NIO vs. Li Auto Stays Ugly, Chery Goes Global & Tesla Faces New Pressure | China EVs & More #249

China’s EV industry isn’t slowing down—it’s becoming even more competitive.

In Episode 249, Tu Le and Lei Xing break down the escalating rivalry between NIO and Li Auto, examine why Chery is rapidly becoming one of China’s most successful global automakers, and discuss what Tesla, Mercedes and other legacy automakers are up against as Chinese brands expand at home and abroad.  

The conversation explores Chery’s potential manufacturing partnership in the UK, the latest May sales results, NIO’s growing momentum with the ES9, Li Auto’s recent challenges, Mercedes’ next-generation EV strategy, and why intelligent driving, software and global manufacturing are becoming the next battlegrounds in the automotive industry.

If you want to understand where the global auto industry is headed—and which companies are building long-term advantages—this episode connects the dots beyond the headlines.  

They also hit:

• Why Chery’s export strategy is reshaping its global ambitions
• Whether NIO’s recent product launches have finally changed its trajectory
• The growing tension between NIO and Li Auto—and what it says about China’s increasingly competitive EV market
• Why Mercedes is betting heavily on Chinese software and intelligent driving
• Tesla’s resilience in China despite a flood of new competitors
• How intelligent driving has become the industry’s newest competitive battlefield
• Why China’s leading EV makers are preparing for a very different next phase of growth.  

SEO Keywords

China EVs, China EVs and More, Chery, NIO, Li Auto, Tesla China, Mercedes China, Chinese automakers, EV exports, China auto market, intelligent driving, autonomous driving, EV competition, Chery UK, electric vehicles, BYD, XPeng, Geely, Tu Le, Lei Xing, Sino Auto Insights

Suggested YouTube Chapters

00:00 Welcome & Episode Setup
01:30 Chery’s UK Manufacturing Move
03:10 Chery’s Export Strategy & Global Push
05:15 Is Chery Too Dependent on Exports?
07:35 BYD, Geely, Chery & China’s Global Automakers
09:40 May Sales: Tesla, LeapMotor, Xiaomi & NIO
10:55 NIO Momentum: ES8 / ES9 Update
11:15 NIO vs. Li Auto Suspension Test Controversy
13:15 Li Auto Under Pressure
15:55 Xiaomi, HIMA & the 30K+ Monthly Sales Club
17:30 Mercedes GLC, Momenta & China-Specific EV Tech
20:50 XPeng, FSD & China’s Intelligent Driving Race
23:10 China EVs Entering Canada
25:00 USMCA, Canada & Chinese EV Investment
26:35 Honda’s China Collapse
27:25 Legacy Automakers’ Only Path Forward in China
29:45 Fast Charging, Battery Life & Viewer Q&A
31:30 Built-In Fridges, BYD, NIO & Closing Thoughts

Transcript

Tu Le (00:00)
Hi everyone and welcome to China EVs and More, where 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. 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, welcome back. Help us spread the word about this podcast to others, and of course, tune in again next week.

My name is 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 sign up for it at sinoautoinsights.substack.com. A recently returning to home lay from the Outer Banks. Can you please, please introduce yourself?

Lei Xing (00:44)
aka OBX Outer Banks. this is your co-host Lei Xing, former chief editor of China Auto Review, and this is episode 249, 249. I was going through the recording when I said 247 last episode, which should have been 248. So this is 249. 249. so I was away earlier this week.

Spending time with my wife because my daughter's still in France right now. Much needed time to to kind of be free. you know how it is to be f away from the kids. but I do know the May sales numbers is something that we can talk about. There's a major beef between Li Auto and NIO.

Tu Le (01:30)
I think it's real too. I don't think it's manufactured and I think it's pretty serious. It's zhen da(for real)

Lei Xing (01:37)
some news on the overseas front. Chery could be producing in Nissan's Sunderland plant in the UK. I think that's one of the major news that came out outside of China. the dominoes are falling, I think.

Tu Le (01:49)
I wanted to congratulate the

UK team for that, because you and I know some of the UK folks in China that are trying to attract foreign direct investment into the UK from China. And recently I had met up with my friend John Edwards, who was leading that commercial team. Remember, we had spoken with him a while back. So he moved back to London and now he is doing foreign direct investment, not just for China anymore, but

Lei Xing (02:09)
Yep. Mm-hmm.

Tu Le (02:16)
I know his team was a little bit involved with that discussion and negotiation with with Chery and Nissan, so congratulations to them.

Lei Xing (02:23)
yes, this comes after about a half year after Chery announced with Nissan on their other plant in South Africa,

Tu Le (02:33)
And they're looking at building in Barcelona through a Spanish brand as well.

Lei Xing (02:34)
That yeah.

So the fine print is that one was confirmed, but this one is a non-binding MOU, which means they're studying. It's not finally confirmed yet, but we can pretty much chalk it up as a check mark. in what will become the first Chinese automaker.

Producing in UK, is that correct?

Tu Le (02:57)
I believe so. And what's important, Lei, is that Chery, through its brands, JAECOO, Omada, Chery Brand, and there's one other that now control about 7% of the they have about 7% of the market in the UK. So the the UK

Lei Xing (02:58)
Yep, and

I don't know. weird name.

Tu Le (03:14)
is becoming an even more important market for them. So to build domestically would likely enhance that market share even further.

Lei Xing (03:22)
Yeah, and then Chery, remember they launched this Freelander, they brought back the Freelander brand, which is basically the Land Rover using Chery's platform. And now Tata, the parent company of JLR, They're probably trying to utilize Chery platform.

Tu Le (03:42)
Did you see my shirt

by the way, Lei?

Lei Xing (03:46)
Yeah, we talked about the Ferrari Luce. I think the the Faraday (Future) FF 91 looked better than the Luce, right?

Tu Le (03:55)
so I had a nice discussion with Sam Livingstone, our good friend Sam, But yeah, Chery is going to be it is so you're not a fan.

Lei Xing (03:58)
Yeah.

It's all over the news.

No, I am a fan. And and one more news on Chery. They sold 240,000 vehicles in May. 180,000 of those were exported.

Tu Le (04:15)
Well

Lei Xing (04:16)
No no, so yeah, they did 240,000 180,000 were

Tu Le (04:22)
I think you said one hundred

and forty I think you said one hundred and forty thousand.

Lei Xing (04:25)
That was 240,000

Tu Le (04:26)
Maybe I'm

okay. I could be wrong. We'll check the video. But

Lei Xing (04:30)
which is 75% exported in the month of May. Yeah.

Tu Le (04:33)
so this will tell you what you need to know about Chery. They will export more vehicles this year than they'll sell domestically.

So domestically in China is is what I'm saying. But did want to ask you, Lei, how do you feel about that? is that concerning? Is that a good thing? Because it seems like they're losing the battle at home, but they're progressing quite well outside of China.

Lei Xing (04:51)
It's yeah.

It's a double-edged sword. we talked about in the last episode. BYD. if you look at the May sales, The big bucket at the top are these groups, BYD, SAIC Motor, Geely, Chery, and Chang'an. all of their sales reported, including ICEVs, at least a third are exported. BYD was close to 50%.

Chery was a 75%, right? 180 versus 240.

Tu Le (05:19)
That's a monster number. it actually does concern me. do they become AIWAYS?

Lei Xing (05:21)
It my modeling number.

no,

I don't think they're no, but

Yeah. It it's hard to compare, but I don't think it's a AIWAYS situation. not yet.

Tu Le (05:35)
75% you know, 25% domestic sales of your mix is not great. It is not great.

Lei Xing (05:41)
60,000 sold in the domestic market versus 180,000. no matter how you look at it, it's kinda jarring, right?

Tu Le (05:51)
the one risk that they're trying to mitigate is that if more tariffs, if more protectionism happens, this really, really exposes them. And remember when they IPO'd last year in Hong Kong, they said that they were gonna leave the Russian market, and that was a big hole. 25% of their sales went to Russia.

So I don't know what their progress. They don't seem to be really making announcements about if they're continuing to ship into Russia. But we do know that there are Chinese brands that are continuing to ship into Russia to fill that void. Mostly ICE vehicles from brands that you and I don't really pay that much attention to. But that is kind of the risk that Chery has because if the domestic sales continue to weaken,

they're gonna be solely reliant on those factories in UK, in Spain, in South Africa for growth, which means there's a lot of risk involved. So

Lei Xing (06:48)
It just feels like Chery, the strategic direction of Chery, based on all of the news that we mentioned at the top of the show, is they're leaning aggressively toward outside of China. That's for sure. And based on the last few auto shows, Beijing and Shanghai, when they invite 3,000, 5,000

media partners, dealership and they invite them on a whole train to travel to China. There's nobody else that does that. so they're becoming international,

Tu Le (07:13)
Seems to be working. Seems

And you're starting to see the Geelys, the LeapMotors, and the Cherys take some headlines from the BYDs because prior to say 12 months ago, 14 months ago, 18 months ago, BYD was the dominant brand that was in most western media outlets. Now you're starting to see more news about LeapMotor and and Stellantis is really, really

Lei Xing (07:16)
Glory.

Yeah. So

Tu Le (07:39)
creating tailwinds for LeapMotor to enter foreign markets and not just Europe. They're helping them in other regions of the world as well.

Lei Xing (07:48)
BYD was at passenger vehicles 376,000. it's a good bump from April numbers. and I'm sure with the recent announcements, they should get into the 400,000s as the year goes along, but how much of those are exported? it's at least 50% from what we're seeing.

Tu Le (08:06)
you and I kind of talked about this a little bit in previous episodes, but let me be clear one more time. Toyota was at over 11 million units last year globally. They have a global manufacturing footprint. And of the top 10 automakers, BYD and Geely fit into that top 10. So now we have Chinese global automakers, quote unquote.

With BYD likely surpassing Ford permanently at some future point in time, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four months from a sales standpoint. but to get from four point six in 2025 to eleven, twelve, thirteen million units, BYD understands how tough it is. In my opinion, if they even get close to eight, nine million units, that four point six.

needs to go up. let's just say this. they need 60% of their sales, at least 60, 65% of their sales to be coming from China, which seems like it's gonna be harder and harder and harder to do that. Now I know Stella Li and Wang Chuang Fu has said we want a 50:50 split, but it's gonna be easier to get to the double digit millions of units.

with a strong base coming out of of China, in my opinion.

Lei Xing (09:16)
Yeah. and then we have this second bucket. I'm looking at those rankings. Tesla has been if you look at this whole long line of monthly sales, Tesla probably is the only one that has been consistent. There are up and downs, but they're still at 80,000 90,000 out of Giga Shanghai.

They're never too much above or too much below. They're always there.

Tu Le (09:40)
Lei, Lei, I'm gonna push back on that because

Mercedes has been very consistent over the last twelve months. Their sales has shrank consecutively for the last twelve months in China. So they've also been very consistent.

Lei Xing (09:57)
Yeah, I mean it's a matter of perspective, right? And then LeapMotor passing 80,000 for the first time, at some point this year they're gonna join the 100,000 club. you can bet on that. Because they have 1.05 million sales target for this year, and they have these vehicles in place and they're relaunching the C series.

and then the third bucket is bunch of these stacked in the 30,000 range. And guess who has the most momentum of those and Xiaomi. Definitely not Li Auto, I can tell you that.

Tu Le (10:30)
give a golf clap to NIO. Congratulations. They're gonna ship 120,000 ES8s very soon. So that's about 10,000 a month, which three years ago you and I were wondering where's that consistency gonna come from? It's gonna come from a higher value, lower priced ES8. And then the ES9 has been out.

Lei Xing (10:43)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Tu Le (10:50)
Cause I want to dovetail that into what you just said about Li Auto. The ES9's been out about a month and they're gonna be shipping about 10,000 units very, very soon, So can you tell us a little bit more about this dispute between Li Auto and NIO, Lei, especially with the ES9 and the L9 Livis?

Lei Xing (11:07)
Yeah, there was this video put out by Li Auto of the Li L9 Livis and the ES9 going through this

bumpy test of of the suspension, Cause these two models, one of the biggest selling points, both of these models, are about their ride handling and going through rough roads surfaces. So this video showed Li L9 very stable, whereas the ES9 was shaking quite a bit. And the NIO people, they kind of went on Weibo and

disputed the video saying, you know, it wasn't set at the right setting. It was on standard, and then the video went offline.

And this is not the first time that Li Auto has got into controversy, When they launched the i8 last July, they had this video of the i8 being impacted with a truck.

And that was controversial and was kind of a bad publicity for Li Auto. negative press. And now they run into it again at the most inopportune times when ES8 is flying out of the lots, when ES9 is flying out of the lots. We don't know how the L9 is gonna do, but

Tu Le (12:00)
Negative press. N

Lei Xing (12:14)
I'm not sure they're gonna get to 10,000 units as fast as the ES9 is going to.

Tu Le (12:15)
Well

The other thing

is that Li Bin is a a bit of a darling, social media darling in China. He's all over the place and he's consistently live streaming and on social media and he's the one on stage announcing new products and he's engaging customers and fans.

Lei Xing (12:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I think the beef started when he said during the ES9 launch event that they have this 48V architecture for the chassis. And he said it's better than the 800V or the 400V architecture. So indirectly pointing at Li Auto. So hence I think Li Auto came back with this video and then it backfired.

Yeah, that's how it stands currently, but we love these companies, right? that's just shows you the other side of the competitive landscape.

Tu Le (13:03)
important thing Lei

there's a few different things going on. It's the ultra competitiveness of

ultra competitiveness between the brands. And we're also seeing pressure seemingly starting to get to Li Auto a little bit because they have had.

Consistent negative press about things. The vehicles that they've launched haven't been as well received as some of their competitors. And we see Brian Gu all over the place in Europe over the last four, six weeks. Did you see that post on LinkedIn where he's showing that he's talking to Tom McKenzie? He's talking to this person, he's talking to that person. He's doing a tour in Europe. And remember, we were told that Brian's going be spending a lot more time in Europe to push.

Lei Xing (13:42)
Yeah, yeah.

Tu Le (13:48)
the Xpeng brand create awareness and excitement. So I I feel like Li Auto is not getting that type of love from their CEO and from its products. And so maybe they're a little bit jealous.

Lei Xing (14:03)
Li Xiang is sometimes low key. Sometimes he blurts out diss Weibos, right? Dongfeng Nissan. They had a beef with the Dongfeng Nissan NX8 with the Li Auto i6 and L6. And the other part of the reason is that they're not yet as international they're planning to be. This is big year. So they're not out there

facing the media, and they don't have someone like Brian Gu, who's an investor guy, right? Who's a money finance guy. so he knows how to build it. So they they don't have that kind of the rhythm yet. So the basically what happening is they're facing complete domestic pressure headwind while they're trying to be export oriented starting this year, heading to Europe.

Tu Le (14:45)
let us assure, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm assuming that you might have a similar feeling about this. let me assure you that the products aren't lacking. It's not because these products aren't very good. The products are good. you and I just drove one for two days over 1,200 km.

No issues, no challenges. We were actually pretty delighted with the charging experience and the simplicity and not in a Scandinavian, not enough going on, but you know, the simplicity of the front console, it was very intuitive. And so it's not a problem issue. It is just kind of a marketing and media relations issue at this point in time in the China market, and because

They can't balance that out with any news outside of China. I think it's so focused and concentrated that that's why it comes off so negative sometimes.

Lei Xing (15:34)
Yeah, it looks like in recent about a year or so, Li Auto has been very controversy.

Tu Le (15:41)
Almost conspiratorial.

Lei Xing (15:42)
Yeah. that does not help with the narrative. Yeah.

Tu Le (15:45)
for sure Li Xiang is the least social media friendly between even He Xiaopeng and Li Bin and to your point we're seeing that them not being international yet is a constraint for them.

Lei Xing (15:59)
Li Bin is at the CBA finals game with Yao Ming right at this moment, I think. And that that must mean the ES9 is selling well because he said if the orders are good, I'm gonna watch the CBA finals, which Shanghai, the Shanghai team is one of the teams in the finals, which is the home team for

Tu Le (16:15)
entire CBA, doesn't he? He owns the Shanghai Sharks in the CBA.

Lei Xing (16:18)
Some I

something like that. and then Xiaomi, I think yeah.

Tu Le (16:20)
'Cause I know Yao is trying to work more

closely with NBA, so

Lei Xing (16:24)
Xiaomi they they put out 30,000, but I'm thinking it's it's probably over 35,000 they never give a middle ground number. It's always 30,000, 40,000, but I'm sure it's much higher.

and then the rest of the bucket is ones that are still below 30,000. So we're seeing the market. Remember a few years ago, we said 10,000 is a minimum, is a threshold you must cross. Now we have a bunch of these 30,000s. and at certain point you have to go up or go out.

yeah.

Tu Le (16:55)
Well, and then this is where it gets a little bit cloudy, we have the HIMA brands, the Stellatos, the MAEXTROS the AITOs.

Lei Xing (17:05)
it's still primarily they reported 46,000 units, but a lot of that are still driven by the AITO at this point. So like AITO is like thirty four. M9.

Tu Le (17:15)
the flagship vehicle, that is a higher end vehicle. I want to say it's $80,000 US. it's Rolls Royce esque. and and so you're not gonna see that as a high volume car. it's more of a a luxury cruiser. even more so than than a

Lei Xing (17:31)
EQS, SUV, Well

So speaking of Mercedes, they just started a pre-sale of the five-seater GLC SUV at 349,000. I'm looking at my WeChat moments and people are actually praising this because it's long wheel based, it's got the Momenta, and when it actually launches, we probably gonna see.

Tu Le (17:34)
Go ahead.

Lei Xing (17:54)
this model inching closer to a starting price of RMB300,000

Tu Le (17:58)
you'd mention that it's using Momenta. It's also using ByteDance Dobao as its LLM. So we're seeing now more non automotive tech companies get involved. Byte dance is obviously the TikTok in Douyin, which is the Chinese version or or let's just say that TikTok is the US version of Douyin.

Lei Xing (18:03)
Tobal, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tu Le (18:19)
w which is a very popular social media app, and TikTok is now controlled by Oracle, in the US. So

Lei Xing (18:27)
Something like that. Yeah.

Tu Le (18:31)
I still question that whole one meter long hyperscreen, but the CLTC range is supposed to be around 400 miles, which is solid, man. It's pretty solid. but again to your point, I think 350 for a mid-size SUV crossover is

Lei Xing (18:42)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tu Le (18:52)
Is a little bit high, especially when you can get an ES8 with no battery for around the same price.

Lei Xing (18:57)
just about to say the ES9 with the BaaS mode starts at under 400,000 RMB And the Mercedes, much smaller vehicle, GLC, the starting price point is 350,000 RMB How? Yeah. So how and it looks like also based on the GX, what He Xiaopeng share on the earnings that the GX like 80%

Tu Le (19:11)
Much smaller even after they extended the wheelbase.

Lei Xing (19:21)
of the orders so far are for the top line, ultra, like RMB300,000 range. So that shows you how much of an uphill battle the Mercedes and the other foreign premiums, the four letter AUDI, this E7X has to compete.

yeah.

Tu Le (19:36)
Yeah, and

so let me see what else did I wanna talk about? So really quickly,

Lei Xing (19:40)
And then so

Tu Le (19:41)
The Mercedes Benz has its own electric platform called the MB.EA, Mercedes Benz has its own operating system, MB.OS. And I I don't know if MBOS is actually running on top of anything, but I'll try to figure that out. The other thing that I think is really important is that the person, I forget his name.

Who was heading up the Sunnyvale Technical Center for Mercedes-Benz, he left. it's a German guy. I forget his name, but I I've spoken with him a few times. He did leave the Sunnyvale office in Mercedes-Benz. So I'm not sure what he's gonna be doing next, but I I know he was driving a lot of that push into high tech and technology. Now, one of the things that I also heard at that media conference was that.

And this was a little bit surprising to me was BMW and Mercedes was really driving a lot of the desire to get media into the vehicles. but now that I've heard more about this GLC, because they want to be able to via the Momenta intelligent driving system to be parking spot to parking spot.

in China before the end of the year. So effectively they want to have FSD capabilities by the end of this year.

Lei Xing (20:55)
so I tweeted recently that this summer is gonna be epic because all of these solutions whether Momenta, Horizon Robotics, they're coming out Xpeng, The updated VLA in the summer. He Xiaopeng said they wanna achieve level as good as FSD. he made a bet, right? Of opening up canteen in their

Silicon Valley office, like some kind of a bet. So yeah, we'll see what happens. But my only experience with FSD, it's the crown jewel. I I know might sound like a stan, but when you go on these I am a stan, I I apologize, but it's just so good. Like when you go on these long trips, 600 miles. I came back yesterday, 12 hours. I was me and my wife, we were in a car.

Tu Le (21:25)
You are a stand now, man. There's no there's no I might sound like a stand

Lei Xing (21:38)
For four and a half hours driving over two hundred miles. And the whole trip, the fatigueness was probably at least a half, if not more, than a normal trip when you drive yourself. That's how good it is.

Tu Le (21:51)
Well,

need to get out because you're stiff more than than anything else.

Lei Xing (21:55)
Yeah. I

yeah, I had not the range anxiety, the butt anxiety because my butt hurts. Yeah, soreness. So and right and it routes you to the supercharging station, parks in the spot, you just plug it in. Once it's done, you plug it out, press the self driving and it continues. Yeah. so

Tu Le (22:02)
The butt soreness.

Yeah, well but but I I also think it's important, Lei, and I think you would agree with me saying this, of course, is that you're still supervising. You're still paying attention it's not like you're sleeping in the driver's seat, you know.

Lei Xing (22:24)
I'm still Yeah. No, no,

no, no. But it's just so good after you drive it every day and then you go these long trips. The value of it. yeah.

Tu Le (22:35)
But

this is where you can't trust your instincts because you trust it so much and you still need to be diligent with paying attention, just in case.

Lei Xing (22:42)
But at the

same time, the other side is that you appreciate its limitations because it does have a lot of limitations.

So on the way over accidentally went through a route where you needed to take a ferry boat. So that was kinda interesting. and I had to take over twice because of this ferry boat thing.

Tu Le (22:50)
Well, this is where good enough is not good enough. Good enough is not good enough.

that's what's considered an edge case. So

Lei Xing (23:06)
corner case of corner cases. so updated numbers. I'm looking at this. I don't know whether you've seen this. the Canadian Global Fairs reported 2910 EVs from China shipped from March first to August thirty first. So remember the 49,000

There was a stipulation that within a six month period, only half of it. So I think we're the remaining quota is 21,590 So they've shipped 2910 Chinese EVs into Canada already. there were some Lotuses. there were some other brands.

I think Chery may be in it as well. probably a lot of Teslas. yeah, so interesting.

Tu Le (23:49)
A lot of Teslas. So I was

I was talking to a few Canadian journalists and they said it's a lot of Teslas. Or Carney said that's a lot of Teslas.

Lei Xing (23:56)
Yeah. I I would assume Tesla's

account for quite a lot of those.

Tu Le (23:59)
Basically, Tesla doesn't need to homologate. They were already shipping, and I think they stopped shipping or slowed down shipping from Shanghai because of the 100% tariff. But

Lei Xing (24:09)
Yeah, they have the probably the easiest

path into Canada because they were already there before. The Shanghai built.

Tu Le (24:17)
And again, 20,000 units, 30,000 units from a major automaker like BYD, it's effectively a rounding error, but it's more important for the Chinese automakers because it'll be their first time in the Canadian market. Tesla, you see Teslas all over the place in Canada already. So it's a continuation of something they had paused as opposed to

a new entry into a new market with new customers. And would say, Lei, that gives Tesla the advantage for the next couple of years, not just this year.

Lei Xing (24:41)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, but I mean the numbers are minimal, 49,000 units.

Tu Le (24:52)
Yeah. I'm sure Carney's team is fast and furious trying to negotiate with the BYDs, the Geelys, the Cherys the LeapMotors to figure out who's gonna be the first to write a check in looking at the unions, looking at the tier ones to figure out what makes the most sense from is it shipping kits? Is it

full production? If it's full production, what's the requirement on the supply base? Because even if you do final assembly in production in Canada, but you're shipping most of the parts from China, is that what the Canadians want? Or is it the entire supply chain or most of it needs to come to Canada? And

Because the USMCA is still up in the air? Are they looking at the United States as a free market that they can ship from? because there's a lot of Chinese suppliers in the United States already building parts for assembly plants.

Lei Xing (25:53)
So I believe the official negotiations start on July 1 for the USMCA and part of the discussions is thinking of something of a content. how much content you have to have to get free trade. so a lot of things are on the table. the Chinese

Tu Le (26:02)
Mm. Yep.

Trump administration doesn't I

the Trump administration doesn't wanna keep the free trade agreement between the three countries. I just feel like Trump wants to do bilateral agreements between the two countries. I don't know.

Lei Xing (26:10)
Chinese Yeah.

But what I was saying is the Chinese EVs are encircling America. when does that bubble burst, right? When they actually come in.

Tu Le (26:28)
The pressure is continuing to build. Let's say that.

People are still getting educated on what's going on and I'm doing the best I can, man. I'm doing the best I can.

that's all I have, unless you have anything else.

Lei Xing (26:40)
Same year. Same year.

No, I just saw this number of Honda.

They sold for the second consecutive month they had major sales growth down in China. so in the first five months they only sold 170,000 vehicles.

At the prime, Honda sold over 1.6 million vehicles. I think that was 2020 actually. And this year they might sell around 400,000. Six years. It's very jarring. I remember Honda is the one that recently put out a re-strategy of how they wanna look at the Chinese market and

Tu Le (27:01)
Mm-hmm.

The the the

Lei Xing (27:15)
There was a line saying that they would utilize Chinese companies tech underpinning their future architectures. I think a bit slow on that decision. But yeah, it's crazy how

Tu Le (27:26)
The the

I think we can definitively say that that's the only path forward in China for most legacy automakers.

The only path forward. Now let me stress that for a third time. The only path forward for most legacy automakers, because I don't think they are able to speed up their development process. I don't think they have the expertise that's needed. I don't think they understand the market as well as the Chinese do. And an aside from that, Lei, there was an article in autoblog that said that.

Sterling Anderson and GM were looking at the Hummer, which was developed in less than 24 months to be the new way forward for General Motors. Now I'm gonna be going to send no, they that big Hummer that they developed in 2021 that is now this 9,000 pound thing, they developed it in 20 months, I think, and they wanna use that as the template.

Lei Xing (28:09)
Maybe a homework?

Okay. Okay.

Tu Le (28:22)
For moving forward on product development. I'm going to San Francisco because Tuesday morning, the 9th, there's a media event with Sterling Anderson. I don't know why it's in San Francisco because they have an office in Mountain View, but it is what it is. Either way, I'm gonna be on the left coast for a couple of days, and I was gonna stay for a few days, Lei.

Lei Xing (28:38)
That that's where innovation

Tu Le (28:45)
To meet with some, but I'm like, I've been gone for so long. I need to not be gone. So I'm taking the red eye on the ninth and it's gonna suck.

Lei Xing (28:48)
Yeah, yeah. It's it

Tu Le (28:54)
Anyways, There's some comments. GM from Grand Junction, Colorado. Okay. That's from Seymour Facts. Toyota in trouble in Australia. It's reliability, reputation in trouble in the United States. feel like it ebbs and flows. Toyota has been pretty consistent.

and I know that they're also making bets on the innovation and and venture capital side for some things. So I I think Toyota's philosophy of slow and steady is actually paying off for them. they know that competition is coming, but I think that they're such a big, big player, the biggest player in one of the most important sectors in the world that

shouldn't their influence in front of the camera and behind the scenes should not be underestimated.

This is where I'm not so he has question mark or he or she has question mark, five minute to nine minute and nine minute charging from China. Will this shorten the battery life?

Lei Xing (29:50)
Well BYD has openly refuted that this shortens battery life. That they say So at this point we don't know, we'll have to see once these flash charging models hit the market and in big volumes and kinda see how it goes. but at this point I think if we ask the OEMs themselves, they would say no. That they've tested this and

Tu Le (29:56)
I think C A T L So

Lei Xing (30:11)
But the other way to look at this, anytime you have fast charging, super fast charging, it affects the battery performance. There's no doubt about that, right? Over a long period of time. that's just the way chemistry or science works. I mean, there's no way you can have a 100% capacity battery three, four, five years after using it.

Tu Le (30:31)
SSJJ 005 since the Yao Ming advertisement, the weekly order for NIO has surpassed Huawei and Tesla. I I wouldn't doubt that. You know, I think Yao Ming is the national hero.

Lei Xing (30:43)
but I think Yao Ming is definitely a plus in boosting sales, but I don't think it started at Yao Ming. I think it started at just the right product definition, the launching rhythm, building on the experience, on the platform architecture, and just bang for the buck for that type of sized vehicles.

Tu Le (30:59)
I'm curious to see how much Yao Ming stays engaged after this initial set of months because if he's to continue to be involved, the ES9 needs to evolve as well with new features, new types of things that will attract buyers. Because again, this is a large vehicle, so it's not gonna be practical for every buyer.

Lei Xing (30:59)
What? No.

Tu Le (31:20)
Although, you know, the price point seems really, really, really competitive. Scott Wilson, two eight, five, nine. In the Chinese vehicles with a built in fridge, can you have the fridge run even when the car is off? It would be nice to keep it working overnight. Well yeah, I think so too. Yep.

Lei Xing (31:36)
Yes. Yes. So as a matter of fact, the N60, the sub RMB120,000 AION N60, In the center armrest below, there's a fridge. So every time I get into the vehicle I check there's a bottle of water in there. After a night, it's cold. So that means it works.

Tu Le (31:42)
Ha ha.

I'll text a few people to confirm and and Lei you can also reach out to a couple of the brands. I think it barely uses any battery, to be frank. CMOR fact four three three three. I think the US is pumping its tiny four percent market as being important. US market is not that important. Even Legacy Autocorp know this. So 4% market. I'm not sure.

Lei Xing (31:56)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's not

Yeah, yeah.

Tu Le (32:17)
what the 4% means. but if you're still on see more fact maybe you can let us know. If not, maybe you can make a comment after this show is posted on YouTube after we edit it and stuff. Anyways, everyone, I thought this was gonna be a pretty short episode, but you and I always have a lot to say, So have a good weekend everyone.

Lei Xing (32:33)
Never.

Tu Le (32:36)
good morning, good afternoon, good evening. We will talk with you all later.

Lei Xing (32:39)
Bye bye!