Tu and Lei dedicate this episode to the sights and sounds coming out of Las Vegas CES 2024. Lei spends the first half of this episode unpacking all that he saw and thought about the technology he experienced and the people he spoke to.
Tu and Lei then go onto some of the macro sales numbers that came from China for 2023 and unpack what they all mean, including GM's slide since 2017.
Tu closes out the podcast by telling Lei he's considering buying a used Tesla from Hertz now that they've put a number of them on sale.
Tu and Lei dedicate this episode to the sights and sounds coming out of Las Vegas CES 2024. Lei spends the first half of this episode unpacking all that he saw and thought about the technology he experienced and the people he spoke to.
Tu and Lei then go onto some of the macro sales numbers that came from China for 2023 and unpack what they all mean, including GM's slide since 2017.
Tu closes out the podcast by telling Lei he's considering buying a used Tesla from Hertz now that they've put a number of them on sale.
CEM #149 Transcript
Recorded 1/12/24
Tu Le:
Hi everyone and welcome to China EVs & More where my co-host Lei Xing, a Vegas Lei Xing, and I will go over the week's most important and interesting news coming out of the global 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 about this podcast 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.
Lei Xing:
Yes sir!
Tu Le:
I have a feeling that this week is going to be a lot of you talking, so grab a bottle of water. Please introduce yourself.
Lei Xing:
A very early good morning, live from Las Vegas and (CES)ā¦
Tu Le:
You are just coming home from the clubs though, right? It's not like you were sleeping.
Lei Xing:
I think I just did, I sound like reallyā¦
Tu Le:
Yeah you just come home from the clubs, right?
Lei Xing:
Exactlyā¦
Tu Le:
Or the tables, one of the two.
Lei Xing:
Well, both maybe. Good morning. Good Morning. This is your co-host Lei Xing, former chief editor of China Auto Review. This is episode #149. Again I'm coming to you live from Las Vegas, CES 2024. It's been, I don't know, I think this is the best CES I've had, this is my 7th time attending. And what can I say? A lot of walking, a lot of China factor. I had a lot of surprises. I had tweeted that one take away is the word respect. And Iāll explain why. But let me see, you, Tu, I mean you skipped it, itās, you need to be here. I meanā¦
Tu Le:
Yeah, next year, for sure.
Lei Xing:
You cannot skip next year. you have to be here to kind of experience. I mean Las Vegas in itself, right? And the reason why I'm saying respect is there's so many anecdotes. And one will be seeing Dr. Wu Xinzhou, the former head of autonomous driving at Xpeng, who is now with NVIDIA at the Mercedes-Benz press conference. And Iām, pretty much was next to him and seeing him and going back to the very early days when I first met him at the first 1024 Tech Day at Tsinghua University, and he said my job was to, for Xpeng to be number one in ADAS. And voila, now the so-called city NOA features. And I think he's done it, right, with Xpeng now, what, having 200 some cities of this XNGP feature?
Tu Le:
I think a few companies and people would argue that point with you, but I didn't understand what you're saying.
Lei Xing:
Yeah I mean, itās, and seeing him, and Mercedes they spoke highly of him now in NVIDIA.
Tu Le:
Well that's because Mercedes doesn't know what the hell they're doing.
Lei Xing:
Yeah exactly, and now NVIDIA is such a crucial ecosystem partner for them. And he has the knowledge in China. He went through that developing these features. So it was good to see him. I mean since last time I saw him was at that event 4 years ago. The other thing I find out was how amazing these brand presentations or maybe the booths, how the booths were presented. Some interesting companies, I did not expect to see, but they were here. Two examples will be Star Charge, one of the leading charging operators in China. The other one is Gendome. Do you know what Gendome is? Have you ever heard of that name?
Tu Le:
I've heard of it. I forget, I've heard of it.
Lei Xing:
What do you thinkā¦
Tu Le:
I might even have met. Let me think, I forget, I'm pretty sure I met somebody from there.
Lei Xing:
It's part of the Gotionās energy storage unit now itās branded Gendome. And so if you don't know that this is a Chinese company, Chinese brand, but the way the booth is set up, I was very impressed how now some of these companies, LiDARs, let's say, RoboSense, Hesai, the customer facing people at the booth are all Americans. You see that internationalization happen, whereas I mean the first time attending 2016, I think RoboSense was here in 2017. And how far just the booth feel, like how they present themselves was very impressive. I think that's the sign of times. And I was also very impressed by all the Korean companies. I mean they just in terms of booth style setup, Hyundai, Kia, Samsung, LG, Doosan, right? Hyundai Mobis. I think the Chinese can learn a lot from the Korean companies on how successful they've been, branding wise, marketing wise. That's my initial impression just seeing these booths. I mean the topic, the other big key word is the generative AI and immersive experience display. Saw a lot of that. And three German companies that are here, Mercedes, Volkswagen, and BMW all launched their roughly the same voice basedā¦
Tu Le:
This is where I got to stop you Lei, cause all these companies, you know, cause couple comments about the Chinese stuff, but I'll start with what you just said. I know you are into dunking on the German OEMs as much as I am, but they've always come to CES to build that tech cred, right?
Lei Xing:
I was just about to start dunking, and you stopped me.
Tu Le:
Go ahead. Go ahead.
Lei Xing:
They all had these generative AI, ChatGPT, voice, how you interact with the system through this chat. I tried all of them. First of all, they're still under development on all the vehicles that they showed. So there were tons of bugs. And when the Volkswagen press conference, they had a bug, it was smooth, right? It wasnāt fast? But it was smooth. But at the very end, the guy from, I think he was from Volkswagen, yes, in the car asked āwho makes the best carsā and the system responded with, you can see the text, āwho makes the best cases.ā And the Cerence guy, this is in collaboration with Cerence, stopped it right there, because there was a bug. BMW they're using Amazon Alexa, and just tons of bugs. Mercedes, same as they had this little pod at the booth showing their next MB.OS and MBUX, there were some issues. And the first, initial reaction was like, what are these? Because you and I have seen what is available in China of just voice recognition, right? So my feel is just that how China has influenced these foreign legacies and they're trying hard to catch up. You could see that how China is far ahead. That's what I want to say, just one aspect of it.
Tu Le:
Yeah, man. I'm going to be a cynic about technology and legacy OEMs until I see one of them kind of win on creating a great UX.
Lei Xing:
Yeah I mean the UX, and then I think this was a great CES for the foreign, the western people to really get to see a few of the latest and the greatest EV products from China. So I tweeted that this was the Geely kind of CES because indirectly, they had the ZEEKR 007 at the Valeo booth. They had the Geely Galaxy E8 at the BOE booth. BOE is a display company, Chinese company. They tried to supply BYTON, that was ahead of its times. But now the E8, Galaxy E8 had that A-pillar to A-pillar screen. NIO ET7, but with the Seyond LiDAR booth. a few Polestars here and there at their partner booths. So, no Chinese OEM brand exhibited directly, but the two of the most talked about products at the end of 2023 made their way into CES and sorry, I've been like just talking like so much and just what I think of that come to mind, is one anecdote was our good friend Abe, I met him finally, and we were going back to, he was staying at New York New York, which is right across from where Iām staying, on the monorail. And we met a couple of designers, guess, from who. From BYD. They're very young. And we talked about the Yang Wang U8, which Abe said he had a sighting in Vegas. I didn't see it. The BYD guy, so I asked the BYD designers, and they said, yes. It brought some Yang Wang U8 over to the U.S., mostly for testing, for localization, I guess. I told him about the interior of that Yang Wang U8 kind of ātuā (out of style) right? And he was so funny. He covered his badge and said, now we're talking in, look at me as not someone from BYD and he just said, a lot of decisions that the designers don't make. Like those kinds of conversations was really interesting. And just people, I guess, the CES I met a lot of people that I wouldn't have met even in China, because they come over here to learn, even for the ones that are not exhibiting. Xiaopeng was here, He Xiaopeng was here, Brian Gu was here. I sent you a photo at the AeroHT booth, right, thatāsā¦
Tu Le:
They have to come though, you know companies like that, guys like that just because they're U.S. traded, so.
Lei Xing:
So I met the former CEO of Yidao Yongche, which started, I think one of the first ride hailing companies before DiDi, Zhou Hang, you've heard of his name. He's now an investor and I told him about the saga of LeTV and his company, just chance encounters with the people that are in this industry and who Iāve met before. But I would never imagine meeting them even in China. But they're here. And it's just a lot of walking around cause it's always huge venue, the West Hall, the North Hall, Central Hall.
Tu Le:
So, I look at these people coming not only out of curiosity and trying to understand western markets, but because there's a, what's the right way to say this, there's a need to expand internationally because they can't rely on the China market for growth anymore. The current situation for them where the Chinese economy is a bit stagnant, struggling a little bit. I think that creates that pressure. I also think there's a level of confidence in products and innovation and being able to compete. And I think it's great and it's unfortunate that I wasn't able to go. I'm sure I would have had a ton of fun, but seeing it from afar, it did seem like there were some interesting companies that were there that I wouldn't have thought were going to be there so.
Lei Xing:
Yeah same here, like you stumble upon these companies that, okay, all right, I know this company but the way they are presented for people that might not know that they don't feel like Chinese brand, they don't feel like Chinese company, they feel very globalized. That's what I was saying. And one also the LiDAR. So if you attended CES for a number of times, you can sort of see, you get to see the trends. So last year, there were at least, I don't know, more than a dozen LiDAR companies in the West Hall alone. And this year, some were not there, or some moved to the North and the other halls. And some probably will not be continuing in the automotive ADAS business, because now the top 3 Chinese LiDAR companies, Hesai, RoboSense, Innovusion now Seyond as their new name, they are at the front. They are what, at the forefront of delivering large volumes of LiDARs and the three of them, I expect them to do a million LiDARs this year based on the trajectory, based on their momentum. And the second tiers, the third tiers. You can sort of see, you know, the companies like, Cepton wasnāt here. I think they are, someone, weāve interview the CEO. Who else, Ouster wasn't here and some of the other Chinese smaller players, they moved away from Automotive ADAS. So you kind of see who the leading players are. They're going to get bigger. They're going to get more business. So I think before, probably before the yearās out, if not before the mid-year, you will start to see announcements of Chinese LiDARs getting onto international OEMs. Hesai already announced something, but they haven't said who the international OEM was. That's a trend right there. They're starting to separate themselves from the rest of the pack. That's what I was trying to say.
Tu Le:
Yeah to me, LiDARs can be commoditized in the next 5 years. I just, Hesai, Innovusion (Seyond) and RoboSense just going to beat each other up. From a volume standpoint, the lion's share is still in the China market. And I don't know, I think that if LiDAR becomes cheap enough, it's going to be used as a an alternate sensor for redundancy. But I think there's going to be new technologies that emerge, or companies are going to start going away from LiDAR and use camera only. They're already starting to do that, right? So it's an interesting space, because what I think in ā24 and beyond is going to happen is we're going to start seeing a bit more scrutiny on the data that's being captured, where it's stored, who has access to it. And so it puts the OEMs, whether European, American, Japanese or Korean, in a weird situation. Because as much as Hesai and these guys open offices, what, they have offices in California, I think a couple of them have offices in Detroit or around Detroit. This is the crazy thing, right? I think a lot of politicians just pull out the broadest brush, they can and say this is a Chinese company. It could be an Asian founder, maybe not even Chinese and then a stupid politician is going to be like man, that's got to be a Chinese company or whatever. So there needs to be, I think a better understanding of that stuff from the U.S. government, from the EU, before. In 2024 and you know this, is just going to be really difficult. So I almost feel this new wave of visitors to CES in 2024 is a wait and see to see what happens with the U.S. election, with any tariffs that are coming out of the EU perhaps later this year. And because I believe they're fully committed to the U.S. market, whether the U.S. government is going to allow them to compete freely is another question.
Lei Xing:
Yeah, just in terms of crowd, just compared to last year, the Chinese factor, the Chinese that are coming to CES, it was at least twice, just pure volume wise. People coming. I think one reason was that at the end of 2022, when China opened up and turning the year to CES 2023, the U.S. had required people from China to take a test to come into the U.S., I think that affected participation a little bit, but man, this year a lot more Chinese, I mean, not only companies, but Chinese people they came over either exhibiting or visiting just to check things out. Presence is a lot more than just last year.
Tu Le:
The one thing that I think is worth pointing out is that when we were in Shanghai, we noticed a lot of European executives at the Shanghai Auto Show. There weren't a lot of Americans that I noticed that visited. There were some, but it was dominated by the European executives and European visitors. So double down on your point, this is a lot of Americansā first opportunity to see Chinese tech up close, see Chinese EVs up close. And so I would think that a lot of the American companies that are trying to compete in the LiDAR space, the battery space, quite a few of them are going to walk away from CES today, tomorrow, Sunday, kind of intimidated a bit, because they're going to look from a spec sheet standpoint to see whether or not their products or the product roadmap can compete. And then they're going to freak out because of the prices that Hesai is rumored to be selling X LiDAR or Y LiDAR at to this foreign OEM or this international OEM. So the American in me, wants this to be a wakeup call, because it was a wakeup call for the Europeans. The Shanghai Auto Show was a wakeup call for the Europeans. Now, whether they can do anything about it is another question. But.
Lei Xing:
And who's doing about it is the question.
Tu Le:
Yeah. And that's the thing, right? Because if you're not even aware of it, then you're not concerned about it. But now that it's in your face and in your backyard. Now, you better reassess your strategy, make sure that you're moving fast. You're kind of managing costs, but pushing the innovation for your products. And automotive sector has just notoriously been, known to be conservative. Now is not the time to be conservative. So and, I had a couple of chats this week, and one of the reasons I couldn't go was because I had a couple of important meetings. What I can disclose about one of these important meetings is that I was talking to some organizations. Let's just call them some organizations. And I think Iāve freaked one or two of them out, because I said we're literally not going to see some American companies in the next 10 years that we've known for the last 60, 70, 80 years. I gave them a lot more detail and showed them pictures, gave them. And I can only, I walked away thinking that they still don't get it. Because my job wasn't to try to freak them out or create fear. It was to give them a reality check.
Lei Xing:
Yeah, like Luminar, seeing Luminar people and I talked to them again, and I just told them that you're not going to compete in China. Letās face the reality of just on the LiDAR space. This, too cutthroat. And I mean Tesla cutting prices.
Tu Le:
So you and I knew that was going to happen.
Lei Xing:
Yeah this is non-CES stuff, but I lost track of what happened back in China but the only thing, I thought it was Tesla again cutting prices and then those huge numbers, final tally announced by CAAM, way more than what you and I probably expected of NEV sales, of vehicle sales.
Tu Le:
So let's do this because I was tracking a little bit. Let's look at my newsletter. I just sent out some of the highlights, things that I would have wanted to see, the ZEEKR 007. Let me ask you what your thoughts on that was. Is it about the size of a Model S, a little bit smaller?
Lei Xing:
No. I mean itās a, Iād say it's a B-sedan.
Tu Le:
So it's like a 5 Series.
Lei Xing:
Maybe a little bit smaller, but they, the 007 and the E8 are competing with each other. I just say that, full stop.
Tu Le:
It wasn't enough because BYD also launched the U7, which is luxury
Lei Xing:
So there were some Geely people at the BOE booth. So there was a young guy who works at what, the, I guess the research institute, I told him, Geely is now having a lot of models within the umbrella that are competing with themselves. But I think the thing that the ZEEKR that was shown at Valeo with that light band customization, right? You just write whatever you want on the touch screen. Like āhello, Xing,ā āhello Tuā and itāll appear on the light band. So I mean these kind of things and I heard that this came out because Valeo CEO visited China, I think in September and An Conghui when they met him, they just came up with this idea. This was just a few months and they made it happen. That's what I heard from Valeo.
Tu Le:
That's one of those things that you'll use for like two times. And then you'll not use itā¦
Lei Xing:
I mean it's trying to be different, right? But I mean other than that, just the vehicles themselves, the design, the fit and finish, the interior quality, I think it opened up a lot of eyes. And there was an Aston Martin, was it the, the SUV what was the model, DBā¦
Tu Le:
I know what you're talking about.
Lei Xing:
Was it X7, DBX7 or something, right next to the Geely E8, nobody was looking at that. Everybody was looking at the E8.
Tu Le:
I've already gotten a few pings from people that left CES and wanted to get a download on X and Y company, Y product. So I'm going to circle back with you offline Lei because there could be some projects we could work.
Lei Xing:
Sure I mean one more I'll add is a lot of these tier-ones, so the Valeos, FORVIAs, Contis, and these companies, they are now, it's exhibiting many products designed entirely by their China teams, because China is now such an influence on innovations, on what's happening HMI wise, a lot of influence on their global kind of the let's say displays, innovative technology on displays like at FORVIA. A lot of it is China developed. So.
Tu Le:
That's why. So one of our core beliefs is that innovation is now moving east to west. And so, when you have that level of competition, it really pushes innovation because it forces companies to take bigger risks. So that's why we're seeing these things. Start in China and get showcased in the west. But let me see.
Lei Xing:
WeRide. I mean WeRide, I took a ride in the WeRide, the Robo Bus. They had to have a safety driver sitting behind, they put a wheel kind of steeringā¦
Tu Le:
So they still had a steering wheel.
Lei Xing:
They put a wheel and brake and accelerator pedals. I think that was retrofitted to, I think there was a requirement for this demo, but the guy was just sitting there and ready to take over any time. But I mean it was, thatās it. It was a L4.
Tu Le:
So they didn't want to get in trouble like AutoX I guess.
Lei Xing:
But I mean it was a, I mean they are the only company that are running commercial operations of this type of robo bus in China and globally for that matter, I thought.
Tu Le:
They have a pretty substantial partnership with Yutong, right?
Lei Xing:
And I mean by now the Cruise Origin should have been on the road already, right? And the Cruise Origin was announced in, right before the pandemic in January 2020. Now it's been 4 years and Cruise is kind of, right, we all know.
Tu Le:
I remember exchanging tweets with one of the current or ex-comms people. And he was like, well, Cruise came out with this. And I was like, we'll see who ends up on the roads earlier. So.
Lei Xing:
You know, ZEEKR, WeRide., Lotus, Lotus wasn't here, they showed some robotic stuff, but these three companies are IPOingā¦
Tu Le:
That's going to be tough. Let me ask you Lei. The one thing that maybe you can give us a history lesson, because GM sold 2.1 million vehicles.
Lei Xing:
That was, yeah, that was a topic quite often talking to people, especially Americans.
Tu Le:
So to give you guys, to give the listeners some context, GM sold 4 million vehicles as early or as late as 2017 in the China market. Now that's going to be Chevy, that's going to, so SAIC their major partner, it's mostly through them, but Chevy, Buick, Cadillac, 4 million, mostly Buicks. And you tell me if I'm wrong. 2023, they booked 2.1 million vehicles. If we're doing math, they've lost 50% of sales in 6 years. So can you maybe just give us a 30, 40-second synopsis of, ok, these were the companies that are the brands that built GM up, why were they so popular? Because we kind of know why they're losing sales, because it's similar to what's happening with Volkswagen. But what I want to emphasize is that losing 1.9 million, effectively 2 million, that if we're looking at annual capacity of 300,000, that's seven factories that they've lost worth of sales in China.
Lei Xing:
I mean, so this is, I think, for the first time, since 2009, maybe that U.S., GMās U.S. sales exceeded those of China. So that's number one. And obviously the 50% drop, but Buick, right? Buick is, I remember they probably did close to a million if not more this one brand alone in China and Buick has always been, of those years since 2009 of the biggest market was in China of those two million. The caveat is the SGM Wuling was over 1.2 million units, but GM will count those sales, although the brands, the Wuling, the Baojun, you can say they're GM brands, but they're Chinese brands. In fact, the rest are the Chevrolet, Buicks and Cadillacs. And I mean it's crazy to see how...
Tu Le:
How fast this has just changed. And so if you are in the board rooms, if you are part of management, 4 million units on a base of in 2017, we're probably at 23, 24 million cars. Think of that. I mean they had almost 20% market share. And this is why, I think for me, 3 or 4 years ago, 4 or 5 years, when you and I really started kind of talking hanging out and stuff. It was already happening. I saw it happening and I think some people thought I was crying wolf in my newsletter, because I saw this 3, 4, 5 years ago.
Lei Xing:
This is not because of the pandemic. This was happening before the pandemic.
Tu Le:
Exactly. So, but when I was writing my newsletter in 2018 and 2019, early part of 2019 before COVID in China, I was getting push back saying this is not a huge deal, and I was like, yea it is. Now, you see why I was making a fuss. And then you look at U.S., they had, so this year was the first year since 2009 that GM sold more vehicles in the U.S. than it did in China. If you're an American employee at GM who doesn't pay attention to their international operations, you think that GM did really well? So like it's almost like one arm you're working out. It's huge, right? It's like pumped, and then the other arm is like bleeding. GM is of an international company, Volkswagen international company, and the realization needs to be that without the China market, they're basically a regional company.
Lei Xing:
I was just about to say that two of the Big 3 in the U.S., GM and Ford, they're about to become a lot more Americanized following your regionalization comment. Because really GM and Ford I mean all their profitability, profits are coming out of North America. And GM is really a U.S. and China company if you look at the volumes, Ford is really, I mean, I haven't seen the Ford numbers yet in China, but Ford is a U.S. company. Stellantis, Stellantis is more U.S. plus Europe and maybe some other parts of the world, but.
Tu Le:
So, sales volume, they are European, but Stellantis, the lion's share of their profits comes from the U.S. So.
Lei Xing:
Quite surprising that the ABBs did still pretty well, the 800,000 (BMW), 765,000 from Mercedes, over 700,000 for Audi. So.
Tu Le:
I think honestly, but BMW is probably the only one that can point to any movement, positive movement on the clean energy vehicles that they're selling.
Lei Xing:
Yeah, they, mostly because of the pricing strategy of the i models.
Tu Le:
How they reconciled it, because they priced it really high. And one other thing, since I wrote the newsletter, there are 20.4 million vehicles, NEVs on Chinese roads right now. So I think, and I'm guessing here, but I'm estimating there are about 1.7 million in the United States. Sorry. There are about 2.4, 2.5 million total in the United States. So almost a 90% difference, and of those 2.4 million about 1.7 are Tesla is in the U.S.
Lei Xing:
Yeah, the bulk of it are Tesla.
Tu Le:
And then there were almost, so there are 3.83 million vehicles exported, passenger vehicles exported from China, almost 5 million if you include the commercial vehicles and then you and I think it's about 1/3 of those are clean energy vehicles, right? And then BYD and Tesla were the largest exporters of clean energy vehicles, BYD exports, almost a 4:1 ratio of BEVs to PHEVs. I think that number is going to balance out a little bit more, 2024 and beyond. Because we're seeing a bit more demand for PHEVs lately. And then Q4, the take rate, hit 39.5% in China. I think the United States was little over 10%. I tweeted, this is why I wrote in the newsletter that was so, 40%, 39.5 to be exact, that was the official take rate for NEVs in China in Q4. See what perseverance, a stack of cash, or a stack of rambos and a bunch of brands creating the fiercest competition on the planet can do. For those that still aren't piecing it together, demand. All right. But I posted a Carnews China chart. BYD is the number one for December, Volkswagen is number two, for the top selling brandsā¦
Lei Xing:
For the full year, BYD was number one over Volkswagen brand. For the full year, this was the first time ever. I think 2022, it was, Volkswagen was 2.4 million in China and BYD was 1.86, right? So last year they surpassed Volkswagen, single brand. Starting off the year, if I remember the three big news was so Tesla cutting prices again yesterday on the 3 and Y, LeapMotor launched the C10, or I guess they revealed the C10 at the RMB150,000 point with LiDAR.
Tu Le:
So $21,000, basically.
Lei Xing:
And then was Hyper, they announced lifetime free charging, for, if you buy the vehicles before end of March. So different ways ofā¦
Tu Le:
And now on Top of that, Tesla has cut price on 3 and Y.
Lei Xing:
Yeah. And they just launched what, the new 3 in the U.S. right?
Tu Le:
Man, I haven't talked to you this week, so guess what I'm looking at buying for a car, a used Tesla.
Lei Xing:
From Hertz? Are you serious?
Tu Le:
From Hertz. You can get one for 20 grandā¦
Lei Xing:
Less than 20 grand, even my family, my sister was talking to me about it.
Tu Le:
so I talked to Yilun and he saidā¦
Lei Xing:
Good deals?
Tu Le:
Yeah, he said, it's, no, I pinged him, I was like, hey, it's legit? And he's like, yeah, I would just get a new set of tires. And you should be good. So I'm seriously considering it. So for those that are wondering, Hertz, I want to say.
Lei Xing:
I'm a big fan of Hertz.
Tu Le:
Has decided to sell a third of their clean energy vehicles. And basically, they're decided to sell a third of their Teslas. They're posted on a Hertz buy sell, I forget what the site is called, but you can find it on Twitter. It's not that difficult to find. They have some Teslas on sale, so to add insult to injury, Tesla cuts price in China. It's getting hosed because the residuals on the 3s and the Ys due to these Hertz fire sale is going to be nasty in the United States, I would think. But I look at it like it could be a daily driver that I don't take to long trips. And I would imagine on eBay, there's a ton of parts on the secondary market if I needed to change an interior part or even replace the seat. I think there has to be a pretty robust market for that stuff. So anyways, that's pretty much all I had.
Lei Xing:
Do you know, if you still get the credit for buying a used Tesla from Hertz or no?
Tu Le:
I think you do. That's the one thing I was going to take a little bit of time today to figure out, because if you buy used car, the United States government or we, as in U.S. taxpayers Lei, we will help you with a $4,500 credit I think, or $4,000 credit, one of the two. And not only that. The last thing I'll talk about Tesla is that they recalled 1.6 million vehicles, but they didn't really recall because it's an OTA update. No, the last thing I'll say is BYD has a boat that ships 7,000 vehicles. Could you imagine the size of this freaking boat?
Lei Xing:
BYD has a boat and it has a boat.
Tu Le:
Yeah, so anyways, we'll be back to our normal covering what's going on with the Chinese and global mobility sectors. Next week, Lei will be well rested. He won't be coming home from Dres doing a podcast.
Lei Xing:
I'm catching a flight like right after this.
Tu Le:
Hey. Everyone, I have some homework for you. Please watch my Lions win their playoff game on Sunday.
Lei Xing:
All right. Go lions!
Tu Le:
All right. Thanks for listening, guys. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. We will talk with you next week.
Lei Xing:
Same here. Thank you all. 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.