In this episode, Lei broadcasts for the first time in Beijing and Lei talks about his immediate thoughts about being back while Tu reflects on some of his experiences driving in Beijing and China.
Tu and Lei then shift the discussion over to the China NEV purchase tax exemptions and the announcement that they’d be extended but capped while also being reduced over time. Both Tu and Lei expected this announcement while Lei throws out how much the exemptions have totaled to date. Tu expects that we should know by the beginning of Q4’23 whether the exemption extension helps boost sales.
Tu shifts topics to Volkswagen’s Capital Markets day and Tu and Lei spend a few minutes unpacking their thoughts and interpretations about what was announced.
Tu then asks for Lei’s thoughts on the $700M investment from the investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government totaling ~7% of the company.
The podcast ends with Tu discussing some of the things that he thought were interesting this week that he wrote about in the SAI Newsletter.
In this episode, Lei broadcasts for the first time in Beijing and Lei talks about his immediate thoughts about being back while Tu reflects on some of his experiences driving in Beijing and China.
Tu and Lei then shift the discussion over to the China NEV purchase tax exemptions and the announcement that they’d be extended but capped while also being reduced over time. Both Tu and Lei expected this announcement while Lei throws out how much the exemptions have totaled to date. Tu expects that we should know by the beginning of Q4’23 whether the exemption extension helps boost sales.
Tu shifts topics to Volkswagen’s Capital Markets day and Tu and Lei spend a few minutes unpacking their thoughts and interpretations about what was announced.
Tu then asks for Lei’s thoughts on the $700M investment from the investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government totaling ~7% of the company.
The podcast ends with Tu discussing some of the things that he thought were interesting this week that he wrote about in the SAI Newsletter.
CEM #121 Transcript
Recorded June 23, 2023
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. For those that are new to the show, welcome! And to our loyal listeners, welcome back! We ask that you 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, good morning. Can you please introduce yourself?
Lei Xing:
This is your co-host Lei Xing, former chief editor of China Auto Review, and this is episode #121 and I'm coming live, to you live from Beijing, China. And I've been here since I arrived on the morning of the 20th from Frankfurt. And it's been a busy few days meeting families and friends. And I feel like I've already gained a few pounds.
Tu Le:
But tell us how cold it's been there. Please.
Lei Xing:
It's, Beijing has been a sauna since yesterday, since when I arrived basically.
Tu Le:
So hold on a second. So China history and kind of culture, there are four cities that people will argue about and there's six cities that people argue about are the four furnaces, which four furnaces are you talking about? And do we agree that Beijing is not one of the four furnaces?
Lei Xing:
Beijing is, well, I'd say Beijing is definitely one of the four.
Tu Le:
But it's not traditionally been.
Lei Xing:
I think the traditional ones are Chongqing, Nanjing, Wuhan, maybe Beijing if we include Beijing, but probably another city.
Tu Le:
I thought it was Changsha.
Lei Xing:
This is a record-breaking heat wave that we're in right now. Yesterday was the hottest day on record for June and the second hottest temperature ever recorded in the history of Beijing. I think it was 41.8°. So pretty much you stay inside.
Tu Le:
Which equates, for our American friends, that means about 105° and 106°.
Lei Xing:
I've never experienced this type of heat even having lived in Beijing for this long.
Tu Le:
Let me tell you a quick, funny little anecdote. My wife, we are in Durham, North Carolina. My boys are in a camp, the sports camp. North Carolina is normally beautifully sunny, and this entire week. We got here on Sunday, the entire week it's been pouring rain. So.
Lei Xing:
It's been weird.
Tu Le:
So my wife has posted pictures of us in Durham, and she talked about how rainy it is. And then one of the responses on the WeChat comments was that they would love to have rain in Beijing right now.
Lei Xing:
Yeah, and some cool down. Yeah, so this is the first time that we've done this show with me live in Beijing cause last time I was in China, it was a quick trip for Auto Shanghai and so I didn't have time to. I'm going to be here for 2 months and basically the last few days I’ve been seeing families and friends, having a lot of food. I've been driving a lot, shuttling back and forth from all my packed apartment stuff, trying to figure out what to throw away and what to keep. And that's what I’ve been doing the last few days. So it's been pretty hectic..
Tu Le:
Lei, stay efficient.
Lei Xing:
But you come right back to the rhythm, to the vibes, how you drive, right? Everything is pretty slow, a lot of cut ins, a lot of mopeds, a lot of construction. I tell you there's still a lot of construction going on.
Tu Le:
Let me interrupt you there, Lei. When we talk cut ins, in the United States, you can have probably 3 or 4 or 5 meters of space in between cars without the car on the left. Let's say you're on the highway. You could actually be in city driving. And in the U.S., if you have 4 or 5 meters or about 10, 15 feet, cars length of space in between you and the next car, the car in front, you're probably not going to have somebody cut into your lane. In China, if there is one meter worth of space, if their nose is ahead of your nose on the vehicle, they will cut in front of you for sure.
Lei Xing:
I think the expectation here is you expect others to cut in. So because the speeds are pretty slow anyway. So if people cut in, you let them cut in and that's it. That's the expectation, so.
Tu Le:
And I'm going to say as a foreigner living in China, one of the things that I really noticed a lot was the passive aggressiveness of China drivers because they know they're being aggressive, but they would refuse to look at you when they do it. So when, for instance, they cut in, and you have to suddenly stop, and then maybe 30 seconds later, you might pass them, because you change lanes, you look over at them, and they know you're looking at them.
Lei Xing:
One thing I noticed is that intersections, when your light turns green, you don't immediately jump and drive and drive away because you have to wait for these mopeds who are jumping the light in the other direction to go through first. And then you go.
Tu Le:
I have to say that when I first arrived there, there were no traffic rules. There were no traffic laws. They might have been traffic laws on the books, but no one paid attention to them, no one did. And you parked anywhere you wanted to. So if you go to Shanghai, it's actually really really orderly. Beijing is a step under that and if you go to the tier-2, tier-3 cities, it's still pretty wild wild west from a transportation standpoint.
Lei Xing:
So Beijing is the wild wild east. I'm used to it because like I said, you, I tell people that I meet, and I say, to us coming back, everything felt exactly the same without that 3 years of whatever that went on, right?
Tu Le:
No man, you got to admit that there's not as many foreigners.
Lei Xing:
Right. And me, I’m kind of…
Tu Le:
It’s not the same.
Lei Xing:
Yeah, not the same, right? So I could be considered a local. I drive often, so it's really interesting. Anyways, I'm still just digesting being back because I’m going to be here for longer this time.
Tu Le:
Physically and mentally, right? Because you're eating the Chinese food again. So.
Lei Xing:
Yeah, Chinese food and just so much, just meeting these people that you last met 3 and 3, 4 years ago and seeing their kids grow up. They are all changed. And stuff like that is really a little bit jarring. And really, again, seeing the all these different kinds of EVs on the roads. It's like so refreshing because I've been talking about it for three years, right? Two and a half years.
Tu Le:
Beijing is probably 80% of Shanghai from a standpoint of the number of green plates that you see. In Shanghai versus Beijing.
Lei Xing:
Yeah there's still a lot of ICEs on the roads. Definitely less EVs but still a lot of green plates.
Tu Le:
I think the major difference between Shanghai and Beijing is because everything is kind of sort of concentrated in one area in Beijing and that's in CBD or Chaoyangqu, right? So in Shanghai, you can go to a lot of different districts, a lot of different roads, a lot of different areas and have traffic jams. But, I'll take that back. There are two primary areas. There's west third ring road and east third ring road, you know financial street, I think that gets pretty busy sometimes, but pretty much CBD, Sanlitun area is where all the traffic jams are going to be starting at around 3, 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon. So anyways, what are we going to talk about this week?
Lei Xing:
So housekeeping: just in case, something happens because I am jumping the wall, but just that you guys know that this could happen now that I’m here in Beijing. We should get into to the
Tu Le:
News this week.
Lei Xing:
Yeah basically you said four more years, four more years.
Tu Le:
Yes. Can you tell everybody what I’m talking about?
Lei Xing:
It’s the NEV subsidies exemption. I mean the purchase tax exemption for NEVs being extended for, let's say, 2 years and then additional 2 years, it will be levied at half the rate. And with purchase tax exemption capped at RMB30,000 for 24-25, and then RMB15,000 for 26 and 27. It's, as we had expected, it’s just a matter of time and matter of not if, but when and how long. And now we know.
Tu Le:
So no surprises on actually extending it. I think it was 119 or 120 Lei, where you had said it was going to be either 2 or 4 years. So kudos to you. I thought it was going to be 4 years, I think. So. Anyways, that's not a surprise. The amounts, what do you think of the amounts the RMB30,000 to start?
Lei Xing:
Because I think the amounts it's interesting because, so the caveat is anything above RMB300,000, you don't, basically is not tax exempt. The other caveat is especially for battery swappable vehicles, and specifically for NIO, if you have the BaaS model, you actually are taxed on the vehicle itself, not including the battery. So let's say for ET5, you are taxed on the RMB228,000, the BaaS model. So that cap of RMB30,000 actually is more beneficial, because you're taxed at a lower pricing point.
Tu Le:
And it's pro-rated based on the price of the vehicle.
Lei Xing:
And it's interesting that this tax, purchase tax exemption has been in place since September 2014, so 9 years and it was extended three separate times, 17, 20, 20222, previously supposed to end at the end of this year. And then the latest news extended it. And I saw some numbers that last year, the number of NEVs that were, benefited from the purchase tax exemption were around 5.68 million, totaling RMB87.9 billion in taxes exempted. And by the end of 2022, this tax exemption scale had exceeded RMB200 billion. And there's some early estimates that the 24-27 tax exemption is going to total around RMB520 billion. So it's a huge number.
Tu Le:
Let me, for our western audience, RMB1,000 is around $150, $140. Just for frame of reference, so RMB10,000 is around $1,400. Just keep that in mind when he's talking RMB500 billion sounds like a lot, it is a lot, but let's just say you divided by seven.
Lei Xing:
Yeah, the other, the RMB300,000 cap for the price of the vehicle, it's specifically at that point, because we have also often talked about this, the share of NEVs priced under RMB300,000 is close to 90%, right? So that had that in mind.
Tu Le:
So let me add a couple of wrinkles to that point, because you took the words right out of my mouth Lei. And so what the Chinese government is focusing on is mass market and moving excess capacity, because that's going to drive the volume. And let's be clear, the Chinese government is very concerned about the overall economy, and they're very concerned about excess capacity in the electric vehicle space. So they've been giving more scrutiny to companies that want to add capacity for the future, including Tesla, is what I'm hearing. So.
Lei Xing:
If we remember what had preceded this announcement was the support on charging that came out of a state council meeting.
Tu Le:
100,000 cities, or whatever?
Lei Xing:
Yeah, no, that was from MOFCOM. But right before this NEV exemption, purchase tax exemption extension, there was another document. I think that was based on a State Council meeting from Li Qiang just before he went on the Germany/France trip, which we can talk about. But this is, again, trying to keep that momentum going.
Tu Le:
And I think what, I’ll add just a little bit to what you said, because you gave a lot of detail, which is great. I think that by November, we should know whether or not this extension of the tax subsidies or the tax abatements have done what they needed to do. If not, the Chinese government might look to do something even more drastic number one, and then number two, look for the price war to continue, because again, we're looking at capacity. And the lack of sales will idle factories for 2, 3, 4 months if factories aren't running at, let's say, over 75% utilization rates. So 100,000-unit factory is not building 75,000 cars, then there's a lot of people sitting around doing a bunch of nothing getting paid. You can't do that for a quarter, two quarters at a time and not bleed money. So let's remember that. And then excess capacity, because you're paying for the land, regardless of whether you use it or not, you're paying for that factory regardless of whether you use it or not. And you're paying for the staff most of the time to not work. So that's why a GM and Ford historically in the United States, because the UAW stuff and China's a little bit different because there are no unions, but it's sometimes better to build cars and sell them at a loss than to not build cars at all. So keep that in mind because the pressure will be to continue to build cars, even if there's not demand. But if they continue to build those cars, the pressure to export them to foreign markets will be increased significantly towards the end of this year if the domestic market doesn't get the boost, that they're hoping it does with these stimulus, continued stimulus. So.
Lei Xing:
Yeah, and the other kind of the debate was, it still included the PHEVs and EREVs which would benefit. Actually, there's a wave, if you see, there's a wave of models, EREV models coming and PHEVs following Li Auto’s footsteps. So they are kind of going to benefit from this extension big time.
Tu Le:
I'm going to say this once and for all because there's arguments on Twitter about the BEVs versus the EVs. When you and I are talking the China market, specifically, we're talking about NEVs, so we'll include PHEVs, we’ll include EREVs because we're talking about NEVs. You and I should specify and I think we do, whether we're talking about BEVs, whether we're talking about PHEVs. But in general, we're talking about NEVs, which includes all of the above when we're talking volumes and things like that. So this is unique to China.
Lei Xing:
And EREV is very unique to China. So last year, EREVs total, I think, was somewhere close to a quarter million units. And Li Auto obviously accounted, I don't know, what did Li Auto do last year?
Tu Le:
120,000, something like that.
Lei Xing:
So this number probably will double to half a million this year because Li Auto is on their way to 300,000 units, likely. And then you add right?
Tu Le:
For our new listeners, EREV stands for extended range electric vehicles. So it has a small electric motor and the difference between an EREV and some plug-in hybrids is that the motor never or so the gas engine
Lei Xing;
The extender.
Tu Le:
So the kind of gas motor part, yes.
Lei Xing:
It doesn't drive the wheels. It only replenishes the…
Tu Le:
The gas part never drives the wheels. It only replenishes the motor or the electric motor battery.
Lei Xing:
And Li Auto is not the first company to do it. I think the first company was Nissan with the e- power, which is the same thing, basically.
Tu Le:
So let's move to Volkswagen Capital Markets Day. Did you get a chance to…
Lei Xing:
No, I didn't get a chance. The only thing I think that stood out to me was Volkswagen wants to remain the number one international OEM, it's a simple statement that actually, I think, has a lot of meaning behind it. What that really means, I think, obviously, on the volume side of it, it's easy. I mean even if they get down to a million units, two million units, they are still going to be the number one international, because the other ones also not doing well in terms of growing volumes. But I think specifically, if you read that, whatever was shared in the press release was this “in China for China” so what I expect that to mean, the number one international OEM, is also a lot more China only, developed in China for China only models. That's what I would expect.
Tu Le:
And simply put, they've given up the volume title or they're willing to give up the volume title to protect margins. And I think this is them looking backwards and saying our trajectory is shrinking to aggressively. We can't save that title and one of the reasons they can't save that or let's say, two of the main reasons they can't save that title. There are poor sales in the United States and there are continuing worsening sales in China. So, if those people at Volkswagen Group think the Scout brand is going to save them? Now, Volkswagen USA said they wanted to, or was it Diess that said they wanted to double, I don't know if Blume is also backing this statement, was made a while ago, they wanted to double share from 5% to 10% by 2030 in the United States. And the ID. series vehicles are not going to do it. So they're looking at Scout, but Scout to me is more niche. And when you're competing against Ford and GM and Hyundai Kia in the United States for SUVs, think Bronco, think Jeep Wrangler, it’s going to be tough. They're not going to give up any share to some upstart Scout brand. It sounds like a cool brand, but man, they need to check all the boxes in order for it to have a successful launch in the U.S. So Volkswagen has some big challenges, and they've been flat on growth and for their revenue for the last 2 years, they want to get back to growth by 2027. So they don't have a ton of time. And I still feel that they're not ready to make the hard decisions, the tough decisions, because it's still a bunch of car guys. Even GM, even Ford, even Stellantis have hired ex-Amazon, ex-Apple to lead teams. So.
Lei Xing:
Before I got on, I saw you tweet on the comms lady for GM, right? That was from a tech background that was interesting.
Tu Le:
For those people that don't know, Lin-Hua Wu, who is the ex-comms head for Google. It was reported that she's taken on the role of global comms head for GM now. Is she the number one on the comms team? It's not clear, but I don't think she would have taken that role if she wouldn't have had the number one job, number one. And number two, I tweeted that she's probably not that interested in talking car stuff. She's probably not that well versed, because she's never had to be. And her contacts are all on the tech side from a media standpoint. So the automotive, the automotive comms team internally at GM is probably not feeling great. And number two, the automotive journalists that follow GM probably aren't feeling great because now tech journalists probably jump the line to get GM scoops. But to your point Lei, this is another indication of tech people getting hired in traditional automotive roles and a couple positive check marks: she's a woman and she's Asian. So I think those are also positive things that have nothing to do with the job.
Lei Xing:
Back to Volkswagen in China. So the last few days I've been driving a lot and surprisingly, I've seen many ID.3s, ID.4s and ID.6s, and obviously tons of other VW badged ICE vehicles on the roads. I didn't get a chance last time because I only stayed for a day, but yeah, I mean like we said, the volume brands other than Tesla, Volkswagen’s leading. You can’t…
Tu Le:
You are in Volkswagen brand’s backyard, so you should expect to see a disproportionate amount of those are probably driven by employees, so.
Lei Xing:
I don't know, yeah.
Tu Le:
See, you're too kind, you are too kind, Lei.
Lei Xing:
Yeah I'm just too kind.
Tu Le:
Anything else that we had going on this week that caught your eye?
Lei Xing:
No, I think I was joking that I’m back on the heels of Blinken. And then Li Qiang visiting Germany. And if you saw the three deals, right? Three deals at Volkswagen, Merc, and BMW signed were with the NDRC, it's not with another partner, it’s with the NDRC, and my wife's like, oh that means they're all good in China. Anytime you have that type of…
Tu Le:
Or you could call it pandering, too, right?
Lei Xing:
Yeah, signing, it’s like they're good.
Tu Le:
One thing I wanted to get your reaction on is this $700 million investment from Abu Dhabi into NIO, 7% of the…
Lei Xing:
Right, that was the other big news. I think now you have the Saudi Arabian investing in Lucid, right? Saudi arabia. And then now the UAE is behind NIO. It's almost like there's a bit of a race from that region of the world investing into smart EVs.
Tu Le:
There's a couple of things going on here that I think are worth mentioning. I think it's a well needed injection of capital for NIO. I think it's also an outlet for their vehicles. So I think that's both net positives, but 7% remember that when Geely acquired 9% of Mercedes, the German government and the Mercedes board got pretty concerned that Geely would want to take on more. And they did, but weren't allowed to kind of sort of. So we look at this is the Chinese government, how would they react if Abu Dhabi doubles down, wants to acquire more of the company. Because right now NIO is $9 a share. So if you believe that NIO is going to have a net positive in the long term, then it's a great time to buy NIO if you are a share, if you buy stocks, and I'm not giving advice, by the way. But do you think the Chinese government would have any heartburn if Abu Dhabi decided to double or even get close to 20%.
Lei Xing:
I think, it’s still contingent on maybe the respective mutual economic ties behind it, right? There's always a kind of a bartering or exchange, if you will, when these things happen.
Tu Le:
Let's just, let's just say that Biden meeting with Modi this week was likely not in a vacuum, right?
Lei Xing:
Biden Modi, Musk, Elon meeting Modi, right? Kind of hinting Indian investment. So if you look at these visits, Blinken to China, I think from what I've heard, it seemed to be relative on the positive side, especially considering flights, right? I had to fly from New York to Frankfurt to Beijing, just because the flights are still not back and so expensive. And then trying to mend that kind of relations, right?
Tu Le:
And we talked about this. We talked about this because currently it's a 1 to 1 thing. China is limiting the number of flights.
Lei Xing:
Reciprocal, yeah.
Tu Le:
That U.S. based airlines can fly into China. So the U.S. reciprocated by saying there are so only so many Chinese flights that can enter the United States. So the relationship and diplomacy got to a transactional level. And anytime there's dialogue, I think it's a positive. It's better than not talking right? And if we can work on the things that we can agree on, that will ease the tensions or not the tensions, but ease some of the coming and going of people. I think that's a net positive.
Lei Xing:
And there's still a lot of chatter on decoupling, right? Even with Li Qiang meeting Olaf, there's some chatter behind the scenes, you know German companies and…
Tu Le:
The German government is uneasy about the German companies, blah, blah. And Blume talked about derisking versus decoupling, which is, to me, half a dozen on one hand and six on the other. They must have talked to some strategic comms teams to say, and they must have been slapped on the wrist by saying, stop saying decoupling, start saying derisking. And Mayor Pete last week was in Japan and he talked about derisking as well. So this is a reality. What's going to happen is more and more and we talked about this months ago on a separate podcast about more mining is going to be happening in Europe. More mining is going to be happening in the United States, despite what some of the environmentalists are going to argue against. More refining for certain is going to be happening in Europe and more refining in the United States. We're going to see a lot of Europe, the EU and the United States leaning on partners to help bridge the gap between the domestic capacity and the capabilities in the rare earth metals that they don't have. And they'll try to work together in order to not have to ship batteries from China. So that's going to take a few years and we're probably not going to see everything play out maturely until around 2030 probably, so.
Lei Xing:
Yeah so a lot of politics going on last few days.
Tu Le:
We can bring up any guests in a minute, but let me look at my newsletter to see if there's anything else that is worth talking about. NAC is the one I think we should talk about Rivian has now…
Lei Xing:
NACS you mean.
Tu Le:
NACS sorry. NACS is the one, which is the North American Charging Standard, which Tesla started or established. We're going to have plugs starting in 2025 for GM, Ford and now Rivian. And Rivian is going to be able to access. Now remember Rivian had also created initially their own charging infrastructure, but it looks like they are much more worried about actually trying to get cars on the road than they are about charging. So I think big win for NACS, big win for the United States. So glad to see that. Stellantis is likely the biggest holdout, because I think Merc and BMW will probably come online shortly. And Hyundai Kia is also another holdout that I haven't heard is going to move forward yet. Oh, BYD had established, because you and I were interviewed by Elliot Chen. And one of the points that he made in the Wire China article was that BYD had established a new company, new entity called RIDE in the United States. So we'll learn more about that. We'll find out more. I've heard some rumors, but we'll find out more. And we'll let you know in coming episodes.
Lei Xing:
The website still looked familiar, except it's using the RIDE, the four letters.
Tu Le:
So they basically whited out all the BYD logos. Because it's still BYD pictures, it's all the same pictures, they just whited it out. And this week was especially significant on the battery tech side, at least from article standpoint, Volkswagen had announced that they've created a breakthrough with a partner on dry coating. So what, and I’m over simplifying this. And this is why we should put a battery engineer on our next MAX episode so they can tell us about the process. There's a cathode and anode, just like a positive and negative side. And in order for the electromagnetic properties to adhere, the current process is to use slurry, and that slurry needs to dry. And in order to do that, the process takes up a lot of space on the manufacturing floor. Dry coating eliminates the need to dry the slurry and eliminates a lot of processes that take up a lot of floor space on the factory. So Tesla famously has been working on this with the 4680 battery. And they announced that in 2020, they still haven't commercialized it. There are 4680 batteries going into Model Ys in Austin Giga, but not wrapped yet. I think the cathode side of the Tesla battery is still having problems with the mass production. So great news for Volkswagen if they can get it into production within the next 12, 18, 20 months, because I think Tesla will have that figured out in the next 12, 14 months. The second thing is Gotion is adding manganese into an LFP battery. And they said, that's a breakthrough that should go into production next year. And it will match the range of NCM batteries, be less volatile and less expensive, because it's not using nickel or cobalt. So two big breakthroughs and I mentioned this in past episodes as well, because the Inflation Reduction Act, the investment in battery technology and innovation is going to increase significantly across the world. So what we're starting to see is some of that occurring. And this is the Gotion and VW announcements. We're years in the making, but we should start seeing more and more of that as well. And we'll see innovation in charging. We'll see innovation in, I think swapping could become a thing in the United States. So for certain use cases. So hold me to that in 3 or 4 years. And maybe we get Levi on a MAX episode soon. So.
Lei Xing:
Which, when you say, charging, reminded me of since you had Li Auto on the topic, was when they had the Family Tech Day and the bold statement was we're going to, the new BEV that is coming out, we're going to be number one, it’s going to be the number one selling model of any kind above RMB500,000, so.
Tu Le:
That's some of the boldest I mean, famous last words for Li Bin on the 3 Series, right? Famous last words. So that's pretty much all I had Lei. Has a question or a comment or disagrees with anything that we've said. This was a little bit kind of a crazy episode, because you and I are traveling, we're not at our desks. We're a little bit like flustered.
Lei Xing:
I am a little bit flustered with the jet lag and…
Tu Le:
The last thing is that Toyota is using AI to design their EVs. I don't know if you saw that article, but I think that's pretty funny.
Lei Xing:
I haven't.
Tu Le:
They should use AI to name their cars because that bZ, blah, blah, blah. I don't know. If there are no other questions or comments, let's end it here.
Lei Xing:
And housekeeping, I guess, since I'm here. So going forward, we will have this show barring any changes at Friday mornings Eastern time 9 am, is that correct?
Tu Le:
Yes.
Lei Xing:
Okay, that works. I'm flexible.
Tu Le:
So I have to apologize because my I’ve been really slow in getting the past podcasts out, so hopefully we'll do a podcast dump today and Monday.
Lei Xing:
Yeah yeah, I know, I know, it's a, lots of things going on. And I sound ok from the wall.
Tu Le:
You sound great. I think there might be like a half second delay, but you sound great.
Lei Xing:
Alright. So I got this figured out this time.
Tu Le:
Keep on using the same tool you're using. Unless there's some special meeting, you should be fine for the next 2 months.
Lei Xing:
All right.
Tu Le:
Hey, everyone, hey thanks again for joining. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. We will talk with you all next week.
Lei Xing:
Thank you all and 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.