The pod starts with a review of June sales with Tesla and BYD dominating the market while many other brands breaking sales records including Tesla and BYD.
Tu points out for the EV purists that BYD beat Tesla for sales of BEVs in China for June. He also points out that breaking sales records are fine but the real test is whether monthly & quarterly sales are growing faster than the market.
Lei moves the discussion over to the pledge by 16 automakers that they would play fairly and vow to not continue the price war. Both Tu and Lei think it’s nothing more than lip service.
Tu and Lei jump to VW and their complaints to the Chinese govt about the ongoing price war and the current competitive environment. Lei goes further by summarizing some of Volkswagen Group China CEO - Ralf Brandstätter’s comments at the China Auto Forum going on this week.
The pod moves over to Tu’s trip out west and his update on what he sees while visiting Vancouver, BC and Seattle, WA.
The pod ends with Tu giving an update on China’s credit system for ICE and NEV manufacturing. It is a system China uses that was largely based on California’s years before.
The pod starts with a review of June sales with Tesla and BYD dominating the market while many other brands breaking sales records including Tesla and BYD.
Tu points out for the EV purists that BYD beat Tesla for sales of BEVs in China for June. He also points out that breaking sales records are fine but the real test is whether monthly & quarterly sales are growing faster than the market.
Lei moves the discussion over to the pledge by 16 automakers that they would play fairly and vow to not continue the price war. Both Tu and Lei think it’s nothing more than lip service.
Tu and Lei jump to VW and their complaints to the Chinese govt about the ongoing price war and the current competitive environment. Lei goes further by summarizing some of Volkswagen Group China CEO - Ralf Brandstätter’s comments at the China Auto Forum going on this week.
The pod moves over to Tu’s trip out west and his update on what he sees while visiting Vancouver, BC and Seattle, WA.
The pod ends with Tu giving an update on China’s credit system for ICE and NEV manufacturing. It is a system China uses that was largely based on California’s years before.
CEM #123 Transcript
Recorded 7/7/23
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. 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, in a hot and humid Beijing. Can you please introduce yourself?
Lei Xing:
Good morning. It hasn't really been cool at all. It's been hot, and that's an understatement. This is your co-cost Lei Xing, former chief editor of China Auto Review, and this is episode #123. Hot, hot, hot, would be the right word to describe July EV sales. And man, it's a records galore.
Tu Le:
June, June, EV sales.
Lei Xing:
June, June. I'm getting ahead of myself, but records galore for June sales. I mean all the numbers that we've seen seems to be there's just one record after another.
Tu Le:
The two at the top, no surprises.
Lei Xing:
And they're still getting new records.
Tu Le:
They're smashing, month over month, every month, there is a new record.
Lei Xing:
So basically if we look at the CPCA chart that they updated, BYD, Tesla, AION, Geely, Chang’an, Li Auto all had records, I think. And then SAIC…
Tu Le:
BYD had a record, Tesla had a record.
Lei Xing:
Tesla record, yep. AION record, but only 10 units more than a May, but still a record. Li Auto probably the most talked about because they keep on talking the talk and then walking the walk. So.
Tu Le:
It's impressive.
Lei Xing:
Yeah it’s impressive and even SAIC-GM got in on the fray, right? They did over what, 7,000 units? No, 9,000 units.
Tu Le:
We have to remember that Li Auto of the three that are traded in the U.S. have not recently launched any new vehicles. And so I'm referring to Xpeng with the G6 and NIO with ES6 and the ET5 Touring, right? Those sales numbers for those two products won't really show up in June sales, but we should start seeing them hit July, August, September, well into September. So NIO and Xpeng are both hopeful that it will boost their monthly sales numbers pretty significantly. So.
Lei Xing:
Well, it's as interesting as seeing these record numbers and equally interesting as seeing what they are projecting. So Li Auto is, based on the recent reports, they're expecting over 240,000 in the second half, which is adding up to be 380,000. It's just mind boggling.
Tu Le:
For our audience, they were at about 123,000 last year, all year.
Lei Xing:
Yeah, and the first half is already more than last year, total. NIO, I think, is still projecting a doubling of sales to about 240,000 and BYD they are right at the halfway point of, they are about 1.26 million in the first half, and they want to do 3 million. So based on second half being higher, it's achievable. I don't, at least for the BYD, Li Auto, these companies, I don't see any signs of slowing down.
Tu Le:
Let's break that down a little bit further. BYD in June had come total sales of 252,000, give or take a couple hundred units, 252,000 units. Tesla had 94,000, of the 251,000 that BYD had, 128 were BEVs. So for the purist out there, BYD beat Tesla on the BEV sales alone.
Lei Xing:
In China.
Tu Le:
In China. So let's be clear about that. And what's also impressive for Tesla is that their quarter number was 247,000 in China, so significant number for them that's driving their global number, okay?
Lei Xing:
So more than half of the 460,000, 466,000, which was a record.
Tu Le:
We can say, looking back that the price cuts did make a difference, I believe.
Lei Xing:
Yeah and even Geely, right? Geely had two records. So ZEEKR went above 10,000 for the first time, and then the Geely Galaxy L7 did close to 10,000 on the first month of sales.
Tu Le:
I think what's, another important thing that we should remind our audience about, Lei, is that the year over year numbers are kind of trash. So I think what's more important are the month over month numbers. And the improvement and the size of the month over month increases.
Lei Xing:
And the incremental growth are pretty significant for some of these brands. I mean just one model adding 10,000 in sales. Xpeng is…
Tu Le:
But we have to remember Lei also and this is where you or I or both of us, maybe we can work on it together for July numbers, is, are they growing faster than the market? You believe, 8 million, 9 million if we include exports for 2023, correct?
Lei Xing:
Yeah.
Tu Le:
That means an increase of almost 50%, probably 30 something percent year over year between 2022 and 2023 for the China market. And so we're seeing record growth from these EV companies, but if they're losing, if they're not selling more or larger than the market is growing, then they're actually losing to somebody else, I believe. So.
Lei Xing:
So CPCA is projecting 8.5 million wholesale of new energy passenger vehicles, and I'm usually a little bit more bullish than CPCA, I'll just say it's going to be 9, over 9 million based on the current momentum wholesale which include exports. I think it's between 30 to 40% growth. If you're growing above or more than that, then you're winning, right?
Tu Le:
Yep, that's where NIO has really struggled. That's where Xpeng has really struggled. So.
Lei Xing:
Well it’s great to see that NIO went back above 10,000 and in one of the charts that Li Auto keeps showing on a weekly basis, NIO did 4,100 in a week.
Lei Xing:
That stood out to me.
Tu Le:
That's 16,000 monthly rate, right? So that's pretty significant.
Tu Le:
But what we've seen in the past Lei, is that some new launches create this initial momentum that fizzles up, fizzles out really quickly. And so they have to be able to build on that and continue to really rally and get to that 4,000 a week for an entire month. Let's see if they're able to do that in the July, August, or September time frame. Now we're in the middle of the summer, so I’m not expecting huge July numbers, but tail end of August, I think we should start seeing a bit of a sharper uptick in sales of NEVs in China. So.
Lei Xing:
I think this year is probably a little bit different, because the previous seasonality, I think we can throw the seasonality out of the window because of where the market is going. And this NEV wave with all these new model launches adding incremental volume to each month's number. So.
Tu Le:
They do seem to be more spread out, these launches. And normally they are clustered together. But this is like peppered throughout every month for the last few months. New product, new product, new product.
Lei Xing:
Which really helped companies like Geely, Great Wall Motor, WEY and Haval, having had their PHEV launches, added significantly more volume. LeapMotor had a record. NETA was the number one selling EV in Thailand. That was interesting.
Tu Le:
Beating out BYD.
Lei Xing:
Which is, that's interesting. Let's see how that continues. Then you have a bunch of other brands in 2,000s, 3,000s on a monthly.
Tu Le:
Fighting for scraps effectively. One thing that I’ll also mention Lei that points back to that 8.5 for CPCA and 9 million for you forecasting for 2023, the lower that number is the more pressure there will be for the OEMs, the China EV Inc. to export to get rid of to keep their utilization rates at the factory pretty high. So the higher that number is closer to 9 million, over 9 million, I think we're going to see a lot more domestic consumption and normal export members. But if we get stuck in around 8 million, then we'll see more pressure to export to Europe, for instance. So it would be interesting to see. The other thing that is notable is that Tesla lowered their price for their vehicles in Japan. So that tells me that there are also trying to use Shanghai Giga to export to East Asia and Southeast Asia. So.
Lei Xing:
Yeah and speaking of the price cut, I think what happened yesterday with this pledge. I think we can talk about that a little bit.
Tu Le:
The truce?
Lei Xing:
The 16 including Tesla, so Tesla is the only, let's say, foreign car maker in that 16 companies that signed that pledge to kind of play fair market by the fair market rules and not exaggerate. But I think this is being reported a lot in the western press. But to me, it's just a gesture.
Tu Le:
Yeah. It's lip service.
Lei Xing:
Lip service and historically, there's has been a bunch of these pledges or, let's say, collaborations signed by multiple, let's say, by a dozen or so companies and none of these have had beared really any fruit. I mean what about the companies that didn't sign it? Does that mean they don't follow it?
Tu Le:
So that's exactly what that means.
Lei Xing:
So these things are really superficial. And I have, I don't think the price war is over as pointed out by some, I think it’s far from over, I think you would probably agree with me, because…
Tu Le:
I think it's going to be well into 2023, late into 2023. This price war.
Lei Xing:
Yeah because as we’ve said, price cuts come in many shapes and forms. And they will continue to do so. And more than likely you'll hear companies when they launch model saying this is the best under RMB500,000, RMB5 million, things like that. And the competition is cutthroat. Once you launch. So, for example, the Denza N7, after it was launched, ZEEKR came out with a WeChat like a push, saying, which is the really the shooting brake. Like you see these silent beefs going on?
Tu Le:
I think that stuff is very healthy for the market. I'm okay with all that stuff if you're going to get called out and you have confidence in your product and your business model, then by all means you should defend yourself or you should poke back for sure. So.
Lei Xing:
Recently also what went on, what went viral in the social media is this chat group of Denza fans dunking on ZEEKR. I don't know whether we've seen those screen shots.
Tu Le:
I've seen a few of them.
Lei Xing:
It went viral, and that's all happened right before the pledge signed at the China Auto Forum.
Tu Le:
So there's a quick comment Lei from Jacob Lana: who's the price war pact placating. It's trying to placate the Chinese consumer. It's trying to placate the Chinese government, because the belief is that there are Chinese consumers waiting on the sidelines, because they're afraid that if they make a purchase, then the price will go down right after they take delivery of the vehicle. And so what they're trying to do is guarantee or at least reassure consumers that they're not going to lower pricing anymore. But we, you and I agree like that is only going to happen if no one else does anything else, and we know that's not going to happen. So do you have any other viewpoint on that?
Lei Xing:
Well I mean as we speak, I think Volkswagen, the ID.3 prices have been cut. The FAW-VW ID.4 prices have been cut. And this after Ralf Brandstatter, Volkswagen Group China CEO vowing yesterday at the forum that they will not participate in this kind of price war for short term sales gains. Talk is cheap, right?
Tu Le:
And Volkswagen complaining to Li Qiang about the price war and the fierceness of the market right now. So that's a bit rich for them to be complaining. So after they've dominated, I won't say dominated, after they've done so well over several years in the China market. So. How quickly things can change, right?
Lei Xing:
Yeah also, I think Ralph's, some of the comments he made yesterday, was also pretty, not controversial, but.
Tu Le:
Can you articulate some of them to the audience, for the audience?
Lei Xing:
Basically he talked about Volkswagen Group China's 2030 strategy being built on three pillars. One of them is continuing to launch ICE models, 17 to be exact by 2030, and at the same time launching 30 BEV models by 2030. The only thing I think I agreed with him, I mean they were supposed to be doing this much earlier is they are trying to increase or accelerate development time by 30% of new products and more in China for China models. I don't know about the ICE part, because I think based on what he was saying that this legacy of having the strength in the ICE segment, I think they're still leaning toward that.
Tu Le:
They have to. Because they have so much capacity still.
Lei Xing:
Yeah. And I don't know how that will play out, because the interest right now is definitely not on ICEs.
Tu Le:
And not on Volkswagen brand. And I think the third thing is that 30% to me is still too slow. So where he got that 30% number from, and why they believe that that'll be fast enough to keep up or even be faster than how quick the market is moving now is kind of a mystery to me.
Lei Xing:
And the other thing he said was about the future projections of, that I do agree, is that more than probably a third NEV share this year, 50% in 2025, 74% in 2030, of which 55% will be BEVs. So you have that at the same time still hanging on to the ICEs.
Tu Le:
I think it's important for them to long-term plan, but their immediate concerns need to be addressed. And in order for their future to 2030 to be guaranteed in a fruitful manner, because I believe that they should be desperate to make drastic updates to their product plan and really either move on to Huawei to get some familiar technology in their vehicles for the Chinese consumer, or be satisfied with losing a certain amount of share, but speeding up in order to stop the bleeding of that market loss, and then trying to build that momentum back.
Lei Xing:
What they're doing in China specifically. So on autonomous driving and chip side, it's with Horizon Robotics. And on the UX side, with infotainment, it’s with Thundersoft. So these are the two kind of the partners that they're depending on to make that faster.
Tu Le:
And this is where it's not very clear either because they want to make CARIAD China a bigger player in the China market for the whole China for China thing. But if they are partnering with Horizon on the ADAS side and Thunder, what's that called?
Lei Xing:
Thundersoft?
Tu Le:
Thundersoft on the UX side, then is CARIAD going to be more of a backend provider for IT and digital services? I'm not sure that's what I’m not clear about to be honest with you.
Lei Xing:
And then there's the tech company. Kind of the overall R&D. 100%TechCo. And then he did confirm also that the export of the Tavascan, Cupra Tavascan out of Anhui so that that'll be a sticky point.
Tu Le:
So number one, Skoda is still up in the air in China.
Lei Xing:
Skoda is done. I mean there was no mentioning of Skoda. So.
Tu Le:
Right. And it should be, so we know that the Audi chief has been let go, and Blume’s lieutenant has replaced him. I forget the gentleman's name, but he's still a car guy. And where Audi might be doing okay in Europe, they're not in China. And we know that's one of the big reasons for the management change was because of their inability to kind of turn it around versus Merc and BMW to a lesser extent. And now even more for some of these Chinese premium makers that are probably going to be pretty dominant in the next 20, 30, 40 months. And I’m talking about the Yang Wangs, the HiPhis, IMs, I would consider them premium, the Denzas. I think they're going to do really well.
Lei Xing:
So the N7 is directly, besides ZEEKR, is more targeting the ABBs. And interesting that Merc still has 10% of Denza.
Tu Le:
That's the thing is it has German DNA, right? Historically anyways.
Lei Xing:
Yeah, it's like Merc backed out of Tesla and right, back in the days, and Merc backed out of Denza and now look at how Denza is…
Tu Le:
Haunting them. I'll be honest with you in the United States, it's America's birthday July 4th, so for me, I'm half on vacation. I have not been as closely following the market as I normally would. I’m actually trying to get some quality time with my family. And so…
Lei Xing:
That's priority.
Tu Le:
So I’m in Vancouver. There are two ride sharing companies. Evo I think is one of them and I forget the other’s names. So it was good to see that there are some ride sharing, a lot of biking in Vancouver, a lot of biking. So that was really cool to see. And one of the energy company vehicles was a hybrid. So I think they are starting to kind of, and this is Vancouver, right? So one of the more early adopter cities for Canada. Then I drove down from Vancouver to Seattle. Now I'm in Seattle, it's hot here. We're still seeing a lot of work from home because the highways are not as crowded as they normally would be. But again, this is also a holiday week. So it's good to see, I mean like, a ton of Teslas in Vancouver. There's a lot of Rivians in Seattle. Not surprisingly, but I think it's more a statement about being anti-Tesla. So.
Lei Xing:
It's good to see some of the numbers that have been put out by the Rivian, Polestar, GM, Ford. I mean they are still miniscule compared to Tesla, but they're on their way up. I think GM and Ford both did, was it around like 14,000, 15,000 in Q2, not much, but….
Tu Le:
Rivian got over 3,000 a month for Q2
Lei Xing:
So there's expecting to do what, 60,000 to 70,000 this year, or was it Polestar? Wait, no, Polestar should be higher. But so it's good to see some of the numbers. I think people….
Tu Le:
Now that we're talking numbers, congratulations to Li Auto, who had number 400,000 roll off the production line this week. I think that's important.
Lei Xing:
42 months since December 2019. Yeah
Tu Le:
And then I know you said that you were going to get a G6 for a few days? That'll likely happen next week?
Lei Xing:
That’s more toward the end of the month and right after this, right after I get off, I’m going to be getting an AVATR 11 for a few days. So I think really when we talk about the competitive environment, these models, so the G6, the AVATR 11, so Li Auto soon with the NOA, the competition on the city level ADAS is really, I think, picking up, it's heating up, everybody saying they have the best, in terms of rollout as well, right? So I think there was that chart showing different companies, their projections of how many cities they'll be in or available with these city level ADAS functions. And AVATR 11 has this NCA similar to the NGP or NOA or so hopefully I'll try that out.
Tu Le:
I think those are just going to really become qualifiers, I don't know if they're really going to differentiate you in the long run here in China.
Lei Xing:
Exactly. They are becoming, they're not the differentiators anymore. That's why I said they're heating up and look at. So Brian Gu, he shared a couple of days ago that the 70% of the orders for the G6 are the MAX, which include the XNGP with the dual Orin-X and dual LiDARs.
Tu Le:
We also remember, have to remember that Li Auto said they'd be giving it out free for life. So couple different things going on there. First of all, it sets the table for every single EV maker that is also going to offer some form of Level 2, Level 3 ADAS. Because if your ADAS system is not as good as Li Auto’s, why bother? And you're going to charge people for it? Why bother? That's how you need to look at that. Okay?
Lei Xing:
So Xpeng, and the latest number is that they have had 28,000 firm orders. So 35,000 orders was the number that was publicly given. So that's a pretty good conversion rate I think. Imagine, right, so from presale beginning of June to now, it has been a month and that they have over 28,000 firm orders.
Tu Le:
Good for them.
Lei Xing:
So 15,000 a month in this quarter, 20,000 in Q4, should be on their way.
Tu Le:
So as grim as sometimes we make it sound in China with the economy, at least they're still probably going to hit 8.5-9 million units this year, which is going to lead the world by a large margin. And so that is why one of the big reasons why the price war, you and I both agree, will last well into 2023.
Lei Xing:
Yeah. 2024 maybe.
Tu Le:
Yeah, because in 2024, at least in the first half of 2024, there will be another couple brands that will be launching vehicles. So as long as there are new vehicles, and I think the one thing that you had mentioned a long time ago and we talked about this is that there are price cuts that happened after the fact, something cost $5, they reduce it to $3. There are price cuts before the vehicles are even launched. And that's what we're seeing with these new vehicle launches there. Really the product planners, the marketing folks and the product managers, they're really looking at what's going on in the market. And then prior to launching, there are announcing pricing for their new vehicles and new products. They're really sharpening their pencil. So that's what we saw with the G6. That's what we saw with the ZEEKR X, they got really aggressive from the very beginning.
Lei Xing:
And most recently, the N7 RMB300,000-400,000, and then the Hyper GT at the RMB200,000-300,000 point, and which happened to be the 20 millionth NEV produced in China all time. So I think this is worth a mention, because I think it's a monumental…
Tu Le:
It's a monster number. That's a monster number, right?
Lei Xing:
20 million units, because, the reason it’s mind boggling because the first 10 million took how many years and the second 10 million took 15 months or 16 months.
Tu Le:
Blink of an eye.
Lei Xing:
And the next 10 million, the third 10 million will probably come sometime early next year, second quarter of next year, and then 2025, 40 million. So on. And the interesting thing about, I looked at the Hyper GT a bit. There's three battery suppliers for that model for the different trims: EVE, CALB, and Farasis. Very interesting.
Tu Le:
Farasis! Haven’t heard that name in a while.
Lei Xing:
Farasis provides the pouch cells for the top end of the GT, while the other two provides the prismatic. And supposedly CALB is supplying one of the highest energy density LFP batteries for the GT, I read it’s 153 Wh/kg, okay? So that was interesting. So major milestone reached earlier this week.
Tu Le:
Yeah, and all the while the United States were 800,000 units last year, Europe was 3 million, 3.2 or something like that. So a lot of distance between the China market and the rest of the world when it comes to NEVs. So anyways, let's do this Lei, let's open it up at 6:45. First of all, thank you for listening in, for those that adjusted their time schedule in order to do that because…
Lei Xing:
For you as well, because it’s 6, so hank you for doing.
Tu Le:
I'm on the west coast now.
Lei Xing:
So thank you for accommodating.
Tu Le:
No worries, all good man. This is the fun stuff anyway.
Lei Xing:
So how long you're saying?
Tu Le:
We will be here until Saturday and then…
Lei Xing:
Enjoy man.
Tu Le:
Seattle is a great town and fortunately for both places. It was not rainy, summer is normally really nice in Vancouver and Seattle.
Lei Xing:
Yeah, it was over 40 again (in Beijing), yesterday.
Tu Le:
My wife is trying to find us tickets to go over late July. So I don't know. We might have to pay through the nose. And there's a couple of things that I might be doing, which might not allow me to join them. So I'm not sure the plan is to maybe meet up with you in late July in BJ.
Lei Xing:
I’ll be here man.
Tu Le:
I don’t’ know if that's going to be happening. So anyways, we'll open the room up for any questions. Do you have anything else while we're waiting for any questions, Lei?
Lei Xing:
I think we covered pretty much.
Tu Le:
Oh no, one thing Lei. They've changed the credit system calculation.
Lei Xing:
Yeah I saw that. The formulas, I think it was like 40% below reduced.
Tu Le:
Reduced by 40%. So for those that don't know or aren't familiar, California did this, I think, 20 years ago where they gave credits to companies that built clean energy vehicles and that really only being Tesla. And so Tesla would use, so if you build a bunch of ICEs and sold them in California, you would be dinged, you need to use these credits to offset the ICE vehicles. If there was a huge delta, you would either have to pay a fine or you need to buy credits from someone else. Tesla sold their credits to the OEMs in order for the, to help the OEMs become in, what's the right way to say this, in compliance? And so China in 2018 is it had started its own credit system. And companies like BYD and Tesla were making a lot of money. And the irony of that is also that Tesla sold credits to Volkswagen a couple years ago. And so that's a revenue generating business, temporary business anyways. But the Chinese government has made it harder now to count those credits, which means that the more, if you continue to build ICEs you're going to be penalized substantially for that. So that's the stick.
Lei Xing:
Yeah my read is that similar to the cap on the purchase tax exemption, RMB30,000 and then RMB15,000, I think it's kind of similar that now that NEVs are more commonplace. Everybody's doing NEVs. So that incentive, credit, I don't know, is maybe it's no longer worth as much.
Tu Le:
Or necessary
Lei Xing:
Or necessary. I think that might be one of the reasons, kind of gradual.
Tu Le:
But remember, you point to Volkswagen, Brandstatter saying they're going to launch 17 ICEs can still in the China market. So I think it'll play a role that will play less of a role, because the market has really done its job and pulled EV adoption forward by several years.
Lei Xing:
The thing is look at, so they still have 4 years. And one of the things that Ralph said was they're going to be launching these ICE models, but gradually putting, making them PHEVs, because PHEVs still enjoy that purchase tax exemption. So they still have 4 years to play with that.
Tu Le:
Less now, though, because they're not full BEVs. That's one thing that I wanted to mention in this in this episode. So that's all I have.
Lei Xing:
Same here and good thing that the wall stayed pretty good today, didn’t mess up. And then, so today I'm going to pick up, there's few things going on today that I'm really excited about and I can share in the next episode. So this AVATR 11, I'm picking up for a few days to drive and to feel, I haven't done any study on it like I'm just going to pick it up and drive and feel it. And in the afternoon, I'll be going to Apollo Park for the Baidu robotaxi, the driverless robotaxi. And right after that, I’ll be doing the same thing on a WeRide. So I'm going to complete the trifecta today. We've done Cruise together, now I'm going to get to Baidu and WeRide. So I'm on cloud nine.
Tu Le:
I'll have to catch up because I'll need to do WeRide.
Lei Xing:
Because they just got, that's worth mentioning that they just got the permit in Beijing to run pilot operations of these fully driverless robotaxis.
Tu Le:
Yeah, that's one of the reasons I didn't get a chance to do the WeRide so.
Lei Xing:
And at some point they'll put that into operation. Currently you can use the Luobo Kuaipao APP to hail safety driver robotaxis in Yizhuang.
Tu Le:
Sounds good, man. That's awesome. Let me know how it goes.
Lei Xing:
I'll see how it goes.
Tu Le:
I ewas pretty impressed with, I showed you the video, but I was pretty impressed with the Baidu for sure.
Lei Xing:
You said that Baidu was slightly better than Cruise, I remember?
Tu Le:
You know, Cruise was at night, not super busy, and you're going to be in Yizhuang. There's roundabouts. And so you'll know what I'm talking about. I think it moves fast.
Lei Xing:
I think there's caveats on both sides, because in Yizhuang, there's less traffic although it's during the day, it's in the geofenced area, like Cruise but.
Tu Le:
Yizhuang also is doing V2X, a lot of V2X stuff.
Lei Xing:
So it worked out.
Tu Le:
So, all right, hey, everyone. Thank you for joining. Please join us again next week. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening.
Lei Xing:
Same from my side 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.