Episode #114 - April Sales, Ford’s New China Strategy, Tu's Adventures Returning to the US

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

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

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

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

Transcript

CEM #114 Transcript
Record 5/4/23

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 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 I encourage you all to do. Lei, we're back to the afternoons, good afternoon. Can you please introduce yourself?

Lei Xing:
Yes sir! Hey, everyone. Good afternoon. This is your co-host Lei Xing, former chief editor of China Auto Review. And this is episode # 114. You still jet lagged or you're back to U.S. time? 

Tu Le:
I’m still a little bit jet lagged. I've had some late-night calls, because I was able to set up some stuff, so wanted to hit while it was still hot and fresh, which unfortunately meant late evening calls. But by the weekend I think I should be fine. But…

Lei Xing:
That's expected if we're focusing on China. 

Tu Le:
One or two o'clock in the afternoon, the eyes are getting heavy 1 or 2 in the afternoon the last couple of days. So.

Lei Xing:
Good to be both back on the same time zone. The force is definitely back in China, judging by the May Day holiday travel and tourism numbers, and following what both of us believe was a watershed worthy and somewhat record-breaking Shanghai Auto Show. However, however, the same cannot be said about April EV sales. So let's start there. 

Tu Le:
With the exception of a couple of brands.

Lei Xing:
A couple, a few. What are your thoughts, and I’ll share mine.

Tu Le:
You know, I want NIO to break through.

Lei Xing:
All of us do.

Tu Le:
Well part of it is because I feel the products are good. So for them to only get 6.5 thousand in or 6.6, 6.7 (thousand) in sales is really disheartening, but you and I had heard some stuff about some of the operational issues, some of the management stuff going on. So I think there's a little bit more to it than just buy sell. I was really impressed with that two visits I made, to, one, the NIO delivery center, the largest one in the world, and then number two to their facility in Xuhui for a one on one meeting or meeting with a couple of people there. And so because you look at Li Auto’s numbers, you look at GAC AION’s numbers, they had solid numbers. BYD is likely going to have really great numbers, but they just haven't. That's the one that kind of stood out to me. So how about you?

Lei Xing:
Same here. If we look at the overall picture based on the 15, 16 brands that have announced numbers, one word, keyword we would be looking for at is consistency. And if we use that as a measuring stick, the only brands or companies, BYD, GAC AION, Li Auto, maybe Tesla, we don't know the numbers yet, but in terms of a consistent month in, month out and a momentum that's showing your sales are growing, I think those are the three brands that have passing grade. The other ones, not so much.

Tu Le:
And let's call out Li Auto because they were at 25,681 units, over 10,000 of those were L7s. So very impressive number. And then GAC AION which was at 41,000 and change. Again, different price segments. So let's just give them credit for really throwing out some big numbers for April when everybody else was pretty much that we're tracking, everybody else is pretty much under 10,000 units.

Lei Xing:
Li Auto is probably going on toward 30,000 pretty soon, if not in May, maybe June.

Tu Le:
They're firing on, they are firing on all cylinders for sure.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, and back to NIO a little bit. NIO, I mean you visited their operational points. We both visited, saw the booth at Auto Shanghai, and I mean they had the NIO House, right? They had the power swap.

Tu Le:
There was no lack of enthusiasm. They had those customer ambassadors, that wall of customer ambassadors, which was totally cool.

Lei Xing:
So I think compared to that, when you see the numbers, it was a little bit deflating, I would say.

Tu Le:
The sizzle is there. It's just…

Lei Xing:
I would combine these factors, which are: the product changeovers, as they say. So really, the ET5 and the ES7, I think, were primary models being delivered in the month, because the EC7, the new ET7 and the all-new ES6, they are starting deliveries this month. So there's that one factor of change over, plus the remnants of whatever operational, supply chain, chip, battery, what have you lingering over, plus my personal belief plus, there is some demand problem that NIO is confronting. So combining all of these is what resulted in a deflating month. I would say.

Tu Le:
Tell them the statistic that you had thrown in the WeChat, group chat with Edison.

Lei Xing:
So roughly a third of NIO deliveries went to Shanghai. So they have what, 320 some thousand customers now. So roughly one-third of those are in Shanghai. And we had our latest owner joining, half owner joining the fray, our good friend Edison, so.

Tu Le:
Relative to the new owner.

Lei Xing:
And I could be a potential owner because I had a fellow add me on WeChat when I visited NIO House in Beijing, and he's been telling me this is ending by this time, hurry up. So I would say, if we talk about the consistency being a measuring stick, I would only give NIO a grade C right now, we've been looking for that the next level. So 10,000 month in month out is only a passing grade. It's not superb. We have to see that step up. Otherwise, I mean there's all these factors that NIO is talking about, but we give it some more time.

Tu Le:
If I'm being frank, the ET5 should sell 7,000 units in a month itself.

Lei Xing:
Which is not.

Tu Le:
Exactly, because if we're looking at the Model 3 that's selling 10, 15,000 units.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, so I think in your newsletter, you pointed out at the very end of your, another long rant that not everybody's, you and I, especially you, I think more than I dunk on the legacy foreign legacies a lot, but sometimes I think you are correct that even these new players.

Tu Le:
I'd like to think I'm correct most of the time.

Lei Xing:
Yeah. They are facing some, I would say this is Chinese that I will use, which is “wei ji si fu,” which means trouble is brewing from all sides. And out of the “Weixiaoli” (NIO, Xpeng, Li Auto), the three U.S.-listed, I think NIO is facing the most pressure right now. That's how I would put it.

Tu Le:
I'm thinking Xpeng is still a little bit more behind NIO, but they are both well behind Li Auto. Let's just say that.

Lei Xing:
I think they're well behind what we would expect them to be at this point in time, forgot about Li  Auto, because Li Auto is a different breed, right? But other than that, the rest of the players, I mean, you have these ones that are selling 1,000, 2,000 units and they are declaring, for example, the IM LS7, they are declaring that there are the top selling BEV SUV priced above RMB300,000. There's different ways you spin it and you kind of market it and feeling like you're on top of the world. But many of these brands, the list, the leader board I posted, I would imagine half of them won't survive in a few years time. That's my kind of concern right now of the startups. We've been giving them a lot of time to prove themselves. And we haven't seen that next level and momentum. So that's what I'm concerned a little bit.

Tu Le:
I think if NIO and Xpeng can really take advantage of the second half of 2023, they could build a ton of great momentum moving into 2024 where we'll probably get away completely from the price war. And they'll have fairly mature products in the market. So the G6, I think the G6 should do pretty well. It had a pretty good reception at the show. I know you said that you're not a big fan of the design and it's okay. I actually think the G9 looks better.

Lei Xing:
Same same. But what do we say about the P5 when it was launched two years ago?

Tu Le:
Yeah, but I never thought the P5 was very, much, very good looking. I just never thought it was that good looking. And I think the G6 is better looking than the P5 when they both launched, if we're just thinking about when they launched. And it's an SUV, crossover, so.

Lei Xing:
And the telltale sign was ZEEKR. And Shenlan, which has the interesting English name called Deepal. I don't understand what that means, but..

Tu Le:
So for our audience, Shen means deep.

Lei Xing:
And lan means blue. So deep blue.

Tu Le:
So I don't know what the English translation is, but…

Lei Xing:
Those two brands surpassed both NIO and ZEEKR for the time being. We don't draw any conclusions, but ZEEKR seems to be on a good momentum if they were to meet their 140,000 target.

Tu Le
If they can quickly ramp the X, I think they'll have massive numbers towards the end of this year. And one thing to note also and we're not completely comparing apples to apples, but if we're looking at Denza which has a couple of products in the market, and the VW ID. series which has five or six products in the market, Denza beat Volkswagen ID. series sales. So, and ID. series sales year over year shrank.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, Group BEV sales was what, 21,000 some units, or 25,000 units. That's everything, that's including Taycan and Audi.

Tu Le:
And then also, did we talk about this last week? BYD beat Volkswagen brand?

Lei Xing:
I think we mentioned it a little bit. Kind of a huge, in itself, a watershed moment.

Tu Le:
That's a passing of the baton that they're likely never going to get back, right? But the CFO did say that they were redoubling efforts to gain share back into Aasia. And when he says Asia, he means China, I think.

Lei Xing:
Based on what these CEOs and CFOs posted on social media. Let's say, for Volkswagen, take Volkswagen, for example, it sounds as if they are very positive, that they are very satisfied and that they're very looking much looking forward to re-growing that, getting that mojo back. I'm not sure, but that's the sense feeling that I get.

Tu Le:
I think they have to try to project confidence. Because the last thing they want is team morale to be just dropping.

Lei Xing:
We know that there's probably some executive shuffle brewing behind the scenes. I just saw Rupert Stadler, right, what he’s, the former Audi boss, what he's going to do with the emissions scandal, right?

Tu Le:
He's going to stay out of jail is what he's going to do. He's going to, he was fined 1.2 million Euros or something like that.

Lei Xing:
And also looking at the Volkswagen Group, they announced their quarterly numbers, just 600 some thousand units. So that's a run rate of, in the first quarter, so for the year, they probably will get to 2.5 million. That's 1.5 million off, they did 4 million right before the pandemic. I think 2019 was over 4 million.

Tu Le:
That's a massive massive reduction.

Lei Xing:
Which we kind of transition to what Ford…

Tu Le:
Let me add to that real quick. When you have a delta that large pressure is on exporting in order to keep the factories going and factories open, because when you lose a million plus units of sales over that short a period of time, that creates a lot of pressure to export the excess supply. So, look for Volkswagen later this year to increase exports from China. This dovetails into what you were just about to discuss Ford's revised, massaged strategy that Jim Farley announced on Tuesday.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, in the earnings call. And actually I like it to be honest with you, because different from Volkswagen Group, Ford has a much smaller, I would say exposure. So I think it's a bit easier for Jim to make that kind of announcement and just say it's an important market, but we have to focus a little bit. It looks like the pendulum is clearly swinging toward JMC for some reason, with the commercial business.

Tu Le:
Because it's profitable. 

Lei Xing:
That's what he was talking about. And so for a company like Ford, I think it's actually very practical and frugal to do this, meaning that, he said it clear, right? “We can't serve everyone.” If you can’t, then don't.

Tu Le:
I think what, to create some context for our listeners. In 2016, I think Ford sold around 1.1, 1.2 million units. Last year they were just under half a million passenger vehicles.

Lei Xing:
Not even that much. I don't think. It's more like 200, 300,000.

Tu Le:
Maybe including commercial then sorry, but total sales less than half a million. So percentage wise, it's a similar drop, I think to Volkswagen, but to your point, when you get into the 300,000 unit number for passenger vehicles, you are struggling to sell, so.

Lei Xing:
So Ford would be in danger of selling less this year, let's say, the PV side in China, than Li Auto. Because I think Li Auto is on their way to 300,000 units. If the current momentum holds, that's again, very deflating. So I think Jim was just being real like, right. So I think it's good.

Tu Le:
But I applaud them just like I applauded GM for taking Apple out of their digital ecosystem. These are tough decisions that need to be made.

Lei Xing:
But it's very difficult for a company like Volkswagen Group to say that we can't serve everyone and we're going to do something that Ford is doing. It's, right?

Tu Le:
Not when they're selling eight brands in the market.

Lei Xing:
I mean, yeah. Now introducing possibly another brand disguised behind the Cupra, right? So I don't know.

Tu Le:
They need to get rid of Skoda full stop. You and I completely agree that…

Lei Xing:
Skoda is done.

Tu Le:
They cannot consistently sell in the quantities that they are and expect not to close factories in the near future. So I think we have to look at that. If there's another year or 2 or 18 months, a really anemic Volkswagen brand sales, it's going to constrain their ability to really, really make bold moves.

Lei Xing:
And spending a billion Euros on that 100%TechCo. This is not something that Ford would be doing. I would imagine. So.

Tu Le:
But Farley, basically, he was interviewed for a Wall Street Journal event yesterday I think, and said that we just can't assume or hope that we can rescale or up skill all of our current employees. So I love his frankness. I think Jim is probably the closest to being as honest to the media, to the public, to the street, as any CEO, to your point specifically pointing to the Volkswagen Group people. I don't know how realistic, what they're saying is when you compare it to a Jim Farley, because I think Jim just is embracing this harsh reality and trying to make the best of it.

Lei Xing:
He would be a less, let's say, a Carlos Tavares, which is very vocal. And Jim will be a little bit more toned down kind of but still real and being frank.

Tu Le:
But he effectively said we're going to leave the market, passenger vehicle wise.

Lei Xing:
The thing is though, you look at the China numbers, and then you look at the financial numbers. These companies are still very healthy financially, Porsche, Volkswagen Group, Ford, right? Where do they make their profits? Some more depending on China, some more depending obviously on North America. So this is a balancing act. And like I said, some time before that, you really have to think about China, really, the position of China is important, but if you want, it's a balance between being profitable and volume, right? And that's what's happening. I think with some of the recent pricing moves by Tesla in both China and the U.S., right?

Tu Le:
Tesla raised prices last week or this week in China.

Lei Xing:
I said it's because of margins because it fell to below 20% and it's a very psychological threshold. I think the other point…

Tu Le:
Street put a ton of pressure on them too.

Lei Xing:
I think the other point is the China market, I think there was a lot of hold and see kind of holding the pocket from the consumer. So now that Tesla has raised prices, it's almost like hey, come buy our products, we're not going to be dropping bottle three to below RMB200,000. So you can stop waiting and just…

Tu Le:
I think that was a relief to the rest of the market and the rest of the brands, too. Because now they don't have to follow them down a price war, price reduction war. So I don't know, maybe Tesla feels pretty good about outlook for the rest of the year in China. So…

Lei Xing:
We'll see the numbers in the coming months, but I think we all agree that, I think the price reductions announced at the beginning of the year have not had the desired effect that many people expected. So…

Tu Le:
Which you and I talked about because of, I said this mid last year, late last year, the law of diminishing returns will come into play when they have so many price reductions. So that's exactly what kind of happened.

Lei Xing:
And for somebody like a Tesla, I think they can go either way pretty quickly. Throughout the year.

Tu Le:
They are the anomaly because they make moves pretty extremely and then pretty quickly. Both ways and both directions, which is jarring if you're following the traditional automotive ways, they do things really, what seems like willy nilly, so to traditional auto journalists and stuff, it’s just jarring for them to do these up and down, up and down, down down down kind of things.

Lei Xing:
And then the overall market itself, CPCA predicted April sales, EV sales were going to be around half a million. So the 15 or 16 brands I tabulated, was over 380,000. So that's what, like two-thirds, 70% almost. But I think the numbers always end up higher. It's going to be more a little bit more than 500,000 units, but still it's not at the level at the end of last year.

Tu Le:
It still should be a positive year, but not 100% growth, obviously. So which we got used to because it was 2 years in a row that was basically 100% growth. And now we sound disappointed, but it's still going to be a pretty solid year for NEV sales.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, I'm no longer as confident as my 10 million prediction.

Tu Le:
I should have bet you dinner or something.

Lei Xing:
I think that’s it on sales, you want to talk about your, end of your China trip a little bit?

Tu Le:
Sure, so last week I was in Beijing and unfortunately, wasn't able to scheduled my Li Auto trip, because I would have loved to spend a bit more time in the L7 driving it around and everything. But timing was just too tight. So we'll have to do that this summer and then went down to Shanghai. And what's funny is that Bill Russo and I had been on a panel discussion on CGTN at like 7:30 in the morning. Then we were both sharing the stage, he as the moderator, I as a panelist, for AMCHAM Shanghai. And we talked about completely different things. He went over the sales numbers for.

Lei Xing:
I remember doing the same thing in April 2019. So both of us has done it.

Tu Le:
Yeah and so, did that and then jumped on a plane to Shenzhen and went down there, was able to visit BYD and spent a day checking out their facility, was really impressed.

Lei Xing:
Was that your first time?

Tu Le:
And it was my first time to BYD.

Lei Xing:
It's the pentagon, no, not the pentagon. It's the octagon.

Tu Le:
Octagon. Yeah, no. Maybe it's pentagon.

Lei Xing:
Yeah it's the six side. What's the word for six side?

Tu Le:
I forget. Pentagon is five.

Lei Xing:
 Hexagon or something?

Tu Le:
Yeah. But what was cool is you go to these campuses, and you always see these prototypes with the camouflage. And they had Denza prototypes. They have Yang Wang. They had the, they had BYD prototypes. And so there are three brands that were kind of driving around. I'm trying to take pictures, and they're like, no. And so as a guest, you try to let, you know, follow the rules, whatever. So was really impressed. Unfortunately, I go in there and they're like, we're going to do the drill test on the NCM battery and then on the blade battery. And I pulled out my phone late and wasn't able to record the NCM battery getting drilled into and then exploding. But then at the end, they take me to like the parking lot and there's like all these cars parked, unfortunately, no Seagull. So I didn't get to drive the Seagull. But Yuan Plus, Han, Tang, Denza 009 I got to drive.

Lei Xing:
 D9, D9. 009 is the ZEEKR.

Tu Le:
009 is the ZEEKR! I said that to them, too, and I caught myself, but it's just confusing, the D9, 009. So I can be confusing. I'm going to give myself a little slack for that. But you know, you got to drive the Han. They're solid cars. Yeah, I told you that, or I told them that if they're going to price premium in Europe, they probably need to up their game on the fit and finish on the interiors, for sure. But dynamic driving, dynamics, acceleration, no complaints, the digital infotainment systems work. If I had a complaint, not complaint, if I had an area of improvement for them, I'd say that it probably needs to be a little more sophisticated. And so I think they're going to sell a bunch of those, almost every single car I got into I think they're going to be selling a lot of them. And they realize that there's room for improvement for sure, but they're also shipping these cars into Latin America, Southeast Asia, where it's not a sophisticated passenger vehicle market. They're just going to grab volume where they can and just be leaders in these other markets. And I think I'd mentioned this before: they've entered 51 markets, it looks like they just entered Ecuador now. So they are definitely all gas, no brakes. And as long as they can keep churning them out, manufacturing them, I think that they're going to sell everything they make. 

And then in the late afternoon, so I was in Nanshan. Then I went to Pingshan and then I went to Futian district in Shenzhen. And DeepRoute was in Futian, went to DeepRoute, which is an autonomous vehicle company. For those that have followed the podcast before, we interviewed the founder, CEO or co-founder and CEO Maxwell Zhou a while ago, he was one of our first guests, very entertaining, very informative. And so we've been fans of DeepRoute for a long time they've been fans of ours because I think we were their first real western exposure. They got a lot of good publicity out of that podcast and then I got to try out a Driver 2.0 vehicle. It was a IM, there was a safety driver, we drove through Futian, was pretty impressed and relative if I'm doing a comparison, I'd ridden in three at this point, the Baidu, the QCraft, and then the DeepRoute was probably the second smoothest ride of the three. And so really impressed as well. They are focused on partnering with OEMs to get their hardware/software stacks on mass produced vehicles. So that's going to be their strategy.

Lei Xing:
There's a real race on that L2+ ADAS from these self-driving startups, WeRide included, right?

Tu Le:
She seemed, Corinne who I spoke with. Unfortunately, I was unable to sit down and meet with Maxwell, will have to do that again. I have to come down again, to sit down and talk with him. Maybe you and I can coordinate this summer, spend a couple of days down south or something, and then got to meet up with Taylor and Jack and Bridget at the Snowbull Capital office.

Lei Xing:
Do they have a penthouse in Shenzhen now?

Tu Le:
Yeah, they were in the highest ranked district of like Nanshan like you know, in Beijing in CBD there's that one tower where all the private equity companies are. That's basically the building, similar to the building. And I was like, wow dude, and then they had this small office that they were sharing, but we went and called a Pony.ai and we rode that thing for 53 minutes. And it was about 6 o'clock in the evening, so traffic was high, a lot of bikes, a lot of delivery vehicles, lot of buses. I was really impressed.

Lei Xing:
With a safety driver, right? 

Tu Le:
With the safety driver. So the only vehicle that I rode in without a safety driver was the Baidu..

Lei Xing:
 On the driver side or on the passenger side?

Tu Le:
On the driver side. So what is impressive about the Pony is that it's point to point. So we can kind of sort of go anywhere and versus Qcraft and DeepRoute. I think they were predetermined routes, okay? With Pony, Taylor had rerouted or changed the destination, 25 minutes into the ride. And I have recorded it. I will try to post it on somewhere, maybe on my Youtube channel that I haven't created yet. But I do have to say that there are four companies. I think two of them are not part of that research companies, autonomous vehicle scorecard, and they, all four of them should be on there. For sure. So we're out there, getting it done, Lei, you and I, we re out there, getting it done. So man, Pony very impressive to be quite frank because it was by far the heaviest traffic autonomous vehicle that I've ever ridden in. Shenzhen is not as, the traffic isn't as intense as a Beijing or Shanghai, but it was nasty, I mean there were some weird roads that we wrote on that had not typical, four-way intersections.

Lei Xing:
We need to come up with our own AV leader board, right?

Tu Le:
Yes. And you know, what's, the key, and one of the things that I talked to DeepRoute about is that the local characteristics need to be programmed into each autonomous vehicle. So AV driving around in Shanghai should act and feel differently than an AV riding around Beijing versus Changsha, versus Wuhan versus Shenzhen. It needs to feel like the local traffic. And so I don't know. And I got the impression that DeepRoute felt the same way that there could ever be a universal Robotaxi where it doesn't matter where it's, where you put it. It just knows.

Lei Xing:
It localizes.

Tu Le:
Because there's local habits.

Lei Xing:
That's what you mean. 

Tu Le:
Yeah there needs to be kind of set parameters from a local standpoint that a universal Robotaxi might not be able to discern on its own without this specific information and programmed into it.

Lei Xing:
That's why you have these local operations testing going on before they are rolled out, right? It's a step-by-step process, as we've seen. Same in hina and the U.S. right?

Tu Le:
At the BYD stop, I even went on that sky train. So I got to do that.

Lei Xing:
You didn't get to do a Yuannian, the one with one wheel falling off. You didn't get to do that.

Tu Le:
I didn't get to do that. No. Next time I’m going to, next time we're there, we got to go drive the Yang Wang, right?

Lei Xing:
So quickly on the BYD numbers, basically, the first four months were a quarter, three quarters of a million units. They should easily get the two and a half (million units) And if we count better second year, half of the year, they probably need to get to 300,000 a month at some point late in the year to get to 3 million, I think. so I mean April was not a huge increase from March from BYD’s perspective. It's a little bit lower than expected, but we'll see, especially speaking, the Seagull, the other model that went on to that leader board was the Bingo, which had the 16,000 in the first month. I'm expecting the Seagull to be at least double that to be really successful with all the expectations that poured in.

Tu Le:
And the thing is with, the thing is with BYD, once they launch, or introduce a vehicle, I think within 3 months they are delivering it.

Lei Xing:
So basically, the A00 segment is completely electrified, BEV electrified. Now, the same thing is happening in A0 segment with the Bingo and the Seagull?

Tu Le:
So it's going to be a fun competition to watch because the Seagull is the closest thing to fully featured. The Bingo and the Hongguang MINI is a really really simple interior, whereas the Seagull is close to like just a normal car, ok?

Lei Xing:
I would say the Bingo is a specialty, whereas the Seagull is the everyday, more mainstream.

Tu Le:
Exactly. I completely agree which gives it broader appeal. That was so, very, very eventful.

Lei Xing:
Yeah you had a full what two week, 2.5 week China trip. I mean mine was a little bit short, but still.

Tu Le:
And I’m, I know it is 3:50, I know we have a hard stop at 4 o'clock. But I want to open the room up, but I do want to talk about my Shenzhen to Hong Kong trip. That was a bit.

Lei Xing:
It wasn't that smooth. Are you saying? 

Tu Le:
Interesting. Man, so…

Lei Xing:
You take the boat? 

Tu Le:
No, my buddies were like take the subway. So for the folks that aren't aware, you have to go through customs to get to Hong Kong from Shenzhen. So you have to leave China and enter Hong Kong, two customs just like any other country, entering and exiting countries. And so and then I talked to Taylor and Taylor's like, no, there's a fast train, there's a Gaotie, right? 15 minutes. And so I'm like, okay, so I'll take that because, so I went to the Shenzhen Nanzhan. And my DiDi driver was like the slowest. I get there 15 minutes before the train is supposed to leave, and he drops me off.

Lei Xing:
And you don't have your ticket yet, right? Because you still need to pick up a physical ticket. Don't you?

Tu Le:
No physical tickets. I did not need a physical tickets. And then if you're carrying a foreign passport, there is a special line if you're carrying a foreign passport. So I was fully confident when I left the hotel that I would make it in time. But this DiDi driver was 7 minutes later than originally scheduled.

Lei Xing:
Where is Pony when you needed it?

Tu Le:
Yeah man, he was just so not aggressive, because you remember this, going into the train stations that it becomes a parking lot. Once you get like half a kilometer away from the front door.

Lei Xing:
Then you got to get in line to go into the actual waiting area.

Tu Le:
Yeah, and it starts raining and the guy’s like, let me just drop you off here, let me just drop you off here. I have no idea where the door is, because I've never been to this train station, and I'm like, I don't know what's going to save me more time sitting in this car going 0.00 kilometers an hour, or just getting out and walking. So I finally get out because I have suitcases, right? So go, go, and then missed my train. It was, but the good thing is it was like RMB100, it was RMB100, so about $15. I’ll eat that. I'll just say I paid $30 for a train and so got on the next train. And 16 minutes, boom. And of course I'm high maintenance because I got the first class ticket. If it was second class would have been like RMB90 or RMB80. And so go there and then go to China customs, no problem and then had to walk like 10 minutes to get to the Hong Kong, Kowloon. And then going through customs for Hong Kong, it took forever. Then I’m now in like past customs to Hong Kong, and I walk to the Kowloon station, the subway station because we're at the train station and underground. You can walk to the subway station. I walked to the subway station and tried to buy a subway ticket because I'm meeting some friends in Central. I was supposed to meet them at 4, it is 5 o'clock now. And I go to the ticket counter or the automatic ticket thing, doesn't take my WeChat, because it's Hong Kong, it’snot China. And so, I need cash.

Lei Xing:
I couldn't neither. So.

Tu Le:
Yeah, right. Because you needed to get your ID match to the WeChat. So I go to the ATM, I get money out. None of the ticket machines take cash, they only take coins. So I go to the freaking pastry shop. And I'm like, can you make change? And they are like, no. I'm like, what? So I can't open the drawer, so I buy this HD$15 pastry that I put in my pocket that I didn't even eat. So I get change and I finally get my train ticket, my subway ticket. I go to Central, and then the restaurant that I'm meeting them at is like a 30-minute walk from the subway stop. And I have one big suitcase, one small suitcase and a backpack. The big suitcase is because my wife bought all this crap that I had back.

Lei Xing:
Hope your life is not listening.

Tu Le:
So I go up. Well, and because Hong Kong is all hills, right? And so I'm like, none of the roads are like super flat. So everything's like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I jump in a cab, I go to Central and that's fine. But man, I didn't get to the restaurant till 6 o'clock. I was supposed to meet them at 4. Then that morning I had spent 3 hours on the phone with Expedia in order to try to change my ticket. And so I was supposed to leave on Wednesday, but because of May Holiday, I wanted to leave early because it would have just been me sitting in a hotel getting work done, which is fine. But I'd rather just go home early, so I ended up leaving at 1:45 am so I drank some beers, we had some dinner and then got on the Hong Kong express at around 10 pm at night with dehydrated because I drank so much beer, go to Hong Kong and everything's pretty uneventful. 

Lei Xing:
Yeah the Airport Express is a great way to travel. That's what I did when I headed back to Beijing.

Tu Le:
So sorry, some of this was kind of personal experience as opposed to like car talk and EV talk…

Lei Xing:
NO I mean this is important because for me, right? So I went to Hong Kong first and then Beijing, Shanghai. So three completely different. They're all China, right? But completely different feel, vibe, and it was just interesting to experience and not only the cultural aspect, but mobility aspect of it because we talk about mobility and there's different ways that you need to be aware of to get around. And in Shanghai during the auto show, the best way to get around is through the Hello Bike, right, the shared bike.

Tu Le:
And subway, right? Because rookie mistake if you get into a cab at Hongqiao from the auto show and you're trying to get into Jing’an, forget about it. That's 2 hour, that's 2 hours right there.

Lei Xing:
And then in Shanghai, in particular, more often than not, you get into an EV cab if you're doing DiDi, right? I posted the Chevrolet Menlo.

Tu Le:
And again, they're not super comfortable because the, where your feet are is flat. And if you're in and ICE, they are, the part where you put your feet is sunken in. So your knees can kind of bend perpendicular as opposed to kind of pressed up against your chest, and so the BEVs are a bit more uncomfortable in that regard. They're getting better. The last thing is I noted this in this week's newsletter, I was in Shanghai, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and then Hong Kong. Maglev, plane, lot of walking, lot of bike riding, DiDi. So I didn't think about it until I thought about it. And I was like you know what I used pretty much every form of transportation you could imagine.

Lei Xing:
The only thing I didn't do this trip is Gaotie. I only had 6 days in China, so is was either flying or.

Tu Le:
I love the Gaotie man. I took a second-class ticket and I was in the middle seat of course. And so on the way back to Shanghai, I bought a first class and it was nice…

Lei Xing:
and here stateside, it's nothing.

Tu Le:
It's so uneventful. Taking the maglev is so uneventful. It goes 325 kilometers an hour.

Lei Xing:
Here in the stateside, it’s nothing but driving. The miles that you rack up in my car is just every day you see the odometer, it just keeps going up. And in China is totally different. 

Tu Le:
It’s a shame, it's a shame. I appreciate the highways that we have, but I would much rather get on a fast train, a maglev, a Gaotie and go to Chicago, go to Pittsburgh. Because honestly, if you've never experienced a maglev or a fast train or bullet train, it is, you can get on the internet. You can walk around. There's no virtually no turbulence. It's restful, because on a plane, you feel like a sardine. You're packed in there and 4 hours, 4.5 hours, because that's how long it takes for the fast train from Beijing to Shanghai. Goes by so fast and you can actually get work done. Because you have enough room, you can put your computer on your lap or on that little table that they give you. I was super productive for the 8.5 or 9 hours that I was in the and the best thing about it, I think it was like $60 or like RMB300 or RMB400 one way. In the United States, if the airlines had competition like that, they would provide so much better customer service and be cheaper. Then the other thing, too, the last thing I’ll rant about is Asian airlines versus American Airlines. The customer service and the friendliness of staff is completely different.

Lei Xing:
So on my flight from Hong Kong to Beijing is a Air China flight and one of the pursers or the purser was actually the wife of someone I knew. So I thanked him again. That was a great service.

Tu Le:
Air China's mamahuhu. I flew Air Korea or Korean Air. So I feel Korean Air is amazing, super nice. Then like I fly Delta and they couldn't be bothered, right? Like, and it's just night and day from a service standpoint.

Lei Xing:
Whatever just thankful that we got to experience everything right, for the good and for the bad, gives you a much more perspective on things. So that's we're all thankful for that.

Tu Le:
And it feels normal to be able to fly internationally again. 

Lei Xing:
Definitely. Without masking, stuff like that. So.

Tu Le:
Beijing and Shanghai for both of us is like nothing we can get around. We know where to go. We still have good friends in both places. And so it's very, those two cities are super friendly for me. But anyways, if no one has any questions, we will close the room up for today.

Lei Xing:
I got to head out. So, but good episode.

Tu Le:
And then next week, we're going to drop our MAX episode. So look out for that, Chris  Hind from CARWOW.

Lei Xing:
And some of the earlier episodes that we're still working on.

Tu Le:
We'll get those out, too. Apologies. But we were behind on a few things, but thanks for joining everyone. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening.

Lei Xing:
Yes, same here. And may the 4th be with 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.