Episode #233 - CES 2026: When AI, Robots, and China Took Over the Auto Narrative

Kicking off 2026, Tu and Lei return from CES in Las Vegas with firsthand insights into how the global auto industry’s center of gravity continues to shift toward China, AI, autonomy, and robotics.  

This episode unpacks why CES is no longer about cars, but about who controls the software, silicon, sensors, and robots that will define the next decade of mobility. From Geely and Great Wall’s growing U.S. ambitions, to Hyundai’s robot-only keynote, to Ford’s quiet but meaningful autonomy reset, the hosts connect dots that most headlines missed.

Tu and Lei also break down the Geely “coming to the U.S.” scoop, Rivian-style AI days spreading to legacy OEMs, and why Western automakers are increasingly borrowing from China’s playbook—from ADAS and silicon strategy to embodied AI and robotics.

The episode closes with a deep dive into autonomy’s three tracks (L2++, consumer L3/L4, and robotaxis), the growing importance of LiDAR scale, and why Donut Labs’ solid-state battery and in-wheel motor reveal could become a true industry disruptor—if it scales.

Fast, candid, and packed with on-the-ground context, this episode explains why CES 2026 marked a turning point—and why the race is no longer just EVs vs ICE, but ecosystems vs incumbents.

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China EVs & More, CES 2026 recap, Tu Le, Lei Xing, Sino Auto Insights, CES China EVs, Geely coming to the US, Geely CES announcement, Great Wall Motor CES, Rivian AI Day comparison, Ford autonomy announcement, Doug Field Ford, Hyundai Boston Dynamics robots, autonomous vehicles CES, robotaxis CES, Waymo CES, LiDAR scale China, RoboSense LiDAR, Hesai LiDAR, Donut Labs solid state battery, in-wheel motor EV, embodied AI cars, automotive AI, future of mobility, China auto industry 2026, EV autonomy roadmap

Transcript

Tu Le (00:04.16)
 Hi everyone. Happy New Year. We are on the 9th of January 2026, our first China EVs and more episode. So let me start by saying officially today, Happy New Year, sir. It was great seeing you in Las Vegas. You having just jumped off the plane at two o'clock in the morning this morning and me jumping off the plane yesterday at 6 a.m.
 
 Lei Xing (00:28.425)
 God.
 
 Tu Le (00:33.298)
 I think we have some thoughts that we'd like to share. So welcome to the China EVs and More podcast, everyone. We are broadcast, or we will open the room up at around the 40 minute mark to anyone who's keen to ask us any questions. In the next hour or so, my co-host, 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. And yes.
 
 There was some news from the Chinese EV makers coming out of Las Vegas at CES. 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 and viewers going on year five.
 
 Lei Xing (01:24.779)
 You
 
 Tu Le (01:25.332)
 Loyal listeners and viewers, welcome back. We ask that you smash those subscribe and like buttons so you don't miss anything from us in the future and let us and help us get the word out about this podcast to others. 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.substack.com, which of course I encourage you all to do. Lei a jet lag and tired Lei but a very, let's say a very lot to say Lei. Can you please introduce yourself?
 
 Lei Xing (02:17.228)
 Yeah, always CES, starting out the year of CES is a fantastic event to really see the Chinese, right? Because the Western audience don't usually get the experience, but that's what CES is all about. Yes, I know we're still doing this for five years, still having some kinks, but that's fun, right? I mean, it's all the spontaneity that make this fun.
 
 Lei Xing, former chief editor of China Auto Review. And this is episode 233. I think I got count right, 233. Yeah, last episode was 232. So I just came back this morning, literally. I got home at 2.30. I was delayed a little bit. So I think things are still fresh. I'm sure it's the same for you. You and I, attended different events. We attended same events.
 
 Tu Le (02:52.192)
 Are you sure?
 
 Lei Xing (03:14.638)
 yeah it was tell you what it was
 
 Tu Le (03:19.424)
 So for the audience, Lei, we go intending to meet up here and there, but we basically have different itineraries. But then we circle back, share our thoughts. And sometimes there's overlap with some of the events that we do. But this particular time, you and I didn't really go to that many events together. So we have a lot of different things to talk about, you and I. And I think I want to hear about your
 
 experience at CES and I'll tell you about mine.
 
 Lei Xing (03:51.638)
 Yeah, which is complimentary, right? That was my ninth and it was your second, right? From last year and my first was 10 years ago. So I think I have a perspective. I think looking back where CES is kind of a place where it's about, I think it's certainly it's about life and death of companies. Two classic examples.
 
 Tu Le (03:54.218)
 Mm-hmm.
 
 Lei Xing (04:19.47)
 Faraday Future, I attended the Faraday Future, they held a stockholder event. 10 years ago, Faraday Future announced their FF01 concept at CES. And 10 years later, they're still around. Between that time, companies have died that were at CES. Byton.
 
 Well, it's WM Motor. They were actually signed an agreement with Baidu, I think, in 2018. Someone wants Hi Phi right? Between that time and FFS still around, YT Jia is still working his butt off, right? And trying to pay off his debt and go back to China.
 
 Tu Le (04:52.362)
 Hi-fi.
 
 Tu Le (04:58.208)
 Qiantu Qiantu
 
 Lei Xing (05:12.266)
 He said it himself, right? He posts videos on social about how much he wants to go back. yeah, I mean, but it's good to see. Yeah, but you and I have a lot of friends over at FF. So silently we're supporting, but at the same time we need to be honest and say, how long did they continue or?
 
 Tu Le (05:20.296)
 He's never gonna be able to go back.
 
 He burned too many bridges.
 
 Lei Xing (05:40.526)
 What's the future? They did announce some targets, 400,000 to 500,000 units by 2030 cumulatively. Cumulatively. Of the funny thing was, Yeah, the funny thing was the same car was on display at the Great Wall Motorbooth. Yeah.
 
 Tu Le (05:53.46)
 Well, they showed off a car with a big digital face.
 
 Lei Xing (06:09.282)
 That's the MPV is called the Super One. And then they're also having the FX4, the RAV4 kind of the size the vehicle's coming. But it's all drawing, what do call it in Chinese? It's called drawing a pie, right? And they're trying to fill a pie. But you know, they're still around.
 
 Tu Le (06:29.568)
 Because the vehicles would come from China as of right now. There's no plans or no announcements to manufacture outside of China for
 
 Lei Xing (06:32.93)
 Yeah, although...
 
 Lei Xing (06:38.71)
 Although Great Wall Motor has been mum about, they're basically like, you know, we haven't officially signed any deal with them. How that works working out, they don't know. But yeah.
 
 Tu Le (06:54.74)
 Well, YT Jia is his own hype man. so credit to the team for being able to.
 
 Lei Xing (06:59.724)
 Yes.
 
 Tu Le (07:08.34)
 continue to be in the conversation, whether all the things he says is true or not, and or whether the forecast and expectations are realistic, 400,000 by 2030 is an impossible task for him because a lot of the technology has moved by Faraday Future right now and they really have no budget to...
 
 deep, dig deep into R &D to improve in any significant way as far as I know.
 
 Lei Xing (07:44.59)
 No, yeah, I mean, just because like I said, we have some maybe some common, people that worked there that have worked there since the very beginning. So there must be some kind of a pull or a culture that's sticking them together, right? For the good or the bad that and you.
 
 Tu Le (08:06.784)
 Hmm.
 
 Lei Xing (08:11.598)
 We talk about NIO, we talk about these smart EV startups, we want them to be successful. And it's also a whole truth for FF, although it's in God's hands, I'd say. Yeah, so that's one the storylines, I think, from CES. then speaking of the Chinese, so Geely Auto and Grey Wall Motor were the two officially exhibiting Chinese automakers.
 
 Tu Le (08:27.551)
 Yeah.
 
 Lei Xing (08:42.656)
 and
 
 Tu Le (08:43.316)
 There were no legacy OEMs that had any exhibits, although Ford did have. yeah, okay, fair enough.
 
 Lei Xing (08:49.174)
 Well, BMW, which always have their own kind of the spot at CES, right? other than that, right, you're right. There's no, yeah, right. GM, Ford, mean, a lot of Western cars.
 
 Tu Le (09:06.932)
 We can talk about this in a second, Lei, but Ford did have an event. Doug Field had made some announcements almost like a mini Rivian AI day, but let's continue talking about the show before we deep dive into any of the particular subjects.
 
 Lei Xing (09:25.708)
 Well, think for Geely Auto and Great Wall Motor, think it would, for me, if I looked at it, it wasn't about their cars. I think for the American audience or the Western audience, they're very much obviously will be interested to see and touch and feel Chinese cars for the first time, right? Both of them announced they're kind of the, what you call it, Smartification ADAS.
 
 AI right? I posted something right?
 
 Tu Le (09:57.898)
 Well, let's back this out. Let's back this out. EVs were not the theme anymore. Everywhere you looked, there were smart glasses and robots. There were drones and eVTOL. So yeah, AI kind of as the large, large theme, but Hyundai Motor Group, no vehicles shown at all. It was all about their acquisition of Boston Dynamics and how they're gonna use those robots.
 
 Lei Xing (10:08.449)
 It was AI.
 
 Tu Le (10:27.314)
 not only to help with their own manufacturing, but they're gonna sell these robots as a subscription service to other manufacturers in the future. So I just wanted to throw out the large themes. There wasn't about cars anymore. And so, although there were car companies doing non-car things.
 
 Lei Xing (10:49.218)
 Yeah, sure. So I was saying that the logo or the message that Geely Auto put up on their booth was AI Everything and AI Everywhere right? It's kind of cheesy, but that's how I felt like if you go to CES. Every booth, everybody was talking about AI something. And at the press conference, right, we both went to, they announced this...
 
 GASD, it's called the Geely-Afari Self-Driving, which is kind of the FSD competitor. And then they announced the EVA Personal AI Assistant. So these are the themes. Sure, the cars that carry them. Great Wall Motor, they announced their VLA, the of the advanced ADAS. What NVIDIA's Jensen Huang announced, their Alpamayo
 
 thinking and reasoning VLA model for Mercedes that's going along for the Mercedes. The autonomous driving part of it, right? I think that was a major theme.
 
 Tu Le (12:02.044)
 Actually, one thing that was really striking that I don't think I picked up by my media is that Lenovo rented out the Sphere for their keynote. And they had every CEO of the chip makers on stage together. so I didn't make it. don't, know, those lines are way too long to get a ticket. And so.
 
 Lei Xing (12:11.508)
 I wouldn't do that.
 
 Lei Xing (12:20.994)
 Yep.
 
 Tu Le (12:32.256)
 I just wasn't gonna stand in line.
 
 Lei Xing (12:32.386)
 Yeah. For me, CES for me is really about experience. So I try to maximize my time there of these different experiences to kind of feel the branding of the companies and their products. So Lenovo, yeah, they had Jensen Huang, they had Lisa Su, had Christian Amman, Qualcomm, they had Li Butan, the new CEO of Intel, the FIFA president.
 
 They announced their computer personal electronics products, phones, Motorola. They announced quite a few Motorola phones, believe it or not. And I hear that it's in the tens of millions of dollars to hold an event like that. So they spent big money on that.
 
 Tu Le (13:25.716)
 Well, who ended the show? Gwen Stefani. That was a...
 
 Lei Xing (13:31.086)
 I didn't see that because I went to the SDV Awards which we can talk a little bit about.
 
 Tu Le (13:36.848)
 OK, yeah, OK, because Gwen Stefani I was told so I had a friend who is working with Intel who is giving me play by play as I'm at another event myself. But yeah, and then. So let me tell you about my Geely Auto experience, because I did not make their press conference. So we. We actually crashed a party.
 
 Lei Xing (13:56.75)
 Right, you went to the... Right. You went to the... Right.
 
 Tu Le (14:05.012)
 that Geely had, they had, was it Sunday night? Was it Sunday night? It was Sunday night. Yeah, because Monday was the driving ride. So Geely Auto came in actually a very, very big way. They rented the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, brought about 10, 15 cars from Mexico, Lynk & Co, Geely, and Zeekr Vehicles, 7X, a 001, the Galaxy, that was there.
 
 Lei Xing (14:07.478)
 Alright, Sunday...
 
 Tu Le (14:33.984)
 And they brought a gaggle of journalists to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway I had heard about and I'd gotten invited secondhand to a dinner that they were hosting at CES in Mandalay Bay on Sunday night and that's when I invited you and Joe Joe white and then Yeah, and we sat down and had dinner. yeah. Thank you to Mike Novak the car geek Mike
 
 Lei Xing (14:54.378)
 And Mike yeah.
 
 Tu Le (15:02.856)
 Mike the Card Geek for sending me over that connection. And then the next day, I wasn't going to make it to the press conference, the 4 p.m. press conference on Monday, so I decided I wanted to say hi to Ash and Kevin and those guys, because Ash Sutcliffe had flown in from Hangzhou. He's an old friend, Lao Peng You of ours, big fan of Ash. And I'm standing there right next to John McElroy.
 
 story behind the story because why Western media is not really picking this up and writing big, stories about this. With the exception of one or two, including Ryan Felton from the Wall Street Journal, there is an article about Geely making an announcement that within the next 36 months, they will be in the U.S. So I'm standing next to John McElroy because he's the one that got the scoop and
 
 He's like, I'm going to go interview Ash and I go, cool, man, go ahead. then he was like, where should I do that? And there was a Lynk & Co car So I was like, go do it in the car. so see, so Ash and John go in the car and I see John doing this. So I take a couple snaps of John and Ash in the vehicle and then he jumps out like 15, 20 minutes later, he's go, I got a scoop. And you know, got to love John McElroy because he was like a big kid. He was so excited and I was so pumped for him.
 
 And then we took a bus ride back to downtown Las Vegas. And he was smiling. well, in between the moments he was sending that video to his son to post, and the big scoop was that Geely is coming to the United States. so again, what are your thoughts on Ash making that public declaration?
 
 because this is an announcement. It's a formal announcement because he is the head of Geely Holdings.
 
 Lei Xing (17:02.712)
 holding group ZGH, as we say. they just announced their global group ride, wider group sales number. It was over 4 million units, counting the Volvo cars, counting the Polestar, and everybody else, Lotus. It's been 20 years since Geely exhibited that Detroit Auto Show, if you remember.
 
 After 20 years, to hear them announce this, I don't think it's surprising. The Chinese have been wanting to come since Geely. exhibited there, maybe even further back. And it's just a matter of how. It's just a matter of from where. You said there were Mexico license plates. Well, there's always ways to get around things.
 
 So no, I mean, it's not surprising. in a way, I also saw some headlines about somebody who said, was it Wall Street Journal that the only thing that you can experience a Chinese cars through the Zeekr RT, which has been renamed the Ojai from Waymo, right?
 
 Tu Le (18:18.368)
 Well, it was always the Ojai, but yeah. most Western people know it as the Waymo Robo Van.
 
 Lei Xing (18:20.8)
 hi. But now...
 
 Yeah, now, obviously with them announcing that, there's more than one way that you can experience the Chinese cars, right? So.
 
 Tu Le (18:39.744)
 So yeah, and then really quickly, we jump on a bus and then we go to the Hyundai press event and all the usual suspects that you and I know from a journalism standpoint. I was sitting next to John McElroy and Patrick George at the Hyundai Motor Group event. And we knew the theme was robotics, but.
 
 It started out with a bunch of Boston Dynamics robots doing a synchronized dance. And the entire time there was always a Boston Dynamics representative and then there's a Hyundai Motor Group executive talking together about all of the news for the robots and their plan to build 30,000 a year by 2030.
 
 have a training facility for the robots and then creating a subscription service that they'll do that they'll sell. They'll maintain the robots and service the robots, create OTAs for the robots. And so there seems to be a very, very comprehensive plan for Hyundai's acquisition of Boston Dynamics. So I applaud that. And we can't help but think about
 
 Optimus with Tesla, what are their plans for it? Because they're not really talking, but I think there are more and more as time goes by, are more cynics with Elon and Tesla's plans because they seem to be late on every announcement that they make.
 
 Lei Xing (20:17.111)
 What?
 
 Lei Xing (20:20.642)
 Well, he said, I think on an earnings call that they want to do millions and millions of Optimus' by a certain timeline, right? So I think maybe from the other way to look at this is if you're from the traditional auto industry, if you're not expanding into these new realms, you're probably not
 
 relevant or you you write like FF YT he said he announced they're gonna go into the embody AI robotics Mobileye Mobileye I purchased Manti robotics for 900 million dollars Exponents are these obvious doing here with our robots NIO has kind of talked about it. I think Li Bin I think he he mentioned something recently and he said, you know, we're
 
 Tu Le (21:00.074)
 Of course they are.
 
 Lei Xing (21:18.146)
 We still want to be focusing on what we're doing. think CES is where you feel the industries, the borderlines are being blurred because you have to expand the horizon. When you cover the right, when we and other people cover the auto industry, it does not mean the Ford wheels anymore. I think that's...
 
 Tu Le (21:47.456)
 Well, let's say for the companies that are really trying to redefine, at least in the public sphere of who they are becoming, I think it's important to kind of specify that they're trying to be like Tesla and saying, you know what, we're evolving. And this is to show you a press event. And so maybe we jump into the Ford event.
 
 Lei Xing (21:48.386)
 Alright.
 
 Tu Le (22:17.28)
 that I went to two days ago, yesterday. No, two days ago.
 
 because so there was.
 
 Lei Xing (22:30.126)
 Didn't they announce a bit of eyes off? Level 3 eyes off thing?
 
 Tu Le (22:33.888)
 So yeah, I forget the names of the individuals, but it started out with Doug Field. It was at one of the big breakout rooms. the theme was great minds or something like that. And Ford had Ford total executives, Doug Field and three others. One was Jae Park, who's the head of their interactive design, I think. And all of these guys are out of their California Long Beach office. And so.
 
 The big announcements from Ford were that they were launching an AI assistant via a Ford app, but it's going to be integrated into the vehicle. So that's a big deal. I didn't really hear about dates, but I did record it. what I'll try to do is post it on YouTube when I'm able to. The second big announcement was that they were doing level three by 2028 with matches GM.
 
 Lei Xing (23:29.784)
 Yup.
 
 Tu Le (23:33.228)
 And the third thing was that, so they were going to launch level three autonomy or intelligent driving. And the underlying theme here was that they're doing everything in-house. The third big announcement was that one of their leadership brought out a compute module and they said they were physically, or they were doing all of the development for that themselves. At the end,
 
 Doug sat down with Ed Loh friend of the show Ed Loh, and he asked, Ed asked Doug if the silicon was going to be designed in-house. Doug punted on that answer, but if I had to summarize it, I would say it's like a quick version of Rivian's AI day. So I think the
 
 Lei Xing (24:05.356)
 Yeah, I him. I met him.
 
 Tu Le (24:31.296)
 Those were the three big announcements and it was an opportunity to hear from some of the non-traditional leadership from Ford, the guys that aren't in Dearborn. So I think that was a really positive move from Ford because I just really, really, they hammered home that we're doing everything in-house and that Doug Field, again, Doug should get some respect because he's
 
 ex-Tesla, ex-Apple guy. And it's not like he was only there for a year or either place. He was there for quite a while. And I think he's the guy that is a major, major component of the Model 3 launch. So he understands how to launch small electric vehicles. Very bullish on the UEV, which is being developed out of Long Beach. He did say that Dearborn is contributing
 
 quite a bit. So there's a collaboration going on between the Ford entities in Long Beach and then in Dearborn. I took all of this as a really positive thing that they're really starting to communicate openly about where they want to go.
 
 Lei Xing (25:48.866)
 Well, all this going on as I think we talked about the EV penetration being possibly down in the US this year from last year. I think there were some reports about that as well. then, yeah, speaking of Ed Loh I met him at the SDV Awards, which NIO and Xiaomi, two of their people won the Innovation Award Pioneer categories.
 
 Not surprising again. I was standing with Emma next to me. And when it was announced, was like, no. But they asked people to come over, right, just in case, you who won. And, you know, like touching that award is heavy, right, figuratively and literally. Xiaomi, this guy who worked at BMW.
 
 Tu Le (26:26.368)
 She didn't know.
 
 Tu Le (26:42.346)
 Who else was in the category? did they just, did they?
 
 Lei Xing (26:46.316)
 So bunch of the so Qualcomm Tesla the guy I forget his name or Swami or something. He wasn't there but quite a few people from Qualcomm Tesla Ford and GM I think some of them won something
 
 Awesome.
 
 Tu Le (27:07.754)
 but they didn't say who NIO beat to get that award. Okay.
 
 Lei Xing (27:11.808)
 No, no, no, no. Just that NIO and Xiaomi won two of the Pioneer Awards. I'll share with some others. So I saw Marcus Schaeffer, the former CTO of Mercedes and Austin Russell. They started a company together called Russell AI Labs. And the funny thing is, me, that's went through a CES before two years ago.
 
 Mercedes and Luminar were standing together, along with Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath And two years later, these three people, they all have something new. Now Thomas Ingenlath is the new chief designer of Volvo cars. He went back to his old job of designing. This was just announced two days ago.
 
 Tu Le (27:50.72)
 who's no longer there.
 
 Lei Xing (28:08.832)
 So within two years, imagine how the industry changed and how people change that, you know, we can't talk about CES without talking about LiDAR We always talk about LiDAR because the sheer amount of volume set that the top LiDAR players from China, right, they have shipped. I think we've seen some numbers, humongous numbers.
 
 which is partially the reason that the Luminar couldn't compete. You got to scale, got to manufacture. Hence, there are bankruptcy.
 
 I think that's another kind of the storyline of these, what do call it?
 
 Tu Le (28:49.822)
 Well, Hesai is now talking about shipping 4 million units a year kind of thing. So yeah.
 
 Lei Xing (28:53.87)
 That's their capacity. it's a double their production output capacity. RoboSense, as we know, they're not making it official, but most likely the supplier to Rivian. And speaking of, I the other good, I think better story was the black sesame Huashan A2000 getting the US approval.
 
 Tu Le (29:19.198)
 Hmm the the
 
 Lei Xing (29:20.462)
 Which is quite positive for them. It's not that easy.
 
 Tu Le (29:26.112)
 So ironically, Lei, and I told you this earlier, I was sitting right next to Pepe, who is the head of North America for RoboSense. He lives here in Michigan. Great guy, great guy. And so talk to him.
 
 Lei Xing (29:35.426)
 I saw him.
 
 Lei Xing (29:46.186)
 And I talked, yeah, just one thing. I talked to him and he's like, damn, these stories about robots, you know, they don't mention us. We have a robot. We have a delivery guy robot, you know, in our booth It's like, you guys want to talk about it.
 
 Tu Le (30:03.528)
 Well, so I'm standing at the Geely booth, just outside the Geely booth, talking to a couple of friends and one of the Neolix PR women. She didn't work for Neolix. I think she runs her own agency, but she kind of mentioned, hey, you should come to the Neolix booth because we have an autonomous delivery van blah, blah, blah. And I was like, great. Yeah. So.
 
 She's kind of, I think she's kind of eavesdropping on our conversation. Me and my friends are talking about autonomous vehicles. so, and then, you know, the other thing too, Tensor had a big presence in, at CES. mean, you walk into one of them. Yeah, you walk into the, where there's several doors into the West hall, but you walk into.
 
 Lei Xing (30:49.59)
 Yeah, are right.
 
 Tu Le (30:58.708)
 the West Hall at this one particular entrance and to the right is the Tensor booth and you can't miss it because that that vehicle is huge, right?
 
 Lei Xing (31:08.598)
 Yeah, it's supposedly I did drop by and check it out. Supposedly this was some kind of AI designed vehicle. The way it's form factor, the way it was, was actually where the sensors are is I hear it's from because of AI design and the founder is the former
 
 Tu Le (31:09.056)
 It's a big, big vehicle.
 
 Tu Le (31:32.704)
 Professor X.
 
 Lei Xing (31:33.71)
 Professor X, yeah, he's well known to those who know the AV industry. His stature is very small. He's kind of like a Stella Li type of height. But I mean, it's a new, different kind of business model, but I don't know if it's gonna work.
 
 Tu Le (31:39.168)
 Oui
 
 Tu Le (31:55.7)
 I'd gone to you and I, we've been to some auto X, press events in China. So, pretty familiar with professor X, the, with, and I'd mentioned this in the previous, China EVs & More, you've used them more, but the Tensor auto is auto X rebranded with a vehicle, Tensor auto is, I guess, technically an American company because he opened an office in the U S and San Jose, I want to say, and
 
 that vehicle, it's been announced that Vinfast is going to be producing that vehicle. Now, I guess they're going to produce it in Vietnam and then ship it over. again, to your point, pretty interesting, but seems like a pretty challenging to go from one prototype vehicle that you put on CES stage to mass producing.
 
 Lei Xing (32:31.266)
 Yup. Yup.
 
 Tu Le (32:52.872)
 Robo taxis to compete with Waymo, Tesla, Cruz, and Zoox and Nuro
 
 Lei Xing (32:59.182)
 Yeah, yeah. also I bumped into, we should talk about Dreame a little bit. I bumped into Nick Twork the head of PR for Lucid, who was at the Dreame booth. And so he shared, I said, you know, I just recently bought a Dreame Govac, the robot, and he said, I have two.
 
 Tu Le (33:08.49)
 Yeah.
 
 Lei Xing (33:23.854)
 I don't know what he was doing there, but I kind of had to run and just said hi to him and then yeah.
 
 Tu Le (33:30.198)
 dude, he's doing, you know, some, he's just studying up. So I actually went to, so Nick and I are pretty good buddies. I went to their event, the Uber event that announced the Nuro Lucid partnership. And Nick was there with a few other people that I knew. So was kind of partying there. Was that the Fontainebleau? Fontainebleau is an amazing hotel by the way. Super nice hotel.
 
 Lei Xing (33:44.78)
 Yeah, yeah.
 
 Lei Xing (33:53.794)
 Yeah, cool.
 
 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where the SDV award was. had this,
 
 Tu Le (33:59.665)
 and then, yeah.
 
 Tu Le (34:04.51)
 was how many people were at the... I wanted to go, but I was like triple booked.
 
 Lei Xing (34:07.783)
 SDV, STVO is quite packed.
 
 Tu Le (34:12.02)
 Okay, I was, yeah, I was, because I had told Ed I wanted to go because I bumped into Ed Loh and he was like, you should come, you should come. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to try to make it, but wasn't able to.
 
 Lei Xing (34:23.104)
 Yeah, CES there's too many things going on. Everything everywhere at the same time, right? So you pick a paddle.
 
 Tu Le (34:29.532)
 And they're either at the Mandalay Bay or they're Fontainebleau or at the convention hall. And actually getting around is, takes time. It's not super far, but it takes time.
 
 Lei Xing (34:40.449)
 It takes.
 
 I think if you're like me, who's I'd say I probably a pro by now, you have to know your way around and form of transportation is very important. So I use the monorail as much as possible. And really if you're in a hurry, there's no way you can do it through Uber or Lyft. So yeah, Uber, Nuro.
 
 and the lucid, they're calling it the world's most luxurious mobile taxi, right? And then.
 
 Tu Le (35:17.684)
 Yeah. Well, and this leads into the baby gravity, probably being the more affordable one. And you would think of Uber, or this, you would think of this as like an Uber Black type of service.
 
 Lei Xing (35:26.03)
 Yeah.
 
 Lei Xing (35:34.446)
 Yeah, and then speaking of this luxury, at the same time you have, was at the Geely booth getting a coffee and hearing some conversations. The Geely Galaxy M9 is below $30,000 for that size of a vehicle. And the jarring thing is you think back to 2016 when Mary Barra announced the Bolt and she said it was 200 mile range 30,000 EV. 10 years later,
 
 We still don't have something like that, but we have the M9, a bigger vehicle. Obviously, if they were to come to the US, I don't know if it's going to sell at the $30,000 level, but still, right?
 
 Tu Le (36:19.526)
 it won't. I think it'll be tough for even the Chinese EV makers to really price something. BYD maybe with the Seagull or something like that, but...
 
 Lei Xing (36:32.973)
 There were a couple of BYD vehicles at the show. If you walk the show, know, extensive.
 
 Tu Le (36:43.498)
 Well, there's a YU7 at the Caresoft booth too. I was talking to the Caresoft guys and they were like, come to the booth, check it out. I mean, I'm like, dude, I've checked it out before.
 
 Lei Xing (36:46.038)
 Yep, YU7 and then, yep.
 
 Lei Xing (36:53.71)
 They showed the US YU7 at the IAA in Munich. there was BYD Han at the Cerence booth. And then there was a Denza D9 at one of their partner's booth where I'll post a video where these, I think they were Americans seeing karaoke in the Denza D9.
 
 yeah, mean it's just random things that make you laugh, right? And then talk about Lenovo spending big money on the sphere. Guess who was the best branding at CES this year?
 
 Tu Le (37:39.362)
 Insta360.
 
 Lei Xing (37:41.006)
 It's the 360. They took over with the yellow bags. I have one as well. I hear they've helped. No, I didn't get a Geely bag. I hear that they.
 
 Tu Le (37:45.33)
 I have one.
 
 Did you get a Geely bag? Did you get a Geely bag? I got a Geely bag.
 
 Wait, hey, you have to ping that woman so we can get our jackets.
 
 Lei Xing (38:04.212)
 I should, yeah, I should talk to the Zeekr people. Yeah. No, they didn't have it at the press conference. I asked, they didn't have it.
 
 Tu Le (38:07.592)
 Yeah, because, well, she said she said she was going to get it for us. anyways, so. let's do this. Summarize, you kind of already did this at the beginning, but summarize CES in your eyes for the audience.
 
 Lei Xing (38:25.358)
 Well, I mean, I post something on LinkedIn. I put a riddle. said, AI, everything, AI, everywhere, is it me or is it a Dreame Right? Because that's how everything was about AI, AI, AI.
 
 Lei Xing (38:46.737)
 and
 
 Tu Le (38:47.2)
 The one, go ahead, go ahead.
 
 Lei Xing (38:49.684)
 And I think for the autonomous driving, should mention Mobileye Professor Shashua's press conference. I went to that one. I really like him for the way he shares his perspectives and the way he kind of articulates the kind of the future of the autonomous driving. He posted a slide of what autonomous driving in the 2030s will look like. I think that was
 
 a great slide showing really the three tracks, right? The level 2++ assisted driving becomes standard on all vehicles in the 2030s. There's the consumer level 3, level 4, something that you can buy but with higher levels automation, which Ford talked about, right? The eyes off GM talked about, XPeng talks about. And then there's a third track is the driverless robot taxis.
 
 That's currently the three tracks of Autonomous Driving in the 2030s. So I think it's a great way to, at a very high level, on what AV is. I really liked it. And he basically echoed what Ola said at the pre-show at the Media Live the day before, the three tracks.
 
 Tu Le (40:02.784)
 Mm-hmm.
 
 Lei Xing (40:15.31)
 And I think Jensen also he mentioned something about what the Alpamayo is in respect to the FSD. He still credits Elon and Tesla for what they have done. Alpamayo VLA model.
 
 Tu Le (40:34.262)
 yeah, that's right. NVIDIA had announced the driving, their own, right.
 
 Lei Xing (40:44.514)
 That's going on to the Mercedes-Benz CLA outside of China. that was a big takeaway. then just lastly, new brands, new brands are still emerging. Dreame, they had two different brands. The Nebula Next.
 
 Tu Le (40:54.378)
 So if I had to...
 
 Tu Le (41:05.428)
 I'm going to be honest with you. I'm going be honest with you, Lei. think Dreame is one of those. They got some provincial money, so they're just trying to throw stuff out there. You know, I don't know, because you go to the Dreame booth, that's one of the biggest booths at CES. They have Insta360 style cameras. They have vacuum cleaners. They have everything. And it was an enormous booth. And I just don't know how...
 
 Lei Xing (41:13.208)
 Yeah, but...
 
 Lei Xing (41:18.092)
 Yeah.
 
 Lei Xing (41:25.326)
 Everything you can think of. Soundbars.
 
 Tu Le (41:36.309)
 they realistically are able to do all. let's say they can, the vacuums are great. I was told I don't have one, but the vacuums are great. But yeah, so, but I just don't know. They seem to be like, they're trying to follow in the footsteps of Dyson, but take that one step further and actually get the car to production.
 
 Lei Xing (41:46.382)
 Well, I have one. I have a robot, cleaning robot, so...
 
 Lei Xing (42:04.47)
 Yeah, the only I hear was that the Nebula NEX is the one they want to produce China, whereas the Cosmera. If you talk to the Cosmera people, you can sense that they don't want to be associated with Dreame. The Cosmera, the two supercars, they want to produce that. And I think they've scouted Germany being one, right? Berlin, this was reported. So they actually have two different brands.
 
 Tu Le (42:19.327)
 Mm-hmm.
 
 Lei Xing (42:34.188)
 Amen.
 
 Tu Le (42:38.749)
 And let me really, there's one or two questions here. So let me summarize.
 
 With the politics of China and the US the way it is, it's still not deterring any of the Chinese brands from showing off their wares in the United States for sure. The two languages that I heard the most outside of English were Korean and Mandarin. I think in my opinion, in these parts, meaning the Midwest and in Michigan, Hyundai's
 
 announcement and press event that only had robots. I think that is an enormous shift for the company because they're firing on all cylinders as an automotive group with the exception of the China market. You you and I both own Hyundai's and so I think that has implications. And, you know, my initial thought was, man, the UAW is pretty
 
 Scared should be pretty scared. But then I was talking to Colin. I forget his last name, but he's the head of MEMA which is the the tier one supplier advocacy group. And, you know, he did mention a statistic that said that, you know, there are a lot of supplier jobs that are unfilled. So the robots could really just help fill some of those jobs. But again,
 
 The largest themes were to your point AI, but drilled down a little bit further, it was all about robots. And then if we think about LiDAR, we think about all these sensors and things like that, it plays right into the robotics part of it. The last thing I'll say is the Tensor auto vehicle, it goes from robot taxi to you drive yourself within like 30 or 40 seconds, meaning that the steering wheel comes out of the dashboard. And so.
 
 Tu Le (44:43.681)
 the theme and, you know, I had heard this from Alex Roy a few times who is the host. He, the Autonocast Party is an Alex Roy, Ed Niedermeyer and Kirsten Korosek party every year. I think it's in his ninth year this year. It was a ton of fun, knew a bunch of people. Met the, what's his name? Dave. Who's the guy that drove his Model 3 from
 
 from California to Florida?
 
 Lei Xing (45:13.454)
 Yeah, I should mention that I met him and took him to check out the NIO ET9. look, his name is David Moss. He's a, yeah. And...
 
 Tu Le (45:19.455)
 Yeah, so...
 
 Yeah, David Moss, that's right. So I got to meet him and talk to him for a while. good dude, he's a LiDAR salesman.
 
 Lei Xing (45:30.574)
 Yeah, exactly. He's based in  Seattle and first time sitting in a Chinese car of any kind.
 
 Tu Le (45:40.865)
 So what he did was he zero interventions from California to Florida. So pretty impressive. And we talk about all of the intelligent driving coming out of China. FSD is an amazing tool for sure. The reservations I have is not that it's not innovative. The reservations I have is that it is not.
 
 Lei Xing (45:47.31)
 11,000 miles. Yeah.
 
 Tu Le (46:08.925)
 as safe as human drivers yet. And that's from a statistics standpoint, okay?
 
 Lei Xing (46:12.526)
 Yeah, not at that point yet, I guess.
 
 Tu Le (46:17.313)
 And so, go ahead.
 
 Lei Xing (46:20.974)
 No, and then I think we covered a lot in 45 minutes. The storylines, the companies, the people.
 
 Tu Le (46:27.125)
 Did you?
 
 Did you hear that the, did you hear the donut motor or donut labs announcement?
 
 Lei Xing (46:33.838)
 Yeah, yeah. That was, I think the only thing that we didn't mention was this Finnish company supplying a solid-state battery 400 watt-hour per kilogram energy density, which is at least twice as what's on the market for LFPs. Usually, yeah.
 
 Tu Le (46:49.707)
 So hold on. So SPX, who's a loyal watcher and participant. So thanks again. Happy New Year, SPX. He writes, one thing seemed to be out of nowhere. What's your take on the donut lab? If something like this gets commercialized, how would it change the landscape of the industry? This is a pretty great question, but I'll let you answer it first Lei
 
 Lei Xing (47:17.602)
 Well, I think the application, first of all, they were showing this pouch, right? And then they were showing this kind of the module. They put three of these modules into the Verge motorcycle. So I think the application itself for the motorcycle is something that may be easier, I'm thinking, rather than putting in a car. Whereas a motorcycle, you don't need that long of a range anyways, My understanding. So maybe you.
 
 The way they did it is start out with these more simpler applications. And the other one was, I did talk to some of the people at the booth, but I asked them what's the secret sauce and they're not saying. But they did confirm that they're starting production this year and putting on the motorcycles. But again, what kind of volumes are we talking about? What kind of a scale?
 
 Tu Le (48:06.837)
 Yes.
 
 Lei Xing (48:14.722)
 I'd imagine that's still very low. it's not like what Ola says, right? The solid state batteries, it looks like they're not fiction anymore, science fiction anymore. But you still take a grain of salt with what's being said, right?
 
 Tu Le (48:36.001)
 So SVX does that. to me.
 
 Everybody I talk to or a lot of people I talk to in some of the chats that I'm in are poo-pooing it. They're very skeptical, which is fair. But solid state, if they can commercialize it within the next three or four years, it might render all that capacity in China moot, which it should scare the heck.
 
 out of CATL and BYD because they have massive, massive, massive capacity. So the implications are enormous. And now that Donut Labs has thrown that massive bomb out there, you better believe that these battery companies, whether it's LG, SK, CATL, BYD, they're gonna throw more resources at this because
 
 Donut Labs could corner the market. Whether they get investment to manufacture on their own or whether they generate revenues through licensing, that remains to be seen. I don't use that game changer description very often, but this would be a game changer in the strength of... Go ahead.
 
 Lei Xing (50:05.804)
 Well, I mean, do they become someone like our next energy or do they become a breakout sensation? We don't know at this point. I think there's certainly a little bit of hype, right, as you alluded, but...
 
 Tu Le (50:16.672)
 Well...
 
 Tu Le (50:27.849)
 And the thing is, if they're putting it on a motorcycle, the durability needs to be there, like automotive grade type of durability. And so it's not like this consumer product that consumes zero, zero energy. It's going to be something that a person relies on for their life.
 
 Lei Xing (50:45.966)
 It's actually one of the first new products we saw at the CES Unveiled. And we didn't think of it as something until later the headlines came out of the donor labs. Right? Remember. Yeah.
 
 Tu Le (50:59.041)
 Oh yeah, that's right. You, me, and Joe walked through Unveiled. And so I just kind of passed by because I saw the e-motor thing. And I'd seen that announcement before. the solid state bat. Again, what everybody wants to do in order to not rely so heavily on the Chinese LFP chemistry or the LFP chemistry that
 
 trying to dominate in manufacturing. They want to leapfrog. Okay, they don't want to evolve. That's why GM and Ford are betting big on LMR. But Donut Labs could become a massive, massive company because the implications of batteries are in pretty much every portable consumer good. And I'm talking drones, I'm talking autonomous vehicles, delivery vans, you name it.
 
 Lei Xing (51:40.269)
 There.
 
 Lei Xing (51:55.628)
 Yeah, so basically what you're saying is they want to give the Chinese a little bit of their own medicine, right? That's that's kind of the yeah.
 
 Tu Le (52:04.541)
 and that would really, really throw China Battery Inc. into a loop for sure.
 
 Lei Xing (52:12.657)
 But I'm sure, I mean, that the CATLs, the BYDs, they're ready. I have no doubt.
 
 Tu Le (52:24.466)
 No, you know, think, you know, if this was to happen, I think they'd feel like they're caught flat-footed as well, so.
 
 Lei Xing (52:26.217)
 Hahaha
 
 Lei Xing (52:35.054)
 The thing about the donut labs, they're not only doing the solid state battery. They have in-wheel motor solutions. E-drive. Yeah, E-drive, right?
 
 Tu Le (52:42.153)
 Yeah, the e-motor,
 
 Tu Le (52:46.707)
 which is also a significant game changer because this is not an evolution of an e-motor or this is a revolution, which is kind of thinking about things differently. everyone, what we thought was going to be a 20, 30 minute CES update ended up being an entire episode.
 
 Lei Xing (53:08.43)
 It never is a quick recap.
 
 Tu Le (53:12.086)
 So.
 
 Happy New Year, everyone, and thanks for joining our first episode of 2026. We should be, is this our second?
 
 Lei Xing (53:21.091)
 Second.
 
 Yeah, we did one on January 2nd. Yeah.
 
 Tu Le (53:26.495)
 On the second, sorry, that's right, that's right. I how quickly I forget. Anyways, we will talk with you all next week. I'll set up an announcement that our regular time is Friday mornings at 9 a.m. Eastern time so that you don't have to think about when's the next event or when's the next episode. Thanks again for joining us. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. I will talk with you on direct message.
 
 Lei Xing (53:53.644)
 Alright, bye bye.