first half CAAM numbers were 2.6 million. That's 120% growth. And let's say China does 6 million this year. And let's cut that 120% in half, let's say 50%, 6 million, a 50% growth will get you to 9 million, right? So we can look forward to 2023 now, that the possibility of China selling 10 million units.

Tu Le:
t's not out of reach.

Lei Xing:
No, it's within reach. The other number I think was important to point out is Chinese export. So the 2.6 million units include some export and I think CAAM said first half NEV export was around 200,000 units. Last year it was 300,000 units, the official number. So I think we can probably expect close to half a million NEVs exported, right.

Tu Le:
So that number is actually to me low, but it's because that the production issues meant that they wanted to accommodate domestic customers before export customers. I think 2021 numbers for the entire year were about 550,000 exported, so not a ton of growth if we get to half a million or 600,000 units exported for the end of 2022. But again, the priority is going to be the China domestic market for most of these automakers.

Lei Xing:
I think how the second half turns out really dependent on aside from the COVID outbreaks, the disruptions, chips, are these policies and the announcement of that, potential announcement of the extension of the purchase tax exemption policy, when that is announced, could affect how strong the market performs. Sometimes if it's late in the year, then people will think that it's going to end at the end of the year, then there will be a push. But so that will affect, but 6 million, I think it's entirely, it's going to happen.

Tu Le:
I'm going to talk about two things that I just thought of, because of that 10 million number that we just threw out for 2023 Lei. That means that every EV company’s going to be fighting for raw materials, going to be fight for batteries, going to be fighting for chips. Okay? Capacity, more capacity should come online, but it is that could also make cost rise. 10 million is just a mind boggling, large number. And I think there could be some challenges just securing, if you're a foreign automaker who isn't producing a lot of vehicles, then for a supplier, you're going to be lower on their tier of importance for supplying parts to. If China EV Inc. is hoovering up most of that capacity, then it could leave the foreign automakers out in the cold in 2023 as well.

Lei Xing:
Well obviously we can't expect 120% growth every year, because that base number gets bigger and bigger, right? 6 million, a 50% growth is very significant, than a, let's say, this year it grows 100%, right?

Tu Le:
The second thing I wanted to mention was that this market is growing. We haven’t, and you know this Lei, we haven't even really seen competition because everybody's eaten, everybody's selling. Now, because weak product, companies are losing out on sales volume, but not because, because in a mature automotive market, in order to grow your sales, you have to take it from somebody else. And so customer acquisition costs increase and that's when real real competition starts. And so we haven't even seen or felt the bare knuckle brawling that is going to happen once that growth rate gets to low double digits or even single digits.

So currently, I feel everyone's eaten, right? If you have, if your product is not competitive in the market, that's just market economics taking care of that, right? But let's say you have some great products in the market, and the only really real way to differentiate is branding and pricing. We know Lei that that's the MO of the automotive sector when in mature markets, right?

Lei Xing:
So  ext, we go to RARDAR. What's on your radar?

Tu Le:
What do you think?

Lei Xing:
No the first thing I thought, isn't there a watch brand called RADO that's also “leida” in Chinese?

Tu Le:
RADO, RADO. I don't know what it's called in Chinese, but it's called RADO. Yeah.

Lei Xing:
I mean Geely, more brands that they can conjure up. 

Tu Le:
Yeah, I feel that they're almost taking it too literally that they want to create economies of scale with their SEA platform. And so they're creating different top hats, but brand management is going to be really important for Geely, right?

Lei Xing:
Yeah, it's interesting that they launched this, just as China is on this wave of outdoor lifestyle, camping. I don't know whether this was a coincidence or how they planned this, right? It seems the right time to launch this brand if they were branded that way. And we were trading messages with Frank on some of the design, styling, and I guess the front design of the RADAR was rather close to some other, mirroring some other brand. But I guess this wasn't like a JIDU ROBO-01. I think the RADAR RD6 design was a bit bland. It didn't jump out as like RIVIAN, right? RIVIAN you have that very strong stance with the headlights. It was just a pickup, electric pickup, but it was all about this in that press conference, was all about this outdoor lifestyle and utility, functionality, all that.

Tu Le:
And Americans know that this is like a Ford Ranger pickup, not an F-150 size pickup. 

Lei Xing:
Maverick? 

Tu Le:
Yep exactly. So it's much smaller than F-150. And so when I think America, I believe that when Americans think pickup, the first thing they think of is F-150.

Lei Xing:
So I think this also the launch of this RADAR brand follows this trend over the recent years where companies are diving into very niche, not niche, but very specific segments. So the examples are the ORA, right? This is a brand dedicated to females, female buyers, let's say a TANK, Great Wall’s TANK, this kind of macho offroad style, right? And then the HiPhi is basically this ultra premium…

Tu Le:
Connected, edgy…

Lei Xing:
Yeah, positioned. Now you have this RARDAR. And we still haven't heard from Great Wall has the other brand, the Salon, and BYD is launching that supposedly off-road premium brand, right? So these are brands going into very specific segments that we never really thought could be a market before. And now they're almost generating these markets on their own that something that didn't exist before that they made it.

Tu Le:
I don't want to be conspiracy theorist, but this outdoor domestic travel trend also coincides with COVID, because 5 years ago, 6 years ago Lei the commercials you saw on TV were probably jet setting, going to other countries, Trip.com, hey go to Rome, go here, go there. But now I don't know if one was created by the other, but and I mentioned in an earlier podcast that pollution has improved significantly in a lot of the tier-one and tier-two cities here in China. So I think that's also a reason for the outdoor stuff.

Lei Xing:
Yeah and also the policy landscape with the recent elimination of the used vehicles not being able to be transferred across cities and provinces, that's been lifted. The use of pickups in cities, how that's going to change, right? And the lifestyle part of it.

Tu Le:
You can bet that Li Shufu in the next congress is going to be pushing for more liberal acceptance of pickups on major “gaosu” (expresways) right?

Lei Xing:
And Geely, remember, they do have a commercial vehicle group. They still have that huge, heavy-duty truck that we haven't, that the concept that they revealed that they're going to get into.

Tu Le:
We should also remind people of a couple things. First of all, that Wuling Hongguang MINIEV came out of nowhere, right? There was no use case for that previously. So the second thing is and first thing now that sells like clockwork 35,000 units a month. The second thing is because China is the world's largest passenger vehicle market, these niche vehicles can still sell 100,000, 200,000 units a month or a year. So, whereas a niche vehicle in a smaller market in Europe or the U.S. market might not have the volume to merit, such a specific vehicle for a specific use case in China, if it's popular enough, you could probably sell 10,000 or 12,000 of those a month.

Lei Xing:
They're just creating these new segments. And Xpeng is betting on flying cars. They just got a new investment, $100 million investment on that entity.

Tu Le:
Which is completely weird, because that's only going to be a foreign market thing.

Lei Xing:
And by the way, Geely is also doing this with Terrafugia and they are an investor in Volocopter. We saw our good friend Roger posting that Daniel Kirchert has gone to a eVTOL startup.

Tu Le:
For those who are wondering who Daniel Kircher is. He's ex-BMW or is it…

Lei Xing:
Infiniti and BMW, China guy.

Tu Le:
Hengchi, BYTON.

Lei Xing:
Co-founder and President of BYTON.

Tu Le:
Then he went down to the Evergrande Hengchi, and then he left, moved back to Germany it looks like and is now a co -ounder or executive at a startup eVTOL company in Germany. So I think that's a really, really unique situation, because most of these eVTOL companies are only going to be able to sell outside of China. Anything else?

Lei Xing:
That's it. I think other, outside of China, just tons of news over here on batteries and charging, right? GM working with EVGo and Pilot on that highway charging route. Panasonic is in the news right?

Tu Le:
Yeah so Nori wrote that article about Panasonic gaining efficiency on their on their battery. So a lot of some good clarification from Nori on that, and then really quickly Lei, let me go through my global roundup real quick. Congratulations first of all, goes to Hau Tai-Tang who announced that he'll be retiring. The young guy out of Ford and one of the executive managers. And I look up to him because he's Vietnamese American. I think he has a similar story to my family. And so it's disappointing that he's leaving Ford because he's one of the few Asian, specifically Vietnamese, executives that I know of in a foreign automaker. But I'm sure he's going to be landing somewhere very soon. I'll keep track of him.

Lei Xing:
You can bet that retirement, you put an asterisk on that retirement. You can bet he'll show up somewhere else. He’s just too young to retire. I think.

Tu Le:
And then next, Tom Zhu is now the vice president of Asia Pacific for Tesla. He was promoted. It's effectively, it's a title change and not much else, I don't think, because everything revolves around the China operations in Asia, right?
Lei Xing:
I remember attending an event back in, I think 2015 when Tesla opened one of their showrooms in Beijing near that Wanda Plaza near..right?

Tu Le:
Yep, near Da Wanglu and stuff.

Lei Xing:
Yeah their second or third showroom in Beijing or something. Yeah, he was there, I think he was in charge of charging infrastructure. So he's come a long way.

Tu Le:
The rumor has it is that he's tireless. He's one of those four or five hours a night sleeping kind of guys. He slept in Shanghai giga during early parts of the restart of production during the lockdown. 

Lei Xing:
So Elon must be, I guess he was referring to him when he said the Chinese people…

Tu Le:
Mobileye delayed their IPO so Intel’s gratification, financial gratification is also delayed. And I think that Mobileye’s having some challenges with growth. So keep an eye on what they're doing, because companies like Qualcomm and NVIDIA, they're not slowing down. And we should start seeing more penetration in China, at least from companies like Horizon and Black Sesame. So that's going to leave a few of the foreign chip manufacturers or hardware/software stacks for autonomous vehicles, kind of odd man out. Then…

Lei Xing:
Karpathy leaving Tesla, right? That's all the chatter, now.

Tu Le:
In the last, the two more things, I'm starting to see a ton of ET7s on the roads here in Beijing. 

Lei Xing:
It's about time, it’s about time.

Tu Le:
They do have a presence and the small wheels kind of look weird. So if you're going to get an ET7, you should definitely go for the at least 20 or 21-inch wheels or whatever.

Lei Xing:
Look for that ES7 to get onto that sales ranking list above RMB400,000 pretty soon, right?

Tu Le:
So I think we've mentioned that I'm going to be in Detroit for the auto show. This week, Time magazine named Detroit as one of the world's greatest places.

Lei Xing:
That makes me want to check out Detroit more now.

Tu Le:
So and I did because I posted that in my newsletter and I got some hate from my friends like my European friends, it's like, dude, whatever man. So you can hate on Detroit and then anyways, but I'm looking forward to coming back because it's going to be exciting time.

Lei Xing:
But you can really feel, I mean me being here, what's going in the West is definitely waking up and trying to catch up to what's going on in the East, right, throughout the value chain.

Tu Le:
I think just to touch on why we and most people who have listened to us before know this, why we started this podcast is because I don't really care if you're in the U.S., Europe or China, you don't have to physically be here, but you need to really understand what's going on. I just don't feel a lot of the analysts and media, until recently, have really even tried. Anytime you talk about Tesla, if you don't talk about China, you don't know what you're talking about. Global business for Tesla, right? It just boggles my mind and the FT over last weekend did a deep dive two articles within two days or three days of BYD. These are the kinds of things that are creating the awareness. And hopefully we're helping right, Lei, and I feel that we are helping.

Lei Xing:
And BYD is about to make some huge announcements, I think, come later this year or early next year.

Tu Le:
Yeah, so are we going to go, if I'm still there, are we going to go to the LA Auto Show and CES too then, Lei?

Lei Xing:
I’ll be there. Next week, I guess it's a week from today, it's Baidu World, you're going, I suppose?

Tu Le:
So they're going to have a small live update from the Yizhuang Depot. And I think I've been invited to the Yizhuang Depot, so that'll be cool. That'll be my second time this year going to there to the Depot.

That brings us to the end of this week’s show. Lei and I thank you for tuning in. My name is Tu Le, and you can find me on Twitter @sinoautoinsight. You can find Lei on Twitter @leixing77. If you wouldn't mind rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you grab your podcast from, we'd appreciate that as well. Even better if you enjoy the show, please tell your friends about it. Please join us again next week as we track down all the latest news on China EVs & More.