China EVs & More

Episode 97 - Tesla's long year, NIO Day surprises, ECarX IPO

December 28, 2022 Tu Le & Lei Xing
China EVs & More
Episode 97 - Tesla's long year, NIO Day surprises, ECarX IPO
Show Notes Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

CEM #97 Transcript
Recorded 12/22/22


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 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 I encourage you all to do. Lei, how are you? Hope you're feeling better? Can you please introduce yourself?

Lei Xing:
Yes. Or as you can tell by the voice, I'm still recovering, but at the very tail end of it, so I'm glad. So this is your co-host Lei Xing, former chief editor of China Auto Review. This is episode #97. I've been to the other side and back. So I feel like it's a weight off my shoulder kind of. If you can afford not to get it, don't, but if you do, happy journey.

Tu Le:
It's going around, the flu, and…

Lei Xing:
My Beijing and China friends are joking that you are “shen tong bu” (very synchronous) that China is getting this and you're finally getting it at the same time. So it's kind of interesting.

Tu Le:
It is that season, right? Flu season, change of weather. We are forecast to get 4 to 8 inches tomorrow. 

Lei Xing:
That's nothing, right, for Detroit.

Tu Le:
But my brother is flying in from Tampa with his daughter. So I'm hoping that flight will still be scheduled, and it looks like we need to do all of our Christmas shopping today, because most of those deliveries might be delayed, or it might be a hassle to get to the stores over the weekend, so.

Lei Xing:
I think we start off by your newsletter again, mentioning the Tesla reality distortion field being weakened. I'm going to go a step further. I'm just going to say it's broken.

Tu Le:
Do you think that, no, but here's the question. Do you think that it's broken because of Twitter? Do you think it's broke…

Lei Xing:
Partially.

Tu Le:
Okay, fair enough. And do you think without Twitter, with the share price down 58% year to date, do you think we would still have this broken or weakened? Or let me pose it this way: would it be broken, or would it be weakened, without Twitter?

Lei Xing:
It would be weakened. This, it’s still would be weakened. It's right, I think it's just coming down kind of like the AV industry reality, that we're focusing on ADAS rather than L4 and L5 and this is happening to Tesla as well, that this is probably the right, they are right now below $400 billion. I don't know if it's right, but I mean $1.2 trillion at the beginning of the year was just…

Tu Le:
I read on, was it CNBC, the Tesla bears are up over $15 billion this year. So.

Lei Xing:
Good for them.

Tu Le:
I guess a clock is right twice a day. What must come up must go down. You and I agree that $1.2 trillion seemed pretty frothy, and $400 billion, because it reached the heights of an Apple and an Amazon and a Google and a Meta. It almost seems low. But this is where they were so good in the early stages of convincing us that they were more than just a car manufacturer, right? They still have residuals, because it's still a $400 billion company versus $250 billionish for Toyota. It's the second place.

Lei Xing:
Toyota is right now, it's just below $200 billion.

Tu Le:
Ok it’s below $200 billion. So everyone's taking a beating. Tesla in the grand scheme of things looks pretty good, percentage wise. But when you're tracking at a trillion dollar valuation, losing 60% is not good.

Lei Xing:
They lost the entire legacy.

Tu Le:
Yeah, I saw that chart.

Lei Xing:
The Statista chart.

Tu Le:
But, their borrowing costs are still going to be much lower than all of the legacies, because they are still a $400 billion company. And I think that…

Lei Xing:
It’s good that it came down. I think Tesla is fine. It's just, was overhyped somewhat earlier. Now it's the nitty gritty, right? What are you going to do, right? I think they are going to be below 50% (growth), but next year, right? We saw the Berlin and Giga Texas ramp to 3,000 a week.

Tu Le:
There's two things that I think will give the share price a boost. If and when they can get Cybertruck to production, and if when they can mass produce the 4680. I think those two things will really give it back some momentum, assuming that Elon has weathered the storm a bit on the Twitter side, too. One interesting thing, and I'd mentioned this to you. So we might as well segway into it. I was, I attended a happy hour last night, a very small, happy hour at a rooftop bar called the Monarch Room. Great place, right off of downtown Detroit. It was hosted by Chris Thomas of Assembly Ventures and Reilly Brennan of Trucks VC, and they both wanted to get a few people together, investors, operators, analysts like myself and startup founders together just a chalk shop and catch up. So I thought it was a great event and got to meet Joe White, the Reuters journalist on the automotive side here, and talked with our friend Nick Twork from Our Next Energy, he was there. So that was good to catch up with him. There is some momentum, I think that is really building because of the Inflation Reduction Act, because GM, Ford, Stellantis have finally all pivoted towards electric vehicles. The excitement is surrounding now ramping, I think, the challenges we see still Rivian and Lucid with manufacturing. I'm hoping that that'll turn the corner next year, early next year. But remember with Rivian and Lucid, we're talking $80,000, $90,000 vehicles, $140,000 vehicles. What will be interesting to see, because right now there's still a 12 to 16 week lead time for the Bolt. And let's see if the Equinox EV and the Blazer EV, I want to know, I want to see if GM maintains that pricing the $30,000 and $40,000 price point on those two vehicles, because it's going to be a struggle to make money at that low price point in 24, 23 and 24 with the volatility of the battery pricing. And if those restrictions hold, because the U.S. government pushed out that firming of the details, the fine print on the Inflation Reduction Act up until March, right? I think they pushed it out until March, right?

Lei Xing:
Last episode we said in January, but as we found out, right? It's delayed again, it's going to be very difficult, I think, for GM, I mean we've seen the F-150, right? Just recently raised prices.

Tu Le:
Again. Yeah, but that's the global trend, so it's not unique to a Ford, a GM, Tesla is kind of doing the opposite of everyone else. One thing that I wanted to get your opinion on Lei is, do you think the Cybertruck, let's just put on our American hats. Do you think the Cybertruck can take significant share from Ford and GM’s F-150 and Silverado and GMC, what's the truck that they make? GMC…

Lei Xing:
Sierra. 

Tu Le:
 Sierra. Do you think the Cybertruck can do that?

Lei Xing:
I think it can, depending on their production ramp, right? I think it's a product to be reckoned with.

Tu Le:
We know it's not going to be a capacity issue, right? So.

Lei Xing:
No. Back to the Tesla, this reality distortion field, I think that field is this view that Tesla is the 800-pound gorilla and nobody can mess with it. But now you're seeing the 400-pound gorillas, the 500-pound gorillas that can fight it.

Tu Le:
They're going to eat away. They're not going to take a big chunk. 

Lei Xing:
 That's the distortion field that many people still think that it can't be touched, but now as we find out in China, they're coming.

Tu Le:
And we give constructive criticism to Tesla, but at the end of the day, they are still the best at what they're doing in this space, on the software side, on the battery management side, on the charging side. And I anticipate and I could be way out there. But if I was an automaker Lei, I would partner, maybe invest heavily in one of the leading charging manufacturers to build out the CX for that. And maybe the charger could still be one for many, but if you used it with a GM vehicle, you would have a completely different UX perhaps. And so I feel that the charging is part of the overall experience for an electric vehicle. And that's why NIO and Tesla have such loyalty. And it's a missed opportunity for an OEM or a legacy. It's still, in the United States, at least, it's not too late for them to turn that around. So if I were advising a legacy, and I've spoken to a couple people that worked at the legacies last night, we did not talk about charging, we talked about other things. Now that I’ve been on the ground here for 4 months, I feel we got a lot of work ahead of us. And one of the things that we talked about last night Lei, and I keep on jumping around so my apologies to the listeners, is that the Ford CATL rumor might be squashed by politics. That's what I was kind of told in debating about. So because effectively the person I was speaking with said Manchin would be, would try to stomp that out. So.

Lei Xing:
Yeah. Not surprising. 

Tu Le:
And since you and I are talking about doing a yearend show and then also what to look forward to show, that was why I was kind of reflecting on the new products for next year. What Tesla’s positioning is. And they're well suited, if they can just eke out a product. I initially thought the Cybertruck was more niche, but I’m being convinced by you and a couple of people I spoke with over the last several weeks that it could be a pretty high runner in the United States. And for our folks that aren't that familiar with the U.S. market, I believe Ford sells almost one million F-150s a year alone in the United States. So the full-size trucks are huge business in the United States and the full-size SUVs, huge business for the automakers here.

Lei Xing:
We compare it to the Wulin Hongguang MINIEV EV, that's the kind of the comparison, the same volume wise.

Tu Le:
And this is what makes it really challenging for the legacies to pivot away, because they'll make easily $15,000, $18,000 per on a Silverado, on a Tahoe, on a Suburban, on an Expedition, on a Sequoia, Toyota Sequoia, right? And a Nissan, and all of the Japanese automakers have come on board, building full size trucks and SUVs. And even you see BMW with the X7, right? That's because of the U.S. market. The Germans wouldn't want something like that in Germany for sure. So anyways, I digress.

Lei Xing:
We move on to NIO a bit.

Tu Le:
Yes, sir, let's do that. I'm excited about this event. I'm disappointed that we can't go.

Lei Xing:
Also, not disappointed, but just having to get up early.

Tu Le:
Oh man.

Lei Xing:
On a Christmas Eve, but that's fine. So basically, what we can confirm is what they're going to announce is one the third-gen battery swap station and EC7 with that rear spoiler. That's what I’m taking. I think the wild card is the EC, no the ET5 wagon or some kind of other, a variant of that size. I think that's a wild card. We already know the updated NT2.0 ES8 has already appeared on the catalog. So they'll reveal that. And probably the entire 866. And the other so one more thing that they may do is some details, preliminary details on the next the two brands, possibly. But I’m sure they will have an individual event to announce, actually announced those brands.

Tu Le:
This event, 2.5 hours, is going to be chalk full of new stuff. For the listeners who aren't that familiar with NIO’s product line up, the EC6 is similar to a BMW X6. So it's like a coupe style, crossover SUV and so the EC7 would just be a larger version of that. I actually think the EC6 is a little awkward. I like the ES6 a lot better and the ES7 a lot. But let's see if the evolution of the EC7 kind of makes it a bit more natural looking.

Lei Xing:
Yeah. And remember, some of these offshoots have European market in mind since they're already there.

Tu Le:
And that's where their DNA is from a design language standpoint anyways, because their designers are all European, so.

Lei Xing:
And then the battery swap station apparently will have 22 bays, 22 battery slots. And also I’m seeing that they will be these what are called the dual swapping and charging stations.

Tu Le:
I actually think that's super important, right? I think that, so NIO in China has moved to a per use change of battery size. I think that is another for the customer feature, how it affects and complicates the back end of their battery supply chain system. I think they're still trying to figure that out themselves, right?

Lei Xing:
These third-gen are supposed to have more flexibility in terms of battery sizes. The other news that came out was the they're going with hatchbacks on their new brands. The Golfs, those type of vehicles, again, for Europe, for the European markets. Yeah. Other than that, I think the NIO Day they'll have their usual stuff, right? NIO Band, owner stories, William will talk. And then the only other thing was that unfortunate user data breach that was kind of a wakeup call, I think William apologized. But it's something to watch, keep an eye on.

Tu Le:
The first thing I thought about that Lei, was so those servers and those that cloud, the cloud is in China. So the Chinese government must be pretty freaked out about that, too, right? But sarcastically, I responded or wrote on Twitter. That means that they've made it. Because somebody had their data.

Lei Xing:
It's pretty serious stuff. Especially considering, I think, the way that all these smart vehicles and owners now trying to be become part of this kind of community. A lot of information are being shared.

Tu Le:
Oh man, but this is what really makes them unique. It's not just that they create this community. They actually utilize the data to try to make it sticky like a technology company would, not. That's how they're very unlike an automotive company, because they really engage the customers on a weekly basis.

Lei Xing:
The NIO Day is planned by their owners. Nobody does that.

Tu Le:
It is, and they have the stage to themselves. NIO does, right? I believe that there will be many viewers around the world, especially now that they've opened their second NIO House, right in the heart of Berlin. I think there's going to be plenty of Europeans that will be watching this as well. I did last night. I did get several questions about my thoughts on certain companies, let's say BYD, NIO. I still think westerners think that NIO or Americans, because they've not been able to kick the tire, see the vehicles themselves, still think it's a tier below what we have here in the U.S. and I reassured them that that is not the case. And they would be surprised. And so the proof is in the pudding, right? Once it comes here, we'll see, especially if it gets compared to a VinFast, because from a pricing standpoint, VinFast is not that cheap. So if VinFast doesn't bring the heat on quality and reliability, because they're not leasing..

Lei Xing:
It's a question mark. 

Tu Le:
They're not leasing those batteries anymore. That's part of the, that's part of the vehicle cost and that's what's driving up MSRP I think.

Lei Xing:
So anyways, very much looking forward to NIO Day, always a fun event.

Tu Le:
Do you think that the one thing that I was thinking about on the product side, do you think they're doing too much of a BMW strategy where the products are really, really close to each other?

Lei Xing:
You know at the end of the day I was thinking about this: NIO is as much a Russian Doll…

Tu Le:
 Yeah! Right!?

Lei Xing:
As Li Auto, right? If you look at their ES8 update, it's got the same signature ET7, ET5 front end, right? And the tail lights have been updated to reflect that.

Tu Le:
And before that, you couldn't tell the difference unless you put them side by side between the ES6 and the ES8.

Lei Xing:
Yeah. So in a way, maybe William and Li they've had, they are in agreement somewhat on product planning at least, or designing? They're just virtually the same thing, except one’s bigger and the other is smaller.

Tu Le:
If these new products resonate, their current lineup is going to be really strong, 23 and 24, it's going to be hard to push them off of their pedestal, at least in the China market because…

Lei Xing:
Definitely on a momentum wise, they're on up, right? We have one of those.

Tu Le:
I think they're the only one that has real positive momentum going into 23. I guess maybe Leap. Maybe, obviously BYD.

Lei Xing:
No I agree with you in terms of the product cadence and their recent performance. Yes. I don't think anybody beats them in that segment of the market, premium.

Tu Le:
But come, right after, come a week later, BYD comes with introducing Yang Wang and the first product right? So there's no breathing room just like…

Lei Xing:
The Yang Wang is completely different market anyways. It’s the G-wagon market.

Tu Le:
Yeah, but man, it's just the fact that there's just no breathing room when you are having a big event, because it always gets followed by a competitor having a big launch or a big event.

Lei Xing:
BYD is doing it on January 5, I think. So not far behind.

Tu Le:
Which they should have been at CES had they not pulled out, right?

Lei Xing:
Right. Yeah. Shall we move on to ECARX alittle bit?

Tu Le:
Yes. Let’s do that.

Lei Xing:
I think that was the big news of the week, I think, simply because it's a U.S…

Tu Le:
NASDAQ listed company now.

Lei Xing:
It's a SPAC, but still it's the first Chinese kind of the smart telematics, connectivity related smart startup IPO ever, I believe. So it's significant. And it's Geely, right? It's actually Li Shufu’s personal baby, sort of. He started with this CEO Ziyu Shen 5 years ago. And it's this company, I was thinking what it is. It's not a CARIAD, and it's not a Horizon Robotics, but something in between where, let's say they already provide the head units for the smart #1, and also the Lotus Eletre. People might not know about this that those are the hardware actually part of it, also including the software is provided by ECARX and they're in 3.7 million vehicles and 12 OEMs, I think. So they're actually pretty…

Tu Le:
They booked $400 million in revenue. But to me, that's kind of hollow because I don't know of any external OEMs that they work with.

Lei Xing:
But yeah exactly. This is the thing: smart and Lotus. They're all Geely brands.

Tu Le:
Mercedes is 9% owned by Li Shufu.

Lei Xing:
And they're all behind in terms of this smart EV revolution. So I think it was kind of foresight on Li’s part that he started this in 2017. And later on in 2018, they announced that smart kind of acquisition. And I think this was in place many years in advance. Now you're finding this ECARX in these products.

Tu Le:
And that, damn, you just said his name, the COO’s name, but you know that they're trying to find validation from an external OEM to use that stuff, right? That's the only way that share price is going to jump. I don't know. To me, it was a money grab by the SPAC. I think it was also Li Shufu, not wanting to fund ECARX on his own anymore, obviously.

Lei Xing:
You know, quite a lot of these are kind of the babies for Li Shufu and these babies. I think he wants them to be listed. Every one of them. Look at Farizon, it's going to be listed. Polestar already is, Volvo is.

Tu Le:
He's incubated them, right? But and I think he's just kind of spread thin from a capital standpoint. And…

Lei Xing:
I think the timing is interesting because this comes just a few days after that PCAOB, you know what I’m talking about, that kind of have softened the requirements, I guess, on China Inc., right?

Tu Le:
That tells me that Li Shufu, the chinese CEOs were probably pressing the Chinese government to comply, right? Because they know that without the U.S. capital markets, they can't compete on raising capital along with the Europeans and the Americans that are competing against each other in these markets, right?

Lei Xing:
Yeah. And then on deck is ZEEKR, as we’ve talked about before.

Tu Le:
Yes. So ZEEKR and VinFast are supposed to go IPO in ‘23, early ‘23.

Lei Xing:
So I guess I wouldn't think that or maybe you too as well. That we would see another Chinese company IPO this year on the U.S. stock exchange, right?

Tu Le:
You know who came up in conversation last night as well? TuSimple.

Lei Xing:
They're laying off what, 25% of the employees.

Tu Le:
So there was a startup founder there that he said that they had done some work for TuSimple. And so he had asked me what my thoughts were on the company. And so we openly talked about it. I think it's going to be a struggle for the foreseeable future for them. I don't know how they grow by cutting half of their staff, but they're just really trying to stop the bleeding at this point, right?

Lei Xing:
This whole year has just been. I mean what happened at the beginning of a year? Tesla valuation wise, the AV industry with Argo. How promising TuSimple was at the beginning of the year to how much they crashed down. It's just been, right?

Tu Le:
The irony, so completely different situations, right? Because I think there was no scandals at Argo. It was just back when Ford and Volkswagen decided to jointly invest, you'd have thought, man, this is the most solid couple of investors you could ask for, right? Blue chip legacy companies, and then they pull the rug out from Argo. I still haven't heard anything about, they weren't progressing, or their technology or their innovation wasn't happening. I have not heard anything about that. It’s just two companies that needed to conserve capital and weren’t willing to invest another few hundred million dollars to keep the doors opened for Argo for another year and they couldn't convince any other legacy company to take their place, right? With TuSimple. There seems to be some smoke and mirrors about hiring a PE guide to be the CEO to bring the institutionals in, and then him leaving right after the IPO effectively. And then these conversations being had between Chen Mo and Xiaodi Hou. Let's just assume that these conversations were being had before they went IPO, and so the discourse didn't change, right? But as a publicly traded U.S. company who had made, and the management team had made assurances to the SEC or the CFIUS group or whatever. And they weren't happy about the timing, or they weren't happy about these continued conversations, right? Because before IPO there's not nothing wrong with those conversations between Xiaodi Hou and Chen Mo, right? Or so, it's good that the PCAOB and the delisting is off the table, I think, that cooled temperatures so that we can still see certain cooperation between Chinese companies and U.S. companies. But now it's the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act that is really going to dictate the type of investment from Chinese companies, whether they're chip companies, EV companies, battery companies that's coming into, let's not even say United States Lei, let's say, North America, let's say Mexico, let's say Canada, because Canada and Mexico also have their gripes with China Mining Inc., China EV Inc. right? So it's not just a U.S. thing anymore. There's certain alignment between North America about limiting China's appetite for investment in Canadian companies and Mexican lithium mines and U.S. cell battery cell manufacturers, right? And Nick, I don't want to talk too much about what we talked in particular, but he had some unique perspectives as an operator in the battery cell, a U.S. operator in the battery cell space. So I can talk to you a little bit about it offline, but we talk for about a good 10, 12, 15 minutes because and we downloaded from each other, right? It wasn't just a one way conversation. He asked me a lot of questions. One of the cool themes about last night was I told you then I'd met someone from SES and everybody knows who Steve Levine is man. So it's funny. I almost feel we should have him back on to kind of talk through what he thinks about 23, right? Some of the struggles now that the IRA has been passed, but yeah man, a lot of excitement coming into 23, a lot of uncertainty. And a lot of momentum, I think the U.S. is almost like the Empire Strikes Back kind of thing, right? Yeah.

Lei Xing:
That's it for me in terms of topics.

Tu Le:
Let me look at the newsletter and anything controversial that I wrote. 

Lei Xing:
No. You are never controversial.

Tu Le:
Never. Never. 

Lei Xing:
You are just you, right?

Tu Le:
What did you think about my take on Tesla and Mexico? And why Mexico would make sense? Because it mimics Southeast Asia a little bit from a cost standpoint. Does that make sense to you?

Lei Xing:
Isn't that already done? It’s just a matter of announcing it?

Tu Le:
So I was told that it's actually not a done deal. I could be wrong. I read that Bloomberg article about the Baidu Apollo stuff. It was like déjà vu, right? Because they're talking about Yizhuang, they're talking about the depot. They talked about that garage with all the QR codes. I went in. There took a bunch of pictures, and they're like, you probably shouldn't post that. And so I was like, and so which is fine, right? Because I was privileged. They were kind enough to invite me in.

Lei Xing:
It just reminded me actually a topic that we should mention a little bit is Huawei has just pushed this thing called city NCA which is Navigation Cruise Assist, okay, into Shanghai on their ARCFOX HI models. It's basically Xpeng’s city-NGP so point to point city Level 2+ ADAS, but you have to, the driver has to focus on the road, but it takes you from point to point virtually. So I thought that was interesting because it seems that Huawei is actually taking the lead now where it's available. I think it's available in Shenzhen and Shanghai as of now. Whereas the city-NGP was approved only in Guangzhou. So, yeah, so remember, in April 2021 when the Shanghai Auto Show, there were a couple of viral videos that came out of Shanghai, one was Xpeng’s city-NGP and the other was the Huawei’s NCA and now we're actually seeing them commercialized being available.

Tu Le:
And that third leg that we should mention is that Baidu did get approval for non-safety driver robotaxi pilots. So that's going to be happening.

Lei Xing:
Also the Baidu’s version of the city NCA will be the ANP 3.0 that's coming on you know what, the JIDU ROBO-01.

Tu Le:
And this is the crazy thing. So the EV makers are competing against the Huaweis to launch L2, L3 ADAS systems along with Baidu. And so not only is Huawei invested in trying to recruit more electric vehicle companies to utilize that hardware software stack. They're going to have to push ahead and compete directly against Baidu who have one single champion with JIDU Auto, but also are trying to sell their ADAS stack to other automakers as well, so.

Lei Xing:
As far as being an EV maker without being an EV maker, Huawei’s definitely in the lead because Baidu obviously has the lead on the robotaxi stuff, but.

Tu Le:
But I am really anxious to see the JIDU Auto ROBO-01.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, next week. Next Friday is the Guangzhou Auto Show, so they'll have the auto show reveal and then also the second model I believe should be also be revealed.

Tu Le:
They did a sneak peek, right, of that picture of the photo. Now the second photo there was a shadow kind of the of the silhouette, and then they did like the rear end picture of it. So we should also mention that CATL in the Thuringia produced some cells at the factory. So the factory is tiny compared to their Chinese factories, but 14 GWh is pretty substantial. It's a few hundred thousand units a year annual capacity. And I'd written that this was the size was probably not to alarm European Union, but you can bet that their strategy is to increase that 14 GWh significantly over the next several years.

Lei Xing:
And then speaking of CATL that news ZEEKR 001 with 1,000-km  Qilin battery is coming out soon.

Tu Le:
So and what I’ve been told about Northvolt is that that six Giga factories seems pretty ambitious at this point in time.

Lei Xing:
First cells for Volvo.

Tu Le:
Yeah, so the indigenous innovation and battery cell manufacturing, British Volt, Northvolt. I don't know Northvolt came out guns ablazing with how much capacity they were investing in. But I think what we're going to see is a lot of shipments from China to fulfill requirements, because domestic capacity isn't there. It won't be there for another 18, 20 months for the factories that are still being built. So I still see a need for Chinese cells to help manufacturing in Europe as well. So for 2023, at least.

Lei Xing:
Next week, we'll talk about NIO Day a little bit, and then housekeeping, are we doing the awards or no?

Tu Le:
Let's do that.

Lei Xing:
We'll figure something out. I mean, we might span it out a few episodes.

Tu Le:
Maybe we put it to the 30th or something. Hey, man, feel better, hope that your family recovers quickly.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, we're all good. I think we're pretty much.

Tu Le:
Out of the woods?

Lei Xing:
It's just a process, a week. It takes about a week.

Tu Le:
Ok. Because you sound, so you sound worse than you feel, basically?

Lei Xing:
Yeah sound worse than I feel.

Tu Le:
Because a you sound a little clogged up. Alright man, good talking, thanks everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. We will talk with you next week. 

Lei Xing:
Same here. Thank you. We'll talk to you next week. 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.