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- [00:01]
A
Big news. Wayfair's President's Day clearance is on now. And you can score tons of huge deals, like Wayfair's best deals since Black Friday right now through February 16th. You can score up to 70% off everything home at Wayfair. Like up to 50% off mattresses with fast and easy shipping straight to your door. Plus amazing flash deals on President's Day. Shop Wayfair's Presidents Day clearance now through February 16th. Wayfair Every style, every home. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Pulse Podcast. The podcast where we delve into the life and death decade of the automotive industry. You are joined, as always, by myself, Imogen Bogle. I am a presenter on the Fully Charged and Everything Electric show, or Everything Electric show under the Fully Charged umbrella. Come back to that. And Dan Caesar, who is the CEO of this illustrious organization and the founder of EV uk. Dan, how are you doing?
- [01:05]
B
I'm really well. I'm actually quite upbeat. I think it's because I've been in Australia and I've been reminded that the sun shines. If anyone's listening elsewhere, obviously we're based in the UK generally, and it has rained every day for I think about 70 or 80 days. It has been super depressing winter from that perspective. So, yeah, I had a week in Sydney. Well, actually three and a half days on the ground. And if that sounds like it's, you know, indulgent, I think I had about 30 meetings within that particular short period on the ground. But it was incredible to see the sun talk to Australians and see what's going on down under.
- [01:45]
A
Well, I've actually got a fact about how many days it's continuously rained for, because over the past three days we've been in Wales, but doing a road trip across the well down the A470 which runs from the top to the bottom of Wales. And it was damp, it was glorious. It had a real Scandi Noir kind of vibe. But in doing that journey, we found out that There has been 68 days of continuous rain in Wales and I'm sure it's a similar number here in, here in, in, in England. And it has been. It's getting into the soul.
- [02:21]
B
Yes, it's a life aquatic here. It really, it's not been, it's not been the best winter. But anyway, you know, I'm sure spring will be here before long and, you know, we, as always, we'll try and be upbeat and positive on this podcast.
- [02:39]
A
Well, do you know what? I have heard some birds chirruping CHIRPING and that has definitely given me a little bit of hope that spring is maybe in the air. And obviously to fuel that positivity, we've got three wonderful stories to get into today. Shall we kick off with story number one?
- [02:57]
B
This episode is brought to you by Hankook. The Hankook ion tyre is built exclusively for electric vehicles, engineered to deliver what EV drivers need most confident grip, quietness, energy efficiency and long mileage. As the official tyre partner of Formula E, Hank Hook proves its EV technology is at the highest level of performance and brings that same innovation to every ion tyre on the road. This is a kind of UK focused story, I think, but it's got real resonance everywhere else. The reality is that when you've got a new technology, you need to prime the pump, you need to get people ready for it. There's a huge amount of education required on the subject of electric vehicles and it does require subsidy. I mean, let's be honest, fossil fuel industries still have subsidy to this day. These are important policy levers that are required to make markets grow, to stabilize markets, etc and when it comes to electric vehicles, quite a lot of subsidy is required because there's quite a lot of ignorance and education that is we need to, to tackle. The reality is, if you think about all the misinformation we've seen, especially since the Shanghai mode show in 2023, the Shanghai Shock. All the automotive execs from Germany went to the Shanghai show and saw that China wasn't selling cheaper Connor boxes, they were selling incredibly high quality, software defined vehicles. We've seen torrents of misinformation, industrial scale amounts of misinformation for the last three or four years. EVs have always suffered from that to a degree, but it's been even worse. So there's always going to be a value to that. If you look to that in misinformation, in advertising value terms, we're looking at billions and billions of pounds of information advertising against evs. So of course that costs us because that means we have to spend a lot of money to get people into evs. Now I might sound biased, but I'm pretty convinced after over 10 years of driving EV that just simply better. I know that they're cheaper over total cost of ownership as well. So it's a real frustration and I would say, you know, we wouldn't need some subsidies if there was less misinformation. There is a cost, there was a literal cost to that misinformation. So in the uk, to bring you up to speed, we have a zero emission vehicle mandate that has two timelines, 2030 and 2035. And the 2030 date means that you really, you have to you. So by 2030 things will change a little bit and again by 2035. So the idea was that of 2030 you could only sell as new cars, battery EVs or plug in hybrid electric vehicles, or plug in hybrid vehicles, combustion vehicles, maybe I should call them. And that was tweaked last year. Tweaked to the extent that actually so mild hybrids were included in that 2030 to 2035 phase out period and that from 2035 it's battery EVS only. And there are lots of people saying, well, why is this necessary? Well, we do need to prime the pump and we do need to set targets because the car industry as a whole would rather things didn't change. Change is expensive. So there has been a Z mandate, it has been diluted a little bit and it's under threat again. The problem is some people will never be satisfied and people will try and slow it down. And so what we're seeing with the ZEV mandate in the UK is that there are voices off stage very obviously calling for ZEV to be weakened again. The idea was that 80% of car sales by 2030 needs to be battery electric vehicle. And there are a few dissenting voices saying that that shouldn't be the case. And I think, you know, there is only a few of the car makers, but they're actually sort of trying to bully the government and back them into a bit of, a bit of a corner. The last time we spoke on the Pulse podcast, of course, Keir Starmer had just been to Beijing and it certainly looks like there is something of a thawing in terms of, or an acceptance of the fact that Chinese cars are going to be a big part of the future here in the uk. So there is a bit of a narrative going around, an insid narrative which says that Z targets are unviable, they're unachievable. And we've even heard that from the smmt, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. And we know that's coming from two or three manufacturers in particular. But the reality is actually, if you look at it statistically, New Automotive, a great company that we work with here in the uk, they actually know that the, the ZEV targets, the real Z targets are offset by other things, credits and such like. And actually a whole bunch of the car makers are actually kind of pretty much on track. Nine OEMs or nine plus OEMs are kind of overachieving. It's the real ZEV targets. Three OEMs are within 2 percentage points and about 10 of them are nowhere near. So when a car company comes out, says it's unviable, where are they? How are they doing? That's the question we should be asked and it's starting to sound from a small coterie of car companies that they are making excuses just because their EVs aren't selling at the level that they would hope the level that meets these targets. Others are doing really, really rather well. Can you guess who those are? Imogen?
- [08:22]
A
Well, I'm still doing well. Well obviously Tesla will be doing super well. I assume Renault has done pretty well this past year. Hyundai I bet is up there, but I think might not be as good as we think. And I think that's probably because we just see the electric vehicles and we forget that they do other stuff as well. And I'm gonna wager, bet that in the bottom a little Jaguar, Land Rover perhaps.
- [08:51]
B
Well it's a good guess. So yeah Tesla obviously only sells battery EVs so clearly it's doing very well. BYD, the BYD organization which isn't just BYD brand, there are other brands is almost 60% of its sales a battery EV which is, which is great. Geely which has its own brand but also Polestar, Volvo, etc is doing pretty well, just shy of 40. There's a whole mix of brands there that aren't accounted for. I think it's some of the new Chinese entrants which accounts for just over 30. BMW doing quite well, just under 30% Renault just under the 28% target but doing well obviously they've got some great cars, some great product at the moment which helps Mercedes not too far off and VW not too far off. But all of those companies listed actually are meeting the real targets. If not the 28% they're meeting the real targets. Then there are some that are what I describe as near as damaged. So Ford aren't too far off. Ford have been in the news a lot recently. Clearly being based in the US and with kind of regressive policy going on there, it has been tough for them. And the Hyundai group are not too far off as well. Obviously that includes Genesis and, and Kia too. A little bit of a shout out for Stellantis. All hope is not lost. They're, they're nearish to, to, to their numbers but they're certainly very visibly stressed as a business. We've spoken about that on this, on this podcast quite recently. But yes, it's the, it's the, it's the, if the company is near the bottom of the list that I think is, is probably the most interesting. And yes, jlr, which is owned by Tata, of course from, from India are down right at the bottom along with a lot of the Japanese brands. Sadly that includes Nissan who are an early EV leader, but also includes Toyota and Honda and other brands as well. And Japan I think is, was in the driving seat and now isn't. And you know, so particularly from, from Toyota as we know they, they're kind of lobbying quite actively, quite actively to kind of slow down Z targets but they are making excuses because meanwhile in Norway about half of Toyota's sales, new car sales are battery ev. So it can be done.
- [11:06]
A
It's, and I really want to be careful in how I say this because I haven't done my research so I'm going to say this, I'm going to go away and come back with, you know, more facts. But I think one of the things that's so interesting about electric vehicles is that obviously there's energy security in there. There's also protecting legacy industries. That's why JLR is a flagship British brand, all this sort of stuff and people want to ensure it's survival, yada yada yada. There's consumer choice of what is a better vehicle to drive. There's obviously the climate question and of course there's that sense for Japan of where is the energy coming from. And following the nuclear disasters that they've had there, I think there is fear around supplying sufficient electricity to that market and therefore their vehicles being totally dependent on electricity as well. But as I say I need to take that away and verify all of those facts because I have mentioned that on a podcast before and actually Robert totally disagreed with me. I think it's the first thing we've really disagreed on. He was like that's, that's utter nonsense. Like that's such a bullshit excuse. But I would be really fascinated to understand a little bit more about the history to see where that fear of electricity generation has maybe sort of impacted an automotive strategy as well.
- [12:34]
B
Well, I think it's, it's completely counterintuitive just to focus a little bit more on Toyota. They're not, they're not the only company in this space but the reality is we know they lobby in multiple countries against battery EVs. They've obviously been pushing for hydrogen and hybrids for a long period of time. No one serious now believes that hydrogen Passenger vehicles are a thing. Hybrids, obviously, plug in hybrids are probably going to enjoy something of a resurgence, although long term the trajectory for us is very clear. It's battery EV because of efficiency, because of cost, who wants to lug around to powertrains, et cetera, et cetera. But I think it's super counterintuitive in that, you know, in Norway there is competition and pressure and most car sales now are battery ev. So the reality is that in Norway, Toyota is selling a huge percentage of its cars, about half of battery EV by arguing to lower targets. In the uk, meanwhile, they're never really fully committing. Then they don't really have to kind of hit those numbers. And, and these targets, as I said, they need to exist. You know, car companies, I think it was Ford and Le I back in the day, sort of resisted seat belts, for example. You know, car companies are conservative. You know, they don't want to spend more money unless they absolutely have to. So I, I do understand that and it's a difficult, it's a difficult line for car companies. But the reality is the targets, if everyone was meeting them, then the targets are too low. There needs to be targets. If, you know, you're saying actually the real targets, actually over half of the companies are kind of making it. There's a few that are not so far away and then there's a, maybe less than half are, are below it. I would argue the targets are absolutely spot on. The targets are there and designed to actually drive behavior change in the automotive industry. And to me it's working. So from our perspective, with my other hat on working for Electric Vehicles UK with Dr. Andy Palmer and Tanya Sinclair, I would say to government, talk to us. You know, don't just talk to the car companies that make cars here in the uk, talk to the whole automotive industry and talk to us. So we could talk you through the biggest, bigger picture. Because just because one car company is kind of making excuses, being very, very noisy doesn't mean that the whole battery EV revolution is at risk. It just means that that company is struggling. And I think we really, really need to talk more closely with people like Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves with Peter Kyle, a very senior level in government, to make them understand actually that even if you weaken zed, I'm afraid people will still want to weaken it further. So I think they should stick to their guns. And I'm kind of a bit fed up with the excuses I'm hearing now from certain car companies. It's starting to get to the point where you're thinking this is becoming a bit of a joke.
- [15:32]
A
I do think two things because there is the counter argument that okay, targets are good, incentives are good, they prove a direction of travel. There is still the argument that actually rather than sort of saying how many, what percentage of electric vehicles should have been sold? It should have been this percentage of your fleet needs to be this amount of efficient. And actually what people would have found is that the most efficient powertrain is electric. And that would have happened by accident, but the technology choice would have been led by the automotive brand. So I can see where there's been some frustration, but I think it's also slightly splitting hairs. But the second thing I think is that obviously we can group these different car brands into how they're performing and there should be a normalized standard of like here's our A stars, here's our A's, here's our B's, here's our C's. And you know, suddenly if you had these luxury marks like JLR being branded a D brand or an E brand, like actually would that inject some kind of, you know, want to do better or perhaps I'm just totally exposing how competitive and grade focused I am. But you know, it's like arguing for, for the requirement to get an A star to be lower. It doesn't serve anybody really well.
- [16:44]
B
Over many years we've run the fully charged live shows now everything electric shows around the world. And so this news doesn't really come as a surprise. We know who the car companies are that really want to sell battery beast because you'll see them at those shows. I think we've had Toyota one show out of 22 in eight years and some car companies have been almost ever present and it's those car companies that at the top of this list and are doing best. So it is a strange world where some are really committed, really trying their hardest to sell, sell EVs and, and others are doing almost everything in their power to, to, to avoid that. But I thought it was an interesting story and you're going to see a lot more of this in Europe and, and elsewhere. There's going to be a lot of arguing the toss and unfortunately some car companies are going to suffer a lot more and you're going to see a lot more kind of excuses just say it's really, really important for everyone to think, well we know one car company sales if they're poor does not mean that battery EV sales are down generally. If that was the case then the likes of byd wouldn't be doing quite as well as they are, but there's plenty of room for growth and it's an interesting story but yeah, one of real frustration I think for us to see things like the ZEV mandate potentially weakened again because that will hit the UK in the pocket. The last tweaks that were made around a year ago to change mild hybrids going back into that phase out period cost 2 million car sales out of a potential 6 million by 2030. That's £70 billion worth of car sales alone. And that's not including the ancillary losses from, you know, home charging, route charging, energy tariffs, all the rest of it. It's a huge, huge cost to emergent EV industry in the uk and if it gets weakened further, I think it'll be lights out for quite a lot of, a lot of companies. So let's hope that the government sticks to its guns because I actually think the Z mandate, for all its faults, is generally driving us in the right direction.
- [18:51]
A
Shall we move to story two, Ute lunacy? What on earth are we talking about here?
- [18:57]
B
Well, I've been in Australia so I haven't quite started to pick up all the vernacular but for those who aren't really familiar, I guess a ute is a kind of a pickup truck or a sort of commercial vehicle in Australia they are huge literally and in terms of sales as well down under. So saw a lot of those around. But actually what's going on at the moment with sort of government levers in Australia is there is actually a, of a fringe benefit tax that is being reviewed basically and it could, if that is reduced, could really affect EV sales in Australia which aren't quite where they are here in the uk. So I guess for awareness, everyone knows almost every car sold now in Norway is battery electric. If you go through the scandinate, the scandes and you look at Netherlands for example, lots of those countries at 40, 50, 60, 70% car sales. China's growing very, very fast. UK is at about one in four car sales, Germany's not far behind. But Australia is less than 1 in 10. So it's still quite early for that market, it's still fragile market and equally they have had to start their ramp up in that kind of post misinformation age, I think. So it is a different ball game now. There's lots of pickup trucks driving around, lots of, lots of EVs but there is the fears that the fringe benefit tax, if it is changed, will actually have a, a big negative impact on, on battery EV Cells there. Meanwhile. And I got this actually off, off LinkedIn. I'm over there quite a lot as, as you might know, his name is Francis Viaboom. I don't know if I pronounced that correctly. Apologies, Francis, but he is actually the CAO at Rewiring Australia and he said, what do you think of my new Rewiring Australia company car? I was joking, of course, but he was pictured in a, a Dodge Ram at one of those huge sor. And actually the reality is that there is a, there is a tax breaks basically for buying utes in Australia. So actually loads of people are running around in them even though they don't necessarily need them for work. And they've got, you know, obviously they're very, very heavy but they, they're tax deductible. You can use them for work. And there are about 50 more utes than actually tradies, I think in Australia. So this is something that people have been kind of jumping on, getting these huge kind of vehicles which weighs sort of a ton, you know, put out a ton more of CO2 and actually the government is effectively gifting sort of $1200 in tax breaks. So it's basically a reverse carbon price. And the argument is going from the EV industry in Australia. Maybe if you are struggling for money and you want to shuffle money around, maybe don't look at fringe benefits tax, maybe look at the, the benefits that utes are getting. So it's, it's a really interesting story I thought. And the reality is that I think governments have got to just look at it not just through car, but also the size of vehicles, road size, you know, all those other things the road surface is in Sydney aren't great actually. And a lot of that will be down to the heat, I think. But there are some huge, huge brakes, pickup trucks, etc riding around, you know, one, one occupant at any given time. So there are ways in which if the Australian treasury is looking to kind of, you know, tweak and save, there are some other ways to do it rather than kind of cutting battery EV cells off of the knees.
- [22:33]
A
It's so interesting and. But I'm sure there'll be people listening thinking, yes, but in Australia people do huge mileage and I will say to that that a few weeks ago we had Tim Jarrett from OZ grid to equivalent of like national grid, but in Australia on the podcast and he was like, yes, the edge cases of vehicle usage are much, much, much more extreme in Australia. And of course for those edge cases, not suggesting that they need to get themselves into a BYD Dolphin Surf. However, for most people's mileage, it's the same as the uk.
- [23:05]
B
Yeah, I think actually the average is lower in Australia. So I've been, as I said, lots of meetings in Australia. So there's that definitely that edge case perception, you know, what if I need to go this far? But the reality is people don't. And I think Francis, who I mentioned earlier, made a kind of interesting point. He said we're spending large sums on tax exemptions for huge cars that can barely be defended as work vehicles. While we talk about repairing the budget using the only measure, the EV discount that's actually working so far. Drive a shift to a transport sector that runs on Australian made electricity instead of imported petrol. And that's the point. In Australia, that market should be going super fast. They have huge, huge amount of solar potential. Rooftops covered in solar more than any other country. Batteries being installed at a fair lick as well. They have that resource and they could, you know, talk about resilience, self reliance, you know, they could be providing all electricity for most of their vehicles rather than importing petrol. And I think that's a key point. If I was speaking to, to the treasury, you know, there. Let's not look. Yeah. Not be too siloed and just look in one area there. You know, this is a huge benefit potential for Australia. I think it's sat on a renewables gold mine. Oh my God. So we are a little bit surprised that the EV market's going to. Not going quite as quickly as we might have expected. So I had some very interesting conversations when I was down there, but that's more for that for another time.
- [24:34]
A
Well, so not only obviously is there just huge solar potential, huge wind potential, both on a huge scale, but also on people's rooftops, et cetera. But we are currently in the process of editing an episode that Robert filmed where it was with an organization called Green Gravity. And they're using old coal mine shafts, shafts to drop weights down to store electricity. It's like basically like a gravity battery. And there are like tens of thousands of these mine shafts that are currently not being used. And they obviously have huge grid connections because they're industrial sites. So it's like not only does it just have huge resources now, it can capitalize on these historic resources as well and transition its economy in such a resilient way. And when you see things like this of like, hang on a second, what? Utes are getting a tax break. This is just nonsense. It's Such nonsense and illogical. But, you know, you need to look at the whole picture to make this transition work.
- [25:32]
B
Yeah. I'm not going to buy you anytime soon, but if I was, I'd buy a Rivian. But that's just. That's just me.
- [25:38]
A
Yeah, we'll allow Rivians in. I will just tell you this very, very quickly, I reckon once a month my husband says to me we should get a defender. And I say to him a few things.
- [25:52]
B
One, it's a real window into your. Into your marriage.
- [25:58]
A
Yeah. And to be fair to us both, we have this, like, huge love for JLR because it's where we met, like, you know, it's where I had my early career, etc. Etc. Remember, like, one, no. 2, we can't afford it. Three, our neighbors would hate us because it would take up all the space on the road and whatever number we were on. Four, I'd be fired. Dan Caesar would fire me.
- [26:24]
B
I think you're probably right. Just tell your husband that.
- [26:27]
A
Yeah, I mean, I do. And I think the problem is, and the reason I bring it up is that there is something about being in a big car that maybe brings out some sort of. Maybe it's insecurity or just childlike fascination with machines and we kind of need to get to the bottom of that to really shift consumer behavior.
- [26:51]
B
I think we're veering into territory as the male psychology, which I don't really want to talk about. Let's go on to the next topic.
- [27:06]
A
The last story you've titled this the BYD Supremacy. Tell us more.
- [27:11]
B
Well, you know, byd, you know, for me, they're going to be the new Toyota. They're on the road towards that. I mean, what they're doing is pretty, pretty incredible. But I started to wonder how much room is there for everyone else. So obviously lots of new entrants going into the market. BYD have been particularly successful. Just to run you through the stats, they've sold and last year more than a million cars outside of China. Not just EVs, they sold last year 2.26 million battery EVs globally out of 4.6 million vehicles total. So about half of their output is battery ev. And obviously that's something what they would call kind of super hybrids as well, and doing very well. Their star markets outside of China include Brazil, Thailand, Australia and Israel. But they're in over 100 markets already. There's a huge battleground in Europe, including the uk. I do include the UK in Europe because I'm old Fashioned BYD is making great strides there. But when I was in Australia, talking of strides, I actually got the monthly sales figures for, for January and they had 6 out of the top 10 battery EV sold in January which is basically the whole range. The Sea Lion 7 was number one, the Atto 2 is number three. The Seal was number five. The Dolphin was number eight. The Atto 1, which we know is the Dolphin Surf here in the UK is the seagull back in China was number 9 and Atto 3 was number 10. There was room for some other cars in that. Zika got one in the top, They've got one. Zika 7X was third, the GDX5 was fourth. Tesla Model Y also made in Shanghai or the ones that are in Australia certainly are, was number six and then Kira EV5 was number seven. No European manufacturers whatsoever, no Japanese obviously in the Battery EV top 10. And I thought isn't that interesting that they're all competing I think the, the Chinese for that new market of, you know, consumers that might switch and might be open minded to a Chinese brand which I think is a much, much higher percentage than legacy car as might have anticipated a few years ago. But BYD are sort of cleaning, cleaning up and it's really interesting to see how that will play out over time because the Australian market might only be a small percentage of cars sold at EV at the moment but it is overheating already. There's about 65 different brands there, probably over 120 cars or so. And you just wonder, you know, is BYD to what extent are they going to sort of dominate the market? It and I saw yesterday they've just become the official sponsor of Manchester City Football Club. Wow. In the UK as well they're supplying BYD and Denzer cars and energy storage systems to the football academy and they were sort of seen pictured with the players and the, and the manager of Man City. I mean their ambition knows no bounds and you have to wonder kind of where it will end and, and if there is room for anyone else. But I do see it, it as a near certainty that they are going to be the world's number one carmaker period, irrespective of powertrain.
- [30:26]
A
What I also find interesting about BYD and you're probably going to correct me here, so this could be totally stupid thing to say but whilst there are brands big traditional OEMs that kind of span a big spectrum of entry level up to luxury, nobody does it in quite the same way I don't think as BYD that go from that? Well, it's, it's sort of £16,000 here in the UK, it's what, like nine grand in China, BYD dolphin surf or seagull or atto one, whatever you want to call it, up to The Crazy Yangwang U8, U9 kind of territory. It's like, I don't think anyone else has that breadth. They have every bit of the market and I feel like most traditional brands would be like, well, they don't understand their niche or they don't understand their market. And I think they're just like, well, well, we don't care about that. We can do absolutely everything. We will prove that to you and we will get a lot of market share along the way.
- [31:18]
B
I think the only if I was going to criticize them because I'm a whale under coming across as a bit of a fanboy and, and I do think what they've done is incredible and they're very fast learners. I've seen that firsthand. Their naming strategy then globally, is a little bit all over the place. So I saw, I think it was The Fang Changbao Leopard 3 or something was a big seller in the Ukraine and, you know, and it's his thing, it's bid is. It's a BYD there, for example. But, you know, they move fast and break things. Well, they're doing a really, really good job of moving fast and not breaking too much that. I mean, it is extraordinary to see what they've done. And if you really want to go back even into the recent past, if you look on everything, electric cars and you search a BYD factory tour, I think Elliot Richards, our presenter, went to BYD in Shenzhen, I think about five or six years ago to have a look around and he actually got a few BYD models out the car park and talked through them. At that point, even I have to say, the city was impressive. BYD was impressive. The cars didn't look that brilliant at that point I wasn't going, oh, I really want one of those. But now, I mean, it's extraordinary what the, what they're bringing out, like you say, at lots of different levels, you know, whether it's that kind of entry level through to interesting brands like Denza and Yangwang, as you say. So, yeah, really, really interesting time. But they seem to be an unstoppable force. There aren't too many certainties in the car industry right now. But I would, I probably bet my house on the fact that BYD are going to be the number one manufacturer.
- [32:54]
A
Do you know, the naming strategy is really interesting and I was chatting to my mother in law about this the other day and she was like, well obviously that's the naming strategy around animals because animals are way much are a far bigger part of sort of Chinese culture. Just look at the fact that, you know, Chinese New Year, there's a year of Internet of animals. So she was like, of course we're never really going to understand that here because it's not part of our, our culture and our storytelling in the same way. And I think it sort of emphasizes the thing of like, yes, you can have fantastic tech and be an interesting brand, but there is something totally illogical about how we purchase cars and how different that looks across different areas of the world. And I know that Stella Lee, who from byd, she's sort of in charge of expansion basically and that's something that her and her team have really been trying to understand and they, she says very openly that us European consumers are a bit of an enigma and a bit of a curiosity because we're so different from how Chinese consumers consume car brands. And I kind of love that about this industry, that it's, it has logic and technology and efficiency and then it has this whole layer that just is weird and human and silly and in the meantime we'll accept a car into the market called the Dolphin Surf.
- [34:15]
B
Yeah, but you know, fundamentally they're, they're good cars, aren't they? There have been some weird car names in years gone by. You know, I think it's fair to say it's not, you know, but yeah, it's just that they're different, different names in different countries. I suppose we, we work globally so we see that probably if you're in country you're less exposed to that. But no, they're doing okay. And it's the year of the fire Horse. In fact, Chinese New Year is almost upon us as well. But yeah, it's, it's interesting but we were going to do maybe our quick wins and fails to finish off with. And I'm. Well, I remember it because this is how my brain operates. My win actually is Korea. So we talk a lot about China. Watched a great episode on everything electric cars where Jack did the ultimate range test of the new Kia EV2 in Norway alongside a whole bunch of other cars in kind of almost minus 20 degrees and the Korean batteries. I think it was the, I'm trying to think of the Hyundai insta and Kia EV2 that Jack was driving. Those were the two best performing cars against their Range claims, the WLTP range claims. But also in this huge battle of ideological battle between the US And China on cars and trade and pretty much everything else, Korea is just quietly getting on with being brilliant. Like, we've driven quite a few different Korean cars from Hyundai and Kieran Genesis, and they're all really, really good cars.
- [35:46]
A
Yeah.
- [35:47]
B
Highly efficient. And equally, we talked in the last podcast about overcapacity and actually the Koreans have prioritized more of a slow growth. So China, it's a challenge. Right. The capacity thing is a challenge. For the legacy automotive companies in America and Europe, it's a challenge. But the Koreans have just quietly grown market share without shouting too much. And sometimes I wish they would go faster and they advertise their cars more because they're excellent. Right?
- [36:16]
A
Yeah.
- [36:16]
B
But actually their strategy, I think, is pretty clever. They're flying under the radar and you don't hear much talk. Trump doesn't mention Korea. Not yet, at least. But they're doing. They're doing okay.
- [36:28]
A
We actually had. And also, I should just say that if anyone has heard the dog sneeze, that's what that sound was. But maybe isolation might have. That have removed that sound.
- [36:38]
B
But I'm talking about South Korea, by the way, as well, just to be clear. Yeah.
- [36:42]
A
For the avoidance. Now, we were having that. This conversation this week with Robert and Jack. We were like, we do need to be careful not to be. To continue being so positive about Hyundai and Kit, because people would think that we're sponsored by them, but they are just fantastic cars and we love them. And I know that on the team, you know, when we're. We're doing shoots and we do have a lot of equipment and we just are obsessed with the EV9. But I think my wins for the week, I must share this because we've just done an extraordinary shoot where we've been proving the capability of small electric cars doing this enormous road trip from the top to the bottom of Wales, which not only is high mileage in cars which have small batteries, but it's not known for being the best necessarily, in terms of charging. In fact, I would say it's a bit of a charging desert it. And all three of those cars had the easiest time imaginable. And I had a fantastic week because we were trying to prove not only that these are capable and that this is not a challenge, but actually these cars are deeply practical. So in order to prove that, I brought my. Both my dogs and I've had a glorious shoot with my colleagues having a lovely time and my dogs. And so I really do duff my.
- [37:56]
B
Cats to the Citroen EC3, apart from one dubious hotel. But we won't get into that.
- [38:02]
A
I just. For anyone who thinks what we do is like really glamorous occasionally, yes, it is, and that is amazing. Other occasions we do prioritize being savvy with our budgets and the hotel we stayed in. On Tuesday night, I just, I went to sleep and I thought, I'll just close my eyes and then it will be morning and everything will be okay. It was not that nice.
- [38:29]
B
So that's your fail for the week as well then?
- [38:31]
A
Yeah, it's my fail.
- [38:33]
B
Yeah, it might fail for the week, just quickly because I think we're probably been going on rabbiting on too long is car companies making excuses. I think, you know, we talked about it at the top. I think that's, that's a, that's a fail because all you're doing is drawing attention to the fat. Yeah, you've got your strategy horribly wrong and now you're playing a rear guard action. So anyway, that's, you know, you can tell I'm frustrated, can't you, about that?
- [39:02]
A
Well, that is all that we have time for today. We will be back in two weeks time. The next episode will be the Tech in China podcast, hosted by Elliot Richards, who's based in Shanghai, and our very lovely Robert Llewellyn. But in the meantime, thank you so much for joining us for this podcast and if you have been, thank you for listening and watching.