China EVs & More Episode #67 - Jumpstarting the Chinese Economy, Bosch & WeRide collab, and XPeng's earnings
Tu and Lei start out with a discussion about the challenges of China’s overall economy and some of the stimulus that the Chinese govt. has announced they’d provide in order to get it jumpstarted. Shanghai is finally opening back up on June 1st, so factories should begin to product more product consistently in June and beyond but Tu cautions that any outbreak could jeopardize the recovery.
Lei then shifts the conversation over to May sales numbers and how he expects BYD to be much further along in their sales volume than the other EV makers. This opens up a broader discussion about BYD including their boldness in entering the ultra luxury market with a vehicle launch later this year that’s supposed to be in the ¥1.5M price range but they both question whether BYD is stretching themselves too thin?
Tu shifts the conversation over to Jidu and their impending vehicle unveil scheduled for June 8th. Jidu is the brand that was created by a collaboration between Geely and Baidu. Lei laments that their messaging is a bit confusing, specifically the claim on being a ‘autorobot’ and he wonders if Jidu is overpromising what the product can deliver?
The pod moves onto the news about the strategic investment Bosch made into WeRide the Guangzhou based autonomous vehicle startup and the possible reasons for the investment and how they could provide each party access to an area that they currently lack or that isn’t available to them.
Tu and Lei close out the show with a brief discussion on ECarX, the software intelligence startup owned by Li Shufu aka Eric Li, the founder of Geely and then a quick chat about XPeng’s earnings as well as who they believe may be moving to the US market first.
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