China EVs & More

Episode 95 - COVID Update - Opening up(?), More Details on November sales, Tesla NOW

December 12, 2022 Tu Le & Lei Xing
China EVs & More
Episode 95 - COVID Update - Opening up(?), More Details on November sales, Tesla NOW
Show Notes Transcript

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

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

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

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

CEM #95 Transcript
Recorded 12/8/22


Tu Le:
Hi everyone and welcome to China EVs & More where my co-host Lei Xing and I 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 the managing director at Sino Auto Insights, a global 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 of course I encourage you all to do. Lei, can you please introduce yourself?

Lei Xing:
Hello. Good afternoon everyone. And this is Lei Xing, your co-host, former chief editor of China Auto Review. And this is episode #95. So let me start off by asking you Tu, a question: can we finally say opening up, instead of easing up?

Tu Le:
I don't think we can Lei, because…

Lei Xing:
 At least domestically!

Tu Le:
Well, it's opening up, but there's going to be at least 6 months worth of a mess that is going to go go kind of spread across China. I think health experts are saying over 80% of all Chinese could end up getting the virus. There is an article today in the Financial Times that said that Beijing has run out of fever medicine. So, it is going to be quite messy because remember, CNY (Chinese New Year) is right around the corner. So there's going to be a lot of people traveling. It's one of those things where easing is still, probably for me, the right verb, so.

Lei Xing:
You know, for me, the share of my WeChat moments posting about being, or getting positive has gone up significantly over the last 24 to 48 hours.

Tu Le:
Yeah, there are repercussions.

Lei Xing:
And people are discussing which medicine, if they can get them, are best for coping with being positive.

Tu Le:
We should let everyone know that prior to this change in policy, if you went to the pharmacy and purchased any aspirin or acetaminophen or whatever Benadryl, you would have to register with the pharmacist. So it was documented. Now, I don't believe they're doing that, and that's why people are making a mad dash for, one person tells another person I’m going to go get some fever medicine. Next thing you know, there's a line out the door at your nearest pharmacy and everyone has bought three, four of this fever medicine. And you run out now.

Lei Xing:
And you had started off your newsletter by using a word whiplash. And I felt it's like a light switch that was turned on 3 years late. I think that's the feeling that probably many of us who, I mean me personally who haven't gone through that is feeling like, because it's almost like, I’m not going to be able to experience that green code thing anymore, ever.

Tu Le:
You're not missing anything, Lei, let me tell you that.

Lei Xing:
A bit of the Shawshank Redemption, right? Once you're inside that wall for a long period of time, you kind of don't want to leave anymore.

Tu Le:
At the end of the day, that green code or that QR code was just a confirmation of where you're at. They always know where you're at. But this just confirms your location as opposed to triangulating where you're at. So whether or not you have to do this QR code. Because at the end of the day, I’m being told that there are no more testing centers, or there's very few. When I left, I was within 500 meters of about five of them.

Lei Xing:
Anyways, the turn of events, as you pointed out in the newsletter, it's just I mean ever since Thanksgiving, right? 20 days.

Tu Le:
You know why that is Lei? It's because they control the media. And so everything seems so negative and negative. And then everything is COVID zero, COVID zero, COVID zero. And then, like you said, this light switch turned on. And everything on social media, everything in the official news is completely different, so.

Lei Xing:
Anyways, the joke is the real pandemic begins right now in China, that's the joke because people are going to go through that, what the west went through more than 2 years ago.

Tu Le:
I'd love to hear your theory because thank you for reading at least the heading of my newsletter at the top of my newsletter. I had thrown out a couple theories as to why this sudden 180° turn. First, the Wall Street Journal had reported that Terry Guo, who is the founder of Foxconn, had written a letter to the Chinese government imploring them to change their policy, change their stance, because of how he thought the economy is going to be permanently damaged. And so I believe, and let's assume that there are two sets of books that the Chinese government keeps: the real books and the books that they announce to foreign media. And I believe the real books, this is inclusive of what they are forecasting for 2023 with the global recession in play. They saw nothing but red or black, sorry black. They saw nothing but black, which is actually bad in financial statistics in China. So red means good and black means bad. So when you're in the red in the United States, it's bad. But when you're in the red in China actually means good. The second thing was, I do think these protests really made a little bit of a difference.

Lei Xing:
At the end of the day, it's the economy. Terry Guo or anybody else, that's the biggest thing, right? The central what, the Central Committee recently had a meeting, and I think the priority for 2023 was, again, domestic consumption, spurring or stimulating that. And you can't do that without everything shutting down. So I think the realization has finally come: you have to open up or ease up one way or another. And that's what's happening.

Tu Le:
We've gotten past the inauguration of Xi Jinping, third term. So I think that was kind of the major thing that needed to happen before any zero COVID policy was going to be shifted. So that means that Lei, if I’m correct, around 6 months is a little bit, April is when the Shanghai Auto Show will be, so I’m hoping that we have an early Chinese New Year so that I think is helpful, because as long as COVID is going through China, it is going to be still more hectic than it normally would be in a normal China. And you and I have lived there long enough to know that normal China is pretty active.

Lei Xing:
And I think it'll take sometime. I think people have realized or aer realizing that the scariness sometimes is inflated, and now through all the hospitals and the shutdowns, now the understanding is it's a cold, right? Or a little bit more than a cold, but nothing more. You go through that.

Tu Le:
As long as you're vaxxed, I think that's the other important thing, I think. If you're not vaxxed, you have a higher likelihood or a higher chance of getting a serious side effect or not a side effect, but a serious symptom.

Lei Xing:
So speaking of Chinese New Year being early, this is a good segway going into sales a little bit so early. Usually an early Chinese New Year means, you add these incentives on top of the expiring subsidies, end of the year push, all of these, and then kind of people going back, finally traveling. So we already had another record NEV sales, just the passenger vehicles in November, that won't last long. So December will break it because of those factors.

Tu Le:
Tesla throwing more money on the hood.

Lei Xing:
36% penetration rate retail?

Tu Le:
36.3%, don't forget that 0.3%.

Lei Xing:
More than a third of every passenger vehicles sold are now an NEV.

Tu Le:
There's two reasons for that. One is the high take rate, but also that ICE sales are going down. It's amplifying the number of NEVs being sold.

Lei Xing:
So the denominator is actually smaller, decreasing, while the numerator is increasing, sort of, right? So simple math there. 

Tu Le:
But remember that the Chinese government's goal three years ago was 25% by 2025. And this was before COVID. So this is during a COVID ravaged lockdown, quarantine year.

Lei Xing:
Which in retrospect, without COVID, it might have been lower. Do you see what I’m getting at? Some of these purchases, where do people spend their money, not traveling internationally, right? So.

Tu Le:
I want to call this out, that lower denominator, that small denominator should freak the foreign legacies out, because that original sales and production plan that they had in 2021, in 2022, they need to throw that out to the window and they need to regroup. They need to reconstitute a product plan that is going to support over 30% NEVs in the market, in sales.

Lei Xing:
The case in point, I think all the big three Japanese brands, I think their sales were horrendous in November, ICE, everything. I think Nissan was only a little bit over 40,000 units. I mean they've been doing six digits, I remember, before. So that's a huge delta.

Tu Le:
And I've been telling people this, and I feel like a broken record because you and I remind people of this all the time, but I've been telling people that this is going to come faster than people, than the legacies realize. It's going to come faster in Europe, and it's going to come faster in the United States so that let this be the canary in the coal mine. For the other regions, the legacies hopefully are learning their lessons in saying we need to get our act together in the U.S. and in Europe and be prepared for these take rates to be considerably faster than original forecasts.

Lei Xing:
And we were in the Climate Transformed conference panel yesterday. One of the big factors we talked about was export, or NEV export, being a significant share of the sales numbers. Let's say this year, you said in your newsletter, you and I are in agreement: you said 6.7-6.9, I think I said 6.8 million long time ago. So out of that, probably the 800,000 or so are going to be exported. That's a huge number in itself. 800,000, it's roughly equal to the number of EVs that are going to be sold in the U.S. this year, to compare, right? 

Tu Le:
Remember the only major exporter outside of SAIC is going to be Tesla.

Lei Xing:
The other number is, I think, so, it's going to be close to 3 million everything exported out of China, so right behind Japan as the second largest export, vehicle exporter. And going to Tesla a little bit: the top three selling models, Model Y was still pretty good, number one, MINIEV second and BYD Song, including some of the (PHEVs).

Tu Le:
It’s a year younger than the Model 3 and it's an SUV, crossover.

Lei Xing:
And the Chinese brands, look at their penetration, within the Chinese brands is well over 50%: half of all Chinese brand passenger vehicles are NEVs.

Tu Le:
I have to point to that tweet you just tweeted an hour ago, maybe. Where you said over 90% of all NEVs sold was under or equal to RMB300,000, I wrote this down. Go ahead.

Lei Xing:
The bulk of that, just to add the number, 43% of that 92% is RMB100,000-RMB200,000.

Tu Le:
So I wanted to make sure because, so I wrote this down, I don't normally take that many notes. I just normally riff, you and I riff during this hour. But if you plan and I'm talking foreign automaker, I’m talking new domestic EV maker in China. If you plan to enter that mass market, sub-RMB300,000 vehicle segment, whether you're a sedan or crossover or an SUV, don't. Unless you have in your cost model, spending a ton of rambos of RMB on marketing, on getting your message out there. And even then, it might not be enough because it is murderous sub-RMB300,000.

Lei Xing:
We're still seeing these big announcements. Two, in particular, is the Honda procuring 123 GWh, that's, by the way, that's for vehicles, for China alone. So that's well over 1 million units they're planning the rest of, the second half of the decade. And then BMW Group is going to have 11 BEVs group wide in China next year. But they are not playing in the RMB100,000, RMB200,000 market.

Tu Le:
No. But they've miscalculated severe, let's say, German Legacy Inc. has miscalculated over the last 3 years in the China market specifically for NEVs. And it's put an even more pressure on them, because at least on the premium side, ABB has done okay on the ICE side. But I think that they are going to be very challenged because BMW is still shipping, converted ICEs as EVs. And I don't think that's going to change. That 7 Series is basically a petrol 7 Series. So and we talked about this two weeks ago, the EQS had a $30,000 haircut, didn't it? Or $20,000 haircut? So they need to sharpen their pencil, meaning that they need to price competitively. And then they need to reconcile the current features in the vehicle. And you've always said this over the last 20 months we’ve been doing this, the hunter is now the hunted. BMW, Mercedes and Audi need to study the domestic brands and how their brand has resonated with Chinese consumers. 

Lei Xing:
Yes. Again, case in point Volkswagens, having, specifically SAIC-Volkswagen having this backlash over the black screens on the ID.4s, right? There was a complaint that were sent by the owners, these things.

Tu Le:
I think that is the same issue in Europe too. So this is, I say this, I’ve said this, you've probably heard me say this Lei, this is blocking and tackling. This is not a feature that is going to be an option that people pay more for. This is just normal day to day operations. These need to work all the time. And I’m reminded of that story. I've told before where my old colleague from GM said, if we built cars that worked 80% of the time we'd be out of business. So this is the craziness about and people will learn the legacies, the auto journalists that are firmly in the automotive space, but have not taken the time to really understand the transition that's happening. I think they're going to see as well that it's going to come faster than they think. What other big news this week?

Lei Xing:
No, just looking at the crystal ball a little bit, so we know well over 5 million units, the first 11 months. CPCA ame out with the kind of their update, and the secretary general said, without possibility of these stimulus policies being extended, so the way as is, he's expecting 8.4 million new energy passenger vehicles in 2023, wholesale, a 30% growth. So still growing, but he did say that the overall passenger vehicle market will be flat. If the current purchase tax half off isn't extended, which we kind of talked about that, could that be a possibility? We don't know. So there's still some debate, probably behind the scenes on whether some of these policies will be extended, because come January, January is going to be a short month because of Chinese New Year. So January data will be very bad. We can say that, but this year the foregone conclusion is, another year of nearly double growth. 2023? Much more cloudy, we are not as confident in maybe as before when it was this time last year, right?

Tu Le:
So Goldman did say that global vehicle sales growth wasn't going to really resume until 2024. And that's in a late, one of the latest reports that I saw from Goldman Sachs. And so I think it's going to be a challenging year to be a brand new EV maker in 2023. I think that's okay for a lot of the newbees, because they're not likely going to be able to manufacture many units to begin with. So like the Fisker Ocean, this could be a blessing in disguise for them.

Lei Xing:
They're not planning big volumes anyways. I think they're pretty pragmatic.

Tu Le:
Yeah, so again, this can be a blessing in disguise for them. And what we should see is the cash rich EV companies really take advantage of the cash strapped EV companies. So, although…

Lei Xing:
Speaking of newbees, we will get into it. 

Tu Le:
NIUTRON. So I don't know if we are misled or if we just assume they ran out of money, but if you peel the layers back, they said that their manufacturing partner Dorcen does not have a manufacturing license currently, and so they still plan on launching vehicle in 2023.

Lei Xing:
I think the reason is not so much that Dorcen does not have a manufacturing license. The reason is because the entity, NIUTRON, is the brand, but the entity behind NIUTRON, the registered company is called Martian Stone Technology, which is partnering with Dorcen. Now, the latest regulations says that both of these partners kind of need to get, acquire that license to produce. That's what was behind this. I said NIUTRON is done, but technically they're not done, they're just delaying that this, they can’t produce, so they have to…

Tu Le:
So if you don't produce at a manufacturing facility for two years, your license becomes dormant and you have to recertify everything.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, so Li Yinan, he's kind of scrambling for partners, but then again, that's taking it too simple. I mean how can you just look for a new partner and you expect to start production of a new brand and model like that, right?

Tu Le:
Like so we're seeing the advantages play out of having an asset light model that with a contract manufacturer. But now we're also seeing the disadvantages of an asset light model with a contract manufacturer that is not able to hold its end of the bargain. So I agree with you. You can't just, it's not like this willy nilly thing. I've been working with you on engineering planning and production planning. And I’m going to swap everything over to Lei contract manufacturer. And by the end of 2023, job one is going to roll off the line.

Lei Xing:
And I’m a little bit surprised that actually the overall reaction is, on the, from the Chinese chatter and industry is actually one of respect for what Li Yinan did with this decision. Because it's tough, right? It's tough to come out and say it's too bad that we have to do this.

Tu Le:
So they were going to be expecting delivery very soon. Because originally I believe job one was supposed to roll off in October.

Lei Xing:
But still if know that you don't have the license to produce and then you launch and it's kind of jumping the gun a little bit.

Tu Le:
But without question, I don't know how you would take 24,000 orders without already having that kind of sort it out.

Lei Xing:
And then the other interesting story behind NIUTRON is Dorcen, is basically one of the plants that Zotye owned. And apparently, the Zotye Chairman gave this plant to his son to operate. And if you remember history, Zotye was, had a strategic cooperation signed with Ford, let's say, in 2018ish that never materialized. So anything you have, anytime you have this company, so that, by the way, is they restarted production, but they've been in trouble for a long time. So at any time you have these kind of back stories, it's kind of shaky, right? So that's what I’m thinking. Shady, not shaky, bogus. So not surprised that this NIUTRON is in this, yeah…

Tu Le:
Wasn’t Zotye also had a relationship with Qiantu?

Lei Xing:
No, I’m not aware of, maybe a different company, but speaking of jumping the gun, right? We can talk about the Tesla CEO…

Tu Le:
Oh, Tesla?! My guys are telling me he's not the current global CEO, so.

Lei Xing:
So good scoop by our good friend Danny Lee from, and his team from Bloomberg.

Tu Le:
They did verify. So I think that's important because PingWest came out. If folks are wondering what we're talking about, PingWest yesterday came out with a new story saying that Tom Zhu who was the architect behind Shanghai Gigafactory, he's basically the project manager. He became Tesla China head, and then Tesla Asia head, there's a rumor that from, there's a report from PingWest that Elon had made him a global CEO and now there have been discussions with Elon and Tesla board about having found a replacement for Elon. It very well could be Tom. There hasn't been any hand over of duties and title yet, at least no confirmation from Tesla. So I think it's important to not believe it until, and this could happen still a year or two away, so.

Lei Xing:
Let's just say this, Tom would probably be a good candidate for CEO but obviously that CEO position will entail different responsibilities. Because Tom is Elon’s double, basically, from a workaholic perspective, from burning the 3 am oil perspective, right?

Tu Le:
But maybe complementary skill sets, as opposed to, because Tom is probably kind of a manufacturing guy, guru, kind of guy.

Lei Xing:
So that's, which is, let's forget about the CEO rumor, but from the Bloomberg article that the fact that he is in Austin with some of his engineers, I mean that in itself is crazy that you would depend on this guy, and being Chinese, right?

Tu Le:
It points to the amount of trust that Elon has in him to get Austin up and running.

Lei Xing:
So that's the thing which is very crazy to me that there is no other manufacturing expert besides Tom that Elon has to depend on him being here.

Tu Le:
But the Tesla way is going to be very unique, right? Because if you think about it, Lei, outside of BYD, there are no other car companies building a million electric vehicles out of any factory in the world, right? So Tom has domain knowledge that likely no one else in the world has. He's worked with Elon specifically and Elon’s trusted team. So I don't see that really being that unusual that he would send a team of ninjas that came from Shanghai Giga when Shanghai Giga in 2020 launched, now less than two years later, it's at 1.2 million units. It is the major export hub for Tesla in Europe. It used to be anyways in Europe and Asia. And so in amazingly short period of time, it's become Tesla’s most important factory. So Tom has been to your point, probably a non-stop workaholic. Now I had tweeted because I’m a cynic that the moment that an Austin Giga employee feels that they're getting pushed uncomfortably to overwork or in an unsafe way. There's going to be leaks about stories for sure.

Lei Xing:
That's the question mark with the same formula that works for Giga Shanghai might not work for Austin, right?

Tu Le:
It won’t. Because the other thing that's important is that the suppliers need to buy into this, too. And the amount of leverage that Tesla has in China is probably a bit more than it is in the United States. Let me just say that.

Lei Xing:
I mean in terms of purely an operations, sales, we are still seeing good numbers, but there are all sorts of danger lurking beneath going into 2023, there's been some chatter on BYD shares in certain segments that Tesla is not being able to play with, right? The Model 2, $25,000 car. But is, are good times over, right? Those are the type of sentiment that I feel. They're still growing, but the overall market is also growing. That pie is getting much bigger, where a lot of the segments that Tesla is not going to be playing with. That's why you see their shares actually going down despite having these record volumes.

Tu Le:
Let's just say this. We are in that WeChat group with you know who. And if Tom Zhu or somebody else became the CEO tomorrow, you'd probably take a pretty big hit. The share price would take a pretty big hit, because there's probably a 15-20% bump, just because Elon is CEO of Tesla and I think this is Elon’s opportunity to take a step back, because he sees how much currently Tesla relies on the China market, not only for sales, but for manufacturing and export. And this is his opportunity. Before any new products roll out. Now Cybertruck’s supposed to be launched in 2023, but he can rebalance the importance of each of these factories now because Austin is going to come online. And then Berlin is also going to going to come online. So these price cuts that you're seeing in China, they could happen in Europe, they could happen in the United States, and it's going to create a lot of bang for Tesla buck from a sales volume standpoint in those regions. So I might take the time to say how much if I'm Tesla management board of directors Elon, I don't know if he has time to do that with everything that he's doing and screwing up on Twitter. But I might take a step back and say, how much do I really want to rely on the China market? Because from a manufacturing standpoint, great, but we see now the ultra competitiveness that I don't believe Tesla was prepared for. They didn't foresee how competitive the Chinese market was. I think they thought they had 2-3 years of runway for the 3 and the Y, the MIC 3 and Y, they had the ability to manipulate pricing in order to extend that out.

Lei Xing:
In retrospect, yes. When all the brouhaha of Giga Shanghai being broken ground and he was dancing, right?

Tu Le:
Because we have to remember also Lei, that the Cybertruck, I don't think it's going to really take that many buyers from the Silverado, the F-150. So let's say that is more niche. It's not a volume driver to me. I could be completely wrong, but I I'm probably not. So is it going to be Model 3 and Model Y sales volume? I don't believe so, absolutely not. At the end of the day, they have to sell more 3s and Ys to get to 30-40% growth year over year, okay? So I think you and I agree that Tesla was overvalued. Most practical people do, and is half a trillion dollars the right market cap? I still don't know. I still think it's pretty fat, especially when you consider that BYD is…

Lei Xing:
Right around $100 billion with Porsche.

Tu Le:
Yeah so around a quarter of that value, right? And within what 18 months., BYD is going to, no, I think less than that, they'll be the number one EV maker in the world.

Lei Xing:
So, the way I see, I think BYD and Tesla are the only ones getting the grade As on the execution operations manufacturing. But I think they're also in the same boat when it comes to further upping the ante, right? From 2 million to 4 million, from 1.5 million, again, 50% growth. It's becoming a lot harder, no matter how you look at it.

Tu Le:
That 50, 60, 70% growth with the current product lineup is not going to come out of China. There needs to be another product, and it probably needs to be that sub-$30,000, that sub-RMB300,000 or around RMB225,000 to 250,000 product.

But fair warning Lei, what did I say at the very beginning of the podcast. If you're thinking about entering that market, don't. Because it's going to be hard for them to sell a Model 2 in the volumes that they would need to in China. It would sell like crazy in Europe, and it would probably sell like crazy in the United States.

Lei Xing:
And that 70,000 or so Model Ys in November. That's after that price cut announced at the end of October, right? They are still factored into it, so.

Tu Le:
I'm just going to throw this out there: in the next two years in order for Shanghai Giga to have 80% domestic consumption, let's say, 6,7, 800,000 units, they need a refresh 3, Y and a Model 2.

Lei Xing:
Well the refreshes are coming.

Tu Le:
Rumored. End of the year, though, end of 23 is supposed to be the Model 3. And with JIDU Auto, with Xiaomi, that is going to be a another big battle, right?

Lei Xing:
There's also been some chatter about Xiaomi not, how do I put this? Their plan is not going as smoothly as planned. I heard about that. And there was even some rumor that BeyonCa

Tu Le:
 I heard about that too.

Lei Xing:
BeyonCa was already letting some people go, but those are not confirmed, but right?

Tu Le:
So what I will say about BeyonCa is that they probably have one of the biggest checks to get to job one. So I don't think they should worry or need to, not yet. They need to worry about raising capital. I think they have a fairly substantial potential credit line. I could be wrong. But from what I’ve heard, it's, they've already raised a pretty decent amount. And yeah, and both of these companies are looking to make a pretty big splash, right?

Lei Xing:
We're pretty much done for the topics, but I think going back to that Central Committee meeting about spurring domestic consumption being a priority, I get the sense that we may see additional stimulus, because you're coming out of the pandemic or you are actually going into it. And how do you make people spend again and on what products. So look out for specific policies to be announced. I have a sense that the kind of the direction.

Tu Le:
You know that Li Bin, He Xiaoping and Li Xiang, they're talking the Chinese government's ear off to help incentivize the market to keep it going in 2023. So I think through summer, it's going to be pretty crazy in China for sure.

Lei Xing:
We cannot expect another 100% growth growing from 7 million to 14 million. That’s, right, it is just not possible.

Tu Le:
So let's do this. It' 3:46. Let's open the room up Lei, but I have a three-way announcement about BYD, wants your thoughts on it. First. Stella Li said that they're going to be opening up a battery factory in the United States. And to be generous, they're going to maybe open up two assembly plants in Europe. This is a difference in what we'd heard prior about their aggressiveness for the U.S. market. And the third thing, another BYD related news.

Lei Xing:
Yang Wang?

Tu Le:
I'll say 4th. So Yang Wang was launched. The logo is what it is. But the other thing that I think is very important is that the first BYD ATTO3s have rolled off the line in India. And so I tweeted that was what Tesla wanted. And so long story short, BYD is getting there by shipping kits from Shenzhen to India and doing final assembly in India.

Lei Xing:
Kind of eating Tesla’s launch a little bit. And the ATTO3 is rapidly becoming BYD’s Model 3, it seems.

Tu Le:
Yes. And it's a global car. 

Lei Xing:
Malaysia just launched, right? 

Tu Le:
I predicted that within 3 years, the ATTO3 could be a Top 5 seller in Europe. I saw Elliot's review. He seemed to be impressed. I trust his judgment. And so watch out Renault, watch out Nissan, watch out Volkswagen in the European market. So. I don't have anything else. Man, hold on. Let me check my newsletter to make sure there's anything else that we can kind of talk about here.

Lei Xing:
Apple car is the other kind of the topic that was…

Tu Le:
Yes. Delayed again. And it's goanna be more practical. It's goanna have a steering wheel. And so special projects team is probably getting a little upset about this, because there's still a lot of car guys at the, on the special projects team. So I'm sure they're wanting to launch a vehicle pretty soon. I'm anxious and I'm curious to see that facility near Mineta. Because in Bloomberg article that I referenced, they had built a new facility near San Jose Mineta. And that's where the special projects Titan team is going to be doing most of their work. Yean man, for sure, and I will, next time I'm in North Cal. If it was a Tesla, I'd consider it. But any other car I'm not really looking to venture out too much because…

Lei Xing:
For someone who dumps on Tesla all the time, you still need a Tesla. That’s the irony.

Tu Le:
Yes. If anyone else has any questions or anything, otherwise, we can close up shop Lei. What do you think? 

Lei Xing:
Yeah, I think so. But will there will be more CAAM data come out. And NIO Day we heard about NIO Day Christmas Eve. 

Tu Le:
Let me see. You have a contact. I have a contact. Let's see if we can get a sneak peek about what they're talking about.

Lei Xing:
So in the coming days, they'll be leaks coming out. So what kind of models they're going to announce and stuff like that.

Tu Le:
A new brand potentially. So anyways, hey, thanks for joining as always everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. And we will talk with you all next week.

Lei Xing:
Likewise. Thank you, bye bye. 

Tu Le:
That brings us to the end of this week 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 or reviewing us on Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you grab your podcast from, we'd appreciate that as well. Even better if you enjoy this show, please tell your friends about it. Please join this again next week as we track down all the latest news on China EVs & More.