China EVs & More

Lei begins the episode with his experience so far at CES including updates on the BMW & Volkswagen unveils and the media events he attended.Tu and Lei speculate that due to the huge number of LiDAR companies in the space, there will be consolidation in the near future. They will not ALL be winners.Tu jumps on his soapbox to complain about how he thinks SDV - software-defined vehicle is a terrible acronym that's being thrown out nowadays to describe the connected vehicle. Tu and Lei close the show with a recap of the final sales numbers for China for 2022. 

Tu and Lei begin their 100th episode with a discussion on the muted Guanzhou auto show and how it was affected by COVID. After a long discussion about all the happenings at the Guangzhou auto show, Tu and Lei move onto a discussion about NIO Day and how NIO seems to be one of the few automakers outside of BYD that is looking forward to 2023.After a chat about NIO, Tu and Lei give out their end-of-the-year awards to the good, bad and ugly companies that made news throughout 2022. Tu and Lei close out the room by answering some questions from listeners of the live show. 

In this latest MAX episode, Tu & Lei chat with Zack Anderson, Co-founder & CTO of ClearMotion. ClearMotion's mission is to transform the quality of time in motion and its solution uses a combination of hardware and software to drive comfort, productivity, performance and safety to new limits for modern vehicle platforms.Zack shares with Tu and Lei his journey from Darpa Grand Challenge participant as an undergrad all the way through to his current role as CTO of ClearMotion and why he thinks now is the right time for their company. He tells a great story and gives a blueprint for how tier 1s can evolve to become major players in what's become the largest-ever disruption of the transportation space by embracing software, technology and data. And yes, all roads lead to China.

Tu and Lei start the chat with a discussion on Tesla's major fall in 2022 and give their opinions on whether or not Tesla should've ever been a $1.2T company.Tu then talks briefly about a happy hour he attended and gives his reflections on what's happening in Detroit and the US after having spent the last 4 months there.Lei moves the conversation over and outlines what to expect from the upcoming NIO Day. Tu and Lei they then unpack the ECarX IPO and what it really means for the IPO market for Chinese EV/AV/mobility related companies.They close out the pod with a discussion on some of the SAI newsletter posts including CATL's German factory producing its first battery cells. 

Tu and Lei start out the podcast with a discussion on rumors of Ford building a battery factory that CATL would use to fab cells for Ford vehicles. This evolves into broader discussion about CATL & Huawei's ambitions.Lei then talks the broader China economy for 2023 and how exports will likely continue to be strong next year.Tu and Lei move the pod over to Li Auto's ambition and current sales of the L8/L9. Tu and Lei then discuss some of the topics they discussed for their Deutsche Bank investor call including how they would rank who would be the most successful in 2023 out of ABB (Audi, Bimmer, Benz).Tu ends this pod with a brief update on the product rollout for XPeng in 2023 with three new or refreshed products on their way.

The pod starts out with the latest news on the ground in China re: COVID and how it's ripping through the country since the Zero COVID strategy was abandoned. Lei then transitions the conversation over to what he anticipates December sales to look like. Tu details how competitive the sub-¥300K segment is in China and warns any EV makers about entering that segment. Both Tu & Lei move their attention and conversation to Tesla and their reads on Tesla's current situation in China including the rumor that Elon has found a new CEO to replace him. The pod ends with Lei talking about seeing a stimulus from the Chinese govt in 2023 to spur consumption and help get the Chinese economy out of its slump. 

Tu and Lei begin the podcast with a discussion on the complete turnaround by the Chinese govt. on COVID policy, how it's completely changed everything on the ground, how long it might take for COVID to spread throughout the country and if it'll have any damaging effects on business. Lei reflects briefly on Jiang Zemin's death and the impact he had on China's modern automotive sector. Tu and Lei quickly move over to a broad discussion on November sales and what caught their attention including a deeper analysis on China's Big 4: Li Auto, XPeng, NIO, and BYD. The podcast ends with Tu and Lei talking about the latest developments in the global autonomous vehicle space starting with Cruise Automation's 100 robotaxis recently being deployed in San Francisco and contrasting that with the strategies for Baidu and other China AV Inc. 

The podcast starts with a brief update on the COVID situation in China and how its affected production this time around. Tu and Lei then move onto a BYD update - namely the news that BYD will be increasing the price of their products and the rumors of BYD launching production sodium ion battery cells early next year. Tu then brings up the announcement by Mary Barra that GM will be launching 10 electric vehicles by 2025 in China that will all be built off the Ultium platform.  Tu emphasizes that this is what's called a 'blitz.'The conversation moves over to Polestar reaching 100K production units which Tu and Lei both congratulate Polestar for achieving.They move onto an update on Baidu's Apollo program and that both Pony.ai and Baidu received approvals from the Beijing govt for (Phase 2) robotaxi services where the safety driver can be in the back seat. Tu and Lei close the pod out with why they are thankful this Thanksgiving. 

The pod begins with Lei having just returned from LA while Tu was still  there after they'd spent the last few days doing a NorCal & SoCal trip.Tu and Lei begin with a detailed discussion about their (two) rides in the GM - Cruise Automation's driverless robotaxis in San Francisco.  They went from Japantown to Sunset at ~10pm in the evening.Tu and Lei move onto congratulating Henrik Fisker and team for getting the Fisker Ocean to Job #1 in Austria (with a lot of help from Magna) and then Lei highlights some of the people that he & Tu caught up with at the LA Auto show events. They then have a broader discussion on the LA Auto show and some of the breakout rooms and events they attended during that week including the Motor Trend documentary 'Coding the Car' and Tu shares his 'review' of the documentary.

Tu chews on the latest EV startup to throw its hat in the ring - BeyonCa. Lei and Tu take the first several minutes of the show discussing in detail how the company came about and how Weiming Soh, the current Renault China CEO & BeyonCa founder, was able to pull everyone together. The conversation then moves onto two China-fornia companies having problems in the US, TuSimple and Faraday Future. Tu and Lei discuss what they'd heard which has now mostly been substantiated by the recent articles about the two company's challenges. Tu and Lei end this week's podcast with a discussion on what it takes to be successful in the global EV space, something they feel that only two companies can really claim for now - BYD & Tesla.