China EVs & More

Tu and Lei begin the discussion about the brutal price war that's currently going on in the China automotive sector including where the foreign automakers, SOEs (state owned enterprises) and startups all fit in and how they think it'll affect everyone long-term.They both also discuss the annual Two Sessions meeting that the Chinese govt has each year and try to read between the lines with what's being said and what's actually meant.  The chat moves into a chat about February sales and Tu talks about how western OEMs don't put enough weight on how much the China market means to their success. Tu then moves onto a discussion about the importance of China Battery Inc to the foreign automakers, but not only in China but in their home markets because it's really the only game in town for reliable, competitively priced LFP battery cells.The pod ends with Tu providing a history lesson on the battery cell sector in China and how it built itself out. 

The podcast starts with Tu and Lei having a long discussion about their takeaways from Tesla's Investor Day. For Tu it was all about the ambitious numbers that stood out. Lei thought it was notable that Tom Zhu came out to present. Lei then moves the conversation over to his attending Luminar Day and they both reflect on how important the China market is for Luminar if they're to hit on any of their lofty sales and install goals. The pod ends with Tu and Lei briefly touching on February sales as the sales numbers were beginning to trickle out and what's surprised them so far. 

Tu and Lei talk about the recently announced Leadership change at Ford China and Tu takes a few minutes to give a brief history of Ford China, where he worked briefly in the early 2010s.Lei then shifts the conversation over to letting us know what he learned from the Mercedes Benz digital strategy and OS update in Sunnyvale, CA. This evolves into a broader discussion about Merc's global rollout strategy and how they'll work out the US vs. China vs. EU markets. Tu also points out that Merc will be partnering it's way to a complete HW/SW stack for connectivity and ADAS which is much different than a VW and other legacies who still want to keep most things 'in-house.'The pod closes with a discussion on the new Galaxy brand that Geely unveiled in response to BYD's Yangwang premium brand and they both briefly talk about the differences between Chinese and American's tastes in connected features. 

In this latest MAX episode, Lei catches up with Silvio Angori, CEO & MD Pininfarina SPA who took over at Pininfarina in 2016.For many in the automotive sector, Pininfarina is the epitome of automotive design. Originally established in Turin, Italy in 1930, Pininfarina was a coachbuilder who built cars for companies like Fiat, Rolls Royce and Cadillac. Pininfarina over the years has branched out to provide design services for consumer products, architecture, furniture and e-mobility solutions. One of their recent designs for German startup called Holon was unveiled at CES 2023. Silvio shares his thoughts on the sector, Pininfarina's partnership with Holon that resulted in the L4 capable robotaxi called the Holon Mover and how China is factoring in to all of this upheaval in the space. 

Lei gets right to it by starting the pod out talking about the HUGE Ford + CATL deal, first giving some background and then unpacking what it all means for Ford, CATL and others. Tu prompts Lei to give a download about Geely's new brand - Galaxy (?) and Tu wonders how or more appropriately where it'll fit in their portfolio.Tesla becomes the next topic of discussion, specifically Tesla shutting a line down at ShanghaiGiga to retool for the rumored refreshed MIC M3. Tu also congratulates Tesla for overtaking Toyota for vehicle sales in California, another huge feather in their cap. Charlie Munger's CNBC video interview made a big splash so Tu and Lei spend a few minutes debating whether what Charlie said about BYD rings true. Short answer - YES!Tu and Lei then close out the pod revisiting some of the Ford issues in China. 

Tu and Lei begin this week’s pod with a discussion and what led up to Hesai’s recent IPO and capital raise of $190M. Tu speculates that there are likely companies that have traditionally been suppliers to the OEMs that, due to the current disruption will look to move upmarket to compete directly with the OEMs.The discussion moves over to the launch of the 5-seat Li Auto L7 and what the prospects are for the vehicle and company. Both Tu and Lei seem to be bullish on Li for now due to their entirely (very similar looking) revamped lineup.Reflecting on the market results for 2022, Tu tries to quantify how much market share the legacies have lost in China over just the last few years with Ford Motor’s by far being the most unsettling. Tu goes as far as to state that Geely and BYD are poised to overtake their foreign legacy competitors in sales volume very soon.Lei moves into a review of the January sales numbers and how it seems the price cuts from Tesla worked as their January sales rebounded but other normal and Lei highlights a few EV companies that saw dramatic drops in sales in the CNY shortened January.Tu closes the pod with news that Tesla overtook Toyota to take the #1 spot in vehicle sales in California in 2022. 

This podcast starts with Lei’s headlines but because of the break, there was ALOT to update. Tu then moves the convo over to January sales and they both agreed that it’s hard to tell who did well because the month was shortened by CNY but NIO’s numbers were a pleasant surprise.Tu and Lei then talk a bit about expectations for Tesla and what it’ll take for them to regain their sales growth I China outside of cutting prices on the MIC Model 3 & Y. They move to discuss the recent hiring of Wang Fengying as President of XPeng and what that points to. XPeng along with several other EV makers are in dire need of getting better control of their operations and this is XPeng’s way of trying to do that. Similar to Tesla’s promotion of Tom Zhu, someone with the reputation of managing the teams to be more operationally efficient. Tu closes the podcast out by talking about the current charging situation in the US and what it will take for the infrastructure to be robust enough to support many more EVs and whether swapping would work there.

In this latest MAX episode, Lei catches up with Junwei Bao, Co-founder & CEO of Chinese LiDAR startup Innovusion while they both attended CES. Junwei was one of the now many former Baidu mafia that left to start their own technology company whose LiDAR just happens to be part of NIO's HW/SW stack.  In 2022, Innovusion delivered more than 50,000 image-grade long-range Falcon LiDAR units for the NIO ET7, ES7 and ET5. Junwei gives us his thoughts on the exploding LiDAR space and why Innovusion is built to last. 

Tu and Lei start out this pod with a brief discussion on China's economy and what the govt may do after Chinese New Year (CNY) to stimulate the economy if they see any signs of weakness including re-upping on subsidies for NEVs. They then spend a few minutes reminiscing about their earlier days in China and the wild CNY celebrations that included many fireworks usually in the middle of high traffic'd roads. The conversation moves to speculation about who else may follow Tesla to slash the pricing of their products. Lei takes a few minutes to explain all of the different sales numbers that are being used to describe 2022 China NEV sales since it's a bit confusing to many people. The pod ends with a brief discussion of the growth of exports coming out of China likely to grow significantly into the EU with a big exporter likely to be BYD. 

Lei and Tu start the podcast out with a brief celebration of hosting their 100th episode. They then move to reflecting on 2022's final China sales numbers. Tu articulates how amazing it actually was that China was able to achieve sales of >6.7M units despite all of the challenges including a complete shutdown of Shanghai, the automotive market's single largest market. The convo moves over to Tesla's price cuts, why they did it and what it means for them and their competitors.The pod ends with Tu discussing the current status of the US's Inflation Reduction Act is, what it means and who it will benefit.