Episode #167 - Huawei will SMASH FSD, Hyrbid Highlights, Detroit Is Open for Innovation

Tu and Lei start out by discussing a provocative statement from Richard Yu, the Huawei executive in charge of their intelligent driving, who said in a much less kind way that Huawei's system would beat Tesla's FSD. 

They then talk more broadly about the current systems out there from other Chinese EV makers and agree that FSD will have it's hands full in the China market and is NOT the clear leader once it finally launches.

The topic moves over to all the recent news from automakers about their latest generation small displacement high efficiency enginers, specifically hybrid engines. With announcements from BYD, Toyota, Mazda, Subaru and others.

Tu then shifts over to his guest appearance on John McElroy's Autoline live show and the question that john posed to him. 

Tu and Lei move on and take a deeper dive into Porsche, it's recent hybrid 911 unveil and it's sales in China. 

Tu closes the podcast out with a few updates on Detroit and the unveiling and rebranding of the old train station into the new Michigan Central that is supposed to concentrate and put a focus on all the innovation that's happening in the city / state. 

Transcript

CEM #167 Transcript
Recorded 5/31/24

Tu Le:
Hi everyone and welcome to China EVs & More where my co-host Lei Xing, a “Ma Shang Hui Lai Beijing” Lei Xing, and I, will go over the week's most important news and interesting news coming out of the global EV, AV and mobility sector. 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 about this podcast to other enthusiasts and tune in again next week. My name's Tu Le. I'm 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 find it on sinoautoinsights.substack.com, and I encourage you all to subscribe to that as well. Lei, can you please introduce yourself?

Lei Xing:
Good morning. This is your co-cost Lei Xing, former chief editor of China Auto Review. And this is episode #167. Happy National Autonomous Vehicle Day. I just found out this is actually a national day today. 

Tu Le:
Is that right? 

Lei Xing:
Yes. 

Tu Le:
Okay, right on.

Lei Xing:
There’s all these different weird days…

Tu Le:
As two of the likely few people that have truly ridden in a few of the American and the Chinese ones.

Lei Xing:
You know where I'm going with this is the fact that Tesla is quote unquote “registering” to get FSD ready in China. And that's I guess where we’ll began this episode.

Tu Le:
Devil’s in the details.

Lei Xing:
Yeah. I was just watching, the AITO, the new AITO M7 Ultra launch. Here's a quote from Richard Yu. He said, let them come, we’ll beat the S*** out of FSD in China. Basically, this is what he said. My goodness. 

Tu Le:
And we’ve been singing the praises specifically, because we used one of the systems extensively for three days. But I think there's still a lot of people in the West that don't have any clue about the number of systems that are available in China and the quality level of each of those systems.

Lei Xing:
The reason I am pointing to Richard Yu’s comments is because I think many of the CEOs and founders of these smart EV startups, I think they will partially agree with him in the sense that if I were Li Bin, if I were Li Xiang, if I were He Xiaopeng, I’d be open arms to Tesla having the FSD available in China, whatever the conditions, whatever the restrictions that it’ll have, is just because that's where the competition is and you need to be there to compete, right? That's what I’m saying. 

Tu Le:
It tags them now because if FSD is an also-ran in China, guess what? It raises the profile of everybody else's system, okay? And I feel confident in saying that FSD is not going to be a clear cut leader, at all, in China. 

Lei Xing:
Yeah. Agreed. But I think going forward, it's just going to be a matter of paperwork, I guess, before we actually get to see and it looks like internally, the first step is for them to have employees internally test that out in China, to have that capability. And then before rolling out to the owners who will be able to purchase, I’m not sure if there will be a subscription model. But I mean, it’s…

Tu Le:
They’ve had pricing posted on the Chinese website for forever.

Lei Xing:
So that's that.

Tu Le:
And really quickly Lei, I think it'll be a city by city layout. I don't think it's a switch that turns on, and FSD is available to every user. I don't think it's going to be like that.

Lei Xing:
Right. If we look at Xiaomi just announced they're pushing out the city NOA next week. It's only going to be available first in 10 cities. And then before rolling out additional cities. And one slide that the new AITO M7 launch put up was hundreds of cities from competitor A, B and C, and they put up 4,000 + cities and towns and, “Cheng Zhen,” right? So I mean and this is where we want to talk about this infatuation with numbers and the competition of these numbers. The latest being by BYD’s 2.9L/100 km DM tech. And by the way, BYD will take issue with your title, saying it’s 1.3-km.

Tu Le:
Isn’t it 1,300 km, No?.

Lei Xing:
1,300 miles miles.

Tu Le:
Miles, miles, ok. So I fat fingerer that, that's my fault. Sorry BYD.

Lei Xing:
The qualifier is rated under NEDC, 

Tu Le:
Probably going at less than 60 mph, blah, blah, blah, right? But really quickly going back to intelligent driving, Pony also just announced that it's going to roll out a service for Beijing that takes you to the train station and by the end of this year that should be fully driverless.

Lei Xing:
Basically the Big 3, so which means Baidu, WeRide and Pony, they have been pretty much at the same time getting the same permits. I think there's like five or six vehicles among the three that all start out the testing process first. But we talk about this last or two episodes ago about AV is moving closer to the city center, rather than Yizhuang. Yizhuang is like the suburbs, right?

Tu Le:
So in a normal day, from CBD to Yizhuang, it takes about 45 minutes driving. So that gives you an indication of how far it is from city center. And city center to me, is going to be Tiananmen, but also CBD area Chaoyang District, right?

Lei Xing:
Guomao.

Tu Le:
Yeah Guomao. Right. Fair enough.

Lei Xing:
Sanlitun. Sanlitun is ther worst. if we talk about traffic right?

Tu Le:
It's gotten better because they turn those, that, remember how you used to be able to turn left into, they turned that into a one way and they made the barrier now. So it's gotten better. It's not still not great, but it's gotten better.

Lei Xing:
But on the flip side, we've seen the tough conditions when we drove into Guangzhou with an Xpeng G9’s XNGP, and we kind of fought over whether you needed to take over or not because of that close call. So, right?

Tu Le:
I did, man. You'll never convince me that it was going to take care of that.

Lei Xing:
All right, so BYD hybrids. I think this past week there's been a lot of news. So BYD, we had the 911, Porsche 911 Hybrid. We had Toyota, Mazda, Subaru working on their own kind of next generation…engines.

Tu Le:
Small displacement, higher efficiency.

Lei Xing:
We just heard about the Horse Powertrain joint venture with Geely and Renault. So a lot of news on the hybrid side of things this week, and a lot of controversy, a lot of beef, because of the numbers that were put up by BYD.

Tu Le:
So the crazy thing is Lei is that I think the legacy automakers, specifically, the Toyotas and those that have hybrid technologies are looking at almost conceding the BEV market in China to the Chinese EV makers. But then leaning heavily into the hybrid stuff because we know that hybrid is going to be a thing, and I've said this before in past podcast, BEV, PHEV, still a win in my book. As we see, foreign automakers lean into and launch hybrid vehicles and introduce it. BYD comes out and says, guess what? We're going 1,300 miles on the single charge, single tank. 

Lei Xing:
And to be honest, BYD is not the first to come out with a 2,000-km hybrid, right? There's been other models that have been launched to the market claiming to have that type of range, which is we throw some grain of salt, because it's under, BYD said it's under NEDC mode. And I think there are two things for me was, that first of all, these are big vehicles, the Qin L and the Seal 06, I mean they are A+ sedans, which is not a Camry size, but definitely not a Corolla size, it’s bigger than the Corolla and Qin L is the biggest among the Qin variants, right? There's the Qin Pro, there’s the Qin PLUS and the Qin L, right? It's a big car, first of all. And second, who are these, which, the vehicles these two BYDs are targeting are exactly the weak spots of these foreign legacy brands. The Nissan Sylphy, the Volkswagen Lavidas, Sagitars, and they sell like 30,000 units, 40,000 units a month. It's pretty specific what the Qin L and Seal 06 is targeting, is really this, the stronghold of these foreign legacy brand, the models in that segment, A+ sedan segment.

Tu Le:
And BYD is the only player that is still aggressively launching new products, new engines, new technologies, it's crazy how prolific they are with new features, new, I mean, they are just, it’s…

Lei Xing:
So in the second half the year, I mean we're right about the midpoint of the year, right? BYD still has quite a few, let's just say, MAX products coming out of their existing vehicles, right? So it’s these ever expansion of the variants of their, right, Qin is one of the top selling models.

Tu Le:
And for those listeners that want to get a better understanding of the China market, we're just getting into the groove. The beginning of the year is always a little bit slower. Once we get out of summer with the exception of October, the first week in October, there's always a mad dash. Look for the intensity on the price war to increase. Look for companies that are struggling to do everything they can, throw the kitchen sink at trying to gain share, take sales from somebody else. I would venture to guess that Xiaomi, starting in September, October, will also put some incentives in place for the SU7.

Lei Xing:
Well they still do with, I think they just announced some incentives for if you order the car before June, end of June. So that will continue. And then more recently, right? I was telling you about this national action plan on reducing carbon emissions for 2024 and 2025. And one specific line that document said to eliminate restrictions of NEV purchase that are in place. Whether that'll happen, I don't know, but it's a directive, but everything is about really adding vitality, increasing….

Tu Le:
Creating less friction.

Lei Xing:
And let's say in the city of Beijing, for example, you can, this is pretty new. This is also recent. If you trade in a China 3 and below ICE for an NEV you automatically get RMB10,000. And if you trade in a similar vehicle for a new ICEV under 2.0 L, you get RMB7,000. This is the latest in Beijing, specifically.

Tu Le:
An easy FX is, let's say, 7 to 1, $1 buys me RMB7.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, so it's $1,000, right, at least. 

Tu Le:
Yeah, Cha Bu Duo.

Lei Xing:
Yeah, the other thing about the beef with the BYD right? I saw Kevin Williams article on there's these people, media they've already done the test drive. We had some back and forth with a good friend Danny Lee about, we did the same trip from Beijing to Shenzhen in a Qin L, we could do it in one shot.

Tu Le:
We need to make more pee stops. Now we would still need to take pee stops.

Lei Xing:
Bladder anxiety, right?

Tu Le:
Because Ed Carson had written when the bladder is greater, or are smaller than the range. That was funny.

Lei Xing:
But I think still for us, I think the reason of these beef is the 2,100-km NEDC mode. Again, it's rated, in order to achieve it, you have to have it under certain conditions, let's say, driving at a certain speed, maybe having you’re a/C at a certain temperature, there's these caveats that makes it, or it's probably not going to get to the actual 2,100 km.

Tu Le:
I mean for me, if it's close, I mean within 25% of, or 75% of the 2,100 km. I say that's a win. That’s progress.

Lei Xing:
Yeah it depends on how many people are in the car, how much luggage you have, the way the total weight of the car, driving conditions, weather. But one thing that was, I was talking about this beef between Geely and BYD was on the certificate that they showed of the engine thermal efficiency. So Geely showed one with 40, I think it was 46.1%. And then BYD came out with another one saying they could get to 46.5%, but they were like, but this is all lab, right? We're just not showing because it's not in production cars. To give you, everyone a sense for this metric. I think the industry consensus that anything over 40% for a thermal efficiency for engine, it's pretty good, right? So 45%, if you can get to 45 %, that's awesome.

Tu Le:
And Toyota was the standard for a while. So it sounds to me Lei, that Geely seems a little jealous.

Lei Xing:
That's the thing, everybody is jealous, right? Because everybody next day launches a product that's better than the product that was launched the day before.

Tu Le:
I have to say this, Lei, I was on AutoLine yesterday with John McElroy.

Lei Xing:
So what was that question that you were asked?

Tu Le:
Oh man, he dropped a bomb, but let me say this. So because I still talk to people in Detroit, in the Midwest, that still have this caricature view of BYD being these vehicles that wouldn't sell. Remember when they came in 2013, 2014 or whatever to the Detroit Auto Show and their vehicles were kind of crap.

Lei Xing:
2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. I think there were there three or four years.

Tu Le:
But John during the show said that everyone he talks to now is looking at BYD as a very serious player and disruptor, in a really short period of time.

Lei Xing:
He, didn't he drive a Dolphin or a Seagull, right?

Tu Le:
Yeah, a Seagull. Because one of the tear down companies here has gray marketed a Seagull over here, so because you can't drive it on the road, but you can drive it on their facilities.

Lei Xing:
So I know that you're traveling in June to the West Coast and the UK but there's that CareSoft event, I think in mid-June.

Tu Le:
I'm going to miss.

Lei Xing:
You know about the event I'm talking about, right? They're showing several Chinese smart EVs, basically.

Tu Le:
Four or five people pinged me like you're coming, right? No. I can’t go.

Lei Xing:
I mean you don't need to go there, right? Cause you don't need to go there, cause you've seen them, you've driven them, but it'll be cool to kind of see the western.

Tu Le:
I would be interested to see reactions for sure without questions, because there's going to be an American bias, just like there's a German bias. There's only one wiper. There's only that. And so someone made a good point to me yesterday. A mutual friend of ours Lei, ArpaE has, and Steve LeVine wrote about ArpaE creating a challenge that says, create that $12,000 competitor, right?

Lei Xing:
That's the other news that we kind of touch upon, because now the last several days, we've seen the 20,000-Euro Volkswagen. I've seen Renault is trying to work on one supposedly with a Chinese partner. And then Carlos Tavares was saying that they were coming out with the 25,000-EV.

Tu Le:
Here's the thing, though, man. If you're talking 2027, that's a lifetime, because…

Lei Xing:
Well it’s right around the corner.

Tu Le:
You and I know that it takes 14 months for a Chinese EV maker to go from effectively clean sheet to job one almost. And again, they're using platforms across different products, but whatever it takes. And so 2027, man for Volkswagen, you might as well get rid of all your...Anyways.

Lei Xing:
And not only the time, but also once you get there, based on the what we've seen that often, the $25,000 car becomes a $30,000 car. The $30,000 car becomes a 35,000, right?

Tu Le:
I think the most important thing Lei is that broad brush. Every major automaker almost is looking at that 25,000-Euro or USD price point, which is a win to me. Because 20 months ago, no one was talking about that. And so you can credit China EV Inc. for this is what I want. This is what I’ve been clamoring for the last 4 years. And so to me, this is progress because the other thing that I want to point to is the Equinox which is a $43,000 vehicle before the $7,500 credit. That's been getting really good reviews. I think there are two or three U.S.-centric media outlets that have reviewed the vehicle. I think Voelcker actually gave it a thumbs up too.

Lei Xing:
So better than the Blazer.

Tu Le:
So I'll send you a link, but I mean you can take a look yourself, but the reviews were posted this week, so like yesterday or two days ago. And so that's a feather in GM’s cap. I applaud them for that, and they need to just do more of this, right?

Lei Xing:
Yeah. And then we had the Cadillac Optiq, the $54,000 in the U.S. and then the Jeep Wagoneer S, $72,000 EV, so we're starting to see.

Tu Le:
So Lei I saw a, and I'm driving so I don't have my freaking my iPhone out, but I saw kind of like Escalade IQ or whatever they're called, the EV, it is huge. I saw one on the road, M plate manufacturer plate.

Lei Xing:
Didn’t we see one at last year's Detroit Auto Show.

Tu Le:
But I saw one driving it was in the wild. So we again going back to the Beijing Auto Show, we're seeing a pulse from legacy auto and Stellantis leaning in, Tavares: hey we make a profitable $25,000 EV. Ok, fair enough. And then, was it that Twingo Renault with the Twingo in the China? I don't know who their Chinese partner is.

Lei Xing:
Well they are making the Dacia Spring with basically JMC, was it. I don't know. It could be with that same partner. I mean, right? It's a small car platform, so.

Tu Le:
I love that legacy has kind of woken up and getting products out there is the most important thing. Whether they suck, I think that's less important than having a dog in the fight, because getting it into people's hands, getting that feedback, and then quickly, iterating to make improvements over the air updates. In order to make them more competitive, they'll find out that they can create instant reaction and instant kind of gratification from a customer standpoint because the software makes it much easier to do that.

Lei Xing:
Speaking of China speed and this is definitely not China speed, more of a China patience. Shout out to NIO finally getting the 150-kWh battery available for rental for upgrades starting tomorrow. And this is coming nearly four years after I think this project initiated, they announced the 150-kWh battery at the 2020 NIO Day, which was held in January of 2021. So it's been 3.5 years. And now they find that the users can finally have this battery in their vehicles and supposedly that gets you 1,000-km for a BEV. And they just received a RMB1.5 billion, NIO Power investment. So and 20,000 units, Afonso just posted, right?

Tu Le:
Jeff, you're listening, right? Jeffrey, you are listening.

Lei Xing:
Hinting a 20,000 units for May. So great, positive news for NIO, which we've been kind of negative a little bit on, but hopefully that continues as what type of reaction and the volumes that the Ledao (ONVO) is going to get once Q4 rolls around. But with the Li Auto L6 just produced the 20,000th vehicle, the Xpeng X9 just delivered the 10,000th vehicle. Right? These, they're progressing. But…

Tu Le:
You are a closer follower to Porsche than I am. Porsche this week had the updated 911 unveil. So can you tell us a little bit more?

Lei Xing:
So my take, we had a good comparison because this happened on the same day that BYD launched the 5th generation DM-i. I think, whereas BYD, this is definitely about efficiency and fuel savings. I think the 911 Hybrid with that Carrera GTS, the hybridization, I don't think it was intended to save gas. I think it was more intended to improve performance. That's my view, because if you wanted something, you buy a Taycan right?

Tu Le:
I don't think you're looking for any efficiencies when you buy a 911, you're looking for…

Lei Xing:
I think there is efficiency, but I think it's more that electric turbocharger is more for performance.

Tu Le:
Yeah, to eliminate the turbo lag, right? And I don't know that GTS rear end is, that GTS rear end looks a little Qi Guai.

Lei Xing:
But the design there's been some, I think, you and I probably agree the design of the new 911, both in the front and the back, there's been some interesting tweaks which you may or may not like.

Tu Le:
But you and I joked around with one of our mutual friends that even a bad 911 update is still good in relative terms, because as lover of great vehicles, great design, 911 is an all timer in my book. My dream is to get a nice slightly used Targa in the next 5-6 years. So hopefully the value or the value goes down on those Targas and I can pick one up first deal, but anyways, yeah, it's a halo car for them, obviously, that they need to keep in the consciousness of their consumers, but I don’t, that doesn't move the needle that much in China unfortunately for them. 

Lei Xing:
No. China is, 911 is definitely not, China is not, definitely not a 911 market. That's for sure.

Tu Le:
Although if they were to increase sales in China of the 911, it would help them just because the size of the market.

Lei Xing:
I think Porsche over the years, I mean since they’ve entered in 2001, more so recently in the last few years, they're trying to push this two door sports car segment with the 718, but it's been difficult. I think it's still a SUV kind of the four-door Panamera dominated market for them.

Tu Le:
Well, I mean the high runners are going to mean the Macan. So I think the Macan-e is going to be their barometer for success.

Lei Xing:
We should touch upon a little bit of about the dealer revolt against Porsche…

Tu Le:
You saw that, right? 

Lei Xing:
Which forced them to issue a statement, basically saying we're going to work with you guys and to handle and go through this difficult period of time.

Tu Le:
So this is probably first time ever in Porsche’s history. 

Lei Xing:
In China.

Tu Le:
I would say globally, right? Where dealers are upset, because they're holding onto inventory, like expensive inventory. And in China, the metal is just not moving. This should really solidify the concerns for Blume about their Porsche strategy for China.

Lei Xing:
The same thing actually has been going on at BBAs well, they're still enjoying huge volumes. But I think BMW issued similar a new policies for their dealers just recently similar to what's happening with Porsche that they're giving them incentives or policies such that like, inventory, how much they had to pay? I don't know the details, but they did something recently.

Tu Le:
So to create context, Lei, ABB, Audi Beamer Benz, traditionally in the China market. They're all about 750 ~ 850, 900,000 units a year. And so the China market is normally between 35-36 % of their global sales, Porsche, I think they sold 300,000 some units globally, last year.

Lei Xing:
Just say 300,000 units.

Tu Le:
Yeah 300,000 last year. And so the China market, I think is…

Lei Xing:
90,000 units, roughly.

Tu Le:
Yeah so just to create some context here, so when there's a 25% drop in sales, that's pretty significant. And remember that they have factories in Stuttgart and Zwickau, so if you're taking 20% of demand out of these factories, again, now you're playing for employees that are sitting idle. These are really huge concerns for Volkswagen Group and should be for ABB right?

Lei Xing:
Another tidbit that's been interesting is, if you remember, Tu, two years ago, Apple announced that new CarPlay and supposedly Porsche was the first OEM to have it.

Tu Le:
Yes please. Yes please.

Lei Xing:
It hasn't happened, right? So that's also an interesting.

Tu Le:
So I might just, I might be able to meet with a couple of companies and a couple of people while I’m in California. And I’ll try to find out a little bit more about that stuff. The one of the features that they highlighted in the video and the video was a little cheesy with the floating words. The Matt Watson part was pretty entertaining. I like Matt Watson, but it was just a little cheesy, whoever the creative agency that they used to produce that video.

Lei Xing:
You were talking about the 911.

Tu Le:
The 17-minute video. But they highlighted how there are six screens. There are six. Did they say six? Anyways, I know you have to run Lei. Is there anything else we want to talk about?

Lei Xing:
I'm good. I don't have to rush much.

Tu Le:
I'm kind of curious and I want to get my hands on an Equinox myself because as you know Lei I'm in the market a for a new car very soon, so.

Lei Xing:
The Model Y 0.99 financing ends today, by the way.

Tu Le:
Yeah. I'm sure there's going to be something else going on, too. But the one thing that's pretty interesting that I read that I put in the newsletter was that California taxes for gas, gasoline sales, the irony of it is that to pay for road maintenance. It's mostly the revenue from gas tax that pays for the road maintenance. And because EV adoption is still pretty high in California, they're losing a lot of revenue to repair the roads. And so they're looking at a mileage tax now, and are going to charge and looking and are going to pilot a new tax program that charges for the number of miles driven. That's pretty progressive. But it penalizes the EV players, too, the EV drivers, not just the petrol drivers.

Lei Xing:
That makes me think of what's going on in China given the current economic environment, the bloodbath and these local incentives that I just talked about Beijing being one example is Beijing currently has this quota, not the lottery, or maybe it is a lottery where there's a certain number of vehicles per year that the consumers can buy. And recently I've heard discussions about lifting that altogether and imagine for a city of Beijing which had a goal of this so called blue sky. They tried to cap the motor vehicle parc at below 6 million units. It's already over 6 million, by the way. And at the same time trying to drive vitality into the economy, one way of doing it is giving these incentives to buy NEVs. At the same time, there's congestion problem. It's a difficult conundrum. I mean the similar what California is facing right now.

Tu Le:
Yeah the last couple of times I’ve been in California, the 101, the 880 have been parking lots. Unfortunately. It's taken me. It historically, obviously, I drove the 101 every day, almost, the 880, almost every day as well when I lived there. So time frames to get from point a to point b where I would normally go in the past, have kind of doubled. It actually extremely painful to get from point a to point b now, a couple of administrative things next week in Michigan, that train station is officially opening. Remember, we got to tour that.

Lei Xing:
Yeah it was already 2 years ago. Almost two years ago, September.

Tu Le:
So now it's officially opening on June 6th. There's going to be a concert. There's going to be 2 hours, and so I work next door a couple days a week at that innovation lab. So I’ll try to stop by, but it's a big, big thing for the city of Detroit. I'm happy to say that it's a reason to come down to the city now. Grand prix is going to happen this weekend I think and so.

Lei Xing:
The Dream Cruise, that’s in August.

Tu Le:
In July. And then the NFL draft was a huge success in Detroit. So for those, now I'm going to put my tourist, my tourism hat on and say for those that are wondering about the city of Detroit you can ask Lei, it's improved significantly and it's worth a visit.

Lei Xing:
The week I spent in September 2022 was memorable. 

Tu Le:
It was fun, right? The Lions game. That's right. And we saw the world champions because we saw Detroit play the Eagles.

Lei Xing:
What the interesting thing for the last two years is every time we’ve met next, there's always a better week, right? Do you think that was fun? And then we had the September last year in Munich, and then just more recently in China with this road trip.

Tu Le:
It's because we have the cheat sheet or the inside track on a lot of that stuff.

Lei Xing:
Speaking of logistics. So I will be in China, again, most of June and the first half of July. So for the time being, I think 9 am still works for me, which is 9 pm my time. Let's stick with that, but you're going to be in the West Coast and in London, in the UK for the latter half of June, right? So we'll figure out when we do these live episodes for sure.

Tu Le:
So for summer. So let's do this Lei, let's just say that our summer hours might be changing, but we will let you know for sure. And let me look at a few comments. So Peter Liu, I test drove an Xpeng G9 last December in Wuxi. I input destination by voice and the car took over and did everything for 10 km, including highway, city streets, parking in my parking space, in the garage. So Peter, we had similar experience, not many issues. Jeffrey loved Lei your article on the legacy article on battery swap. And then Peter says, no manual intervention. I'll open it up for any questions that anyone has?

Lei Xing:
Yeah, just to stress that we talked about this quite a few times, the battery swapping is a thing in China. It works.

Tu Le:
 Yes.

Lei Xing:
 If anybody still doubts it. I mean we've seen it. We visited and it's expanding. It will be interesting to see where those expanding partnerships go and how much utilization we're going to see from other brands at the new battery swapping stations.

Tu Le:
Alan, Jim and Ford, I thought we're supposed to get native NACS charge plugs in 2025 model year vehicles. So starting later this year, I believe that's your question. I don't see anything else so Lei. Appreciate you doing a bit of overtime, sir. I know you have something going on with your daughter, but everyone, thanks again for joining. I thought this was going to be a short one, but it ended up being quite.

Lei Xing:
It was good an hour.

Tu Le:
Yeah, quite interactive. So it's good. Yeah.

Lei Xing:
I will talk to you next from China again.

Tu Le:
Yeah. So anyways, man, we'll talk on DMs anyways, but travel safe. Everyone, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. We will talk with you all next week.

Lei Xing:
Yep. 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.