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- [00:00]
A
Hey, y', all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair, where delivery and setup are as easy as a few taps on your phone. Picture this, you're relaxing in an old hammock scrolling Wayfair's app when you spot it, a brand new patio set. Next thing you know, Wayfair delivers it right to your patio and sets it up. Oh, you need a new grill too. All right, Wayfair's got you covered. With Wayfair's room of choice delivery and fast expert setup on qualifying orders, life gets a little easier. Visit Wayfair.com or the Wayfair app.
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B
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C
Since 1883, Lucchese has stood for American heritage and intentional design crafted one pair at a time by skilled hands and steady tradition. Shop timeless quality today@lucchese.com.
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B
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Pulse Podcast. The podcast where we delve into the life and death decade on of the automotive industry. You're joined as always by me, Iman Bogle and Dan Caesar, CEO of Fully Charged show and founder of Electric Vehicles uk. Dan, how you doing?
- [01:08]
C
I'm good. We actually, Robert and I did a secret podcast without you while you're away. I think you know that really. But we, we, we took the opportunity to talk about what had just begun. You've been away, of course, on a, on a well earned break. Have you been in Japan, is that right?
- [01:26]
B
I've been in Japan, but I was meant to be in Australia, which I think links to what you're about to say. I was not in Australia because my flight that was going to take me via Abu Dhabi of course got canceled. And sort of from that point it's the world's gone mad.
- [01:44]
C
It's been a very strange few weeks and there aren't many certainties in life. But I think the stone cold certainty is that the cost of living is going to go up again. Which sounds a little bit kind of Western world centric selfish, I suppose, in the light of what's going on, the tragedies that are unfolding in the Middle East. But yet at the point of recording, we don't know whether the conflict in the Middle east is going to stop shortly or it's going to continue for a while. But irrespective, the world has changed. The cost of things is definitely going to change. So another period of time, huge upheaval. And Robert and I were reflecting on the fact that we've known each other for 10 years and when we first met it was around the time of the Brexit vote in 2016, and the world has been very unpredictable ever since then.
- [02:35]
B
Yeah. And it's interesting because there are so many things that have happened at the same time to sort of be sucked into this tornado of change. Yes, 2016 was the Brexit vote. It's also when Trump came in for the first time. It was also when really there was mainstream adoption of social media platforms and not an understanding of how they could be used to shape election public opinion, create polarization between different groups. We've had AI in that time, the whole. And it's then such a melting pot of the world that is changing far quicker than we can possibly predict.
- [03:16]
C
I often used to say on social media, you know, if you're scared of change, if you're scared of electrification in whatever form, then the next 10, 15, 20 years aren't for you, because actually, we're going to see an acceleration of change. And we are I think, still quite early in that things have changed massively. And it is incredibly disconcerting. I guess, with this podcast, we're trying to keep an eye on what's going on in the automotive industry specifically. But, yeah, change is super fast. And in the near future in the industry, we're talking about things like dark factories where there's. There's no people in them making cars, you know, autonomous vehicles, you know, all sorts of different changes coming and around. That is, of course, the. The changes to the world. You got a factory as well. So it is. It is difficult and as we always say for automotive execs, what a horrendously difficult period of time to kind of navigate your way through.
- [04:16]
B
Well, I will be interviewing many of them at the Financial Times Future of the Car, which I feel like this year's event is going to be a bit of a therapy session, is my prediction. But as you say, things are changing at an astronomical rate. And I have to say, I've been away for two weeks and I'm totally out of the loop. So I'm really treating this particular podcast as an opportunity for. For you to update me as to what are the key things I need to be aware of. And we've got three stories today. We're talking xpeng, fleets and oil. A very nice combination there. So do you want to kick us off with the first story?
- [04:52]
D
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- [05:19]
C
Yeah, I do. One of the things that occurred when you were away was Honda canned their zero series vehicles which were going to be made in the us. So due to US policy that canceled those and that actually probably means that Europe won't get those cars either. So they're probably off the table completely. Honda about a year or so ago was actually talking about possibly merging or working with Nissan more closely. If you remember that went away. I posted about that recently on LinkedIn and someone said I can't help but use the phrase dinosaurs mating about Honda and Nissan kind of potentially merging. And so on one hand you've got some of the old God visibly struggling and you know, I take no pleasure in that. You know, I feel huge sympathy. But you've got others who have been thinking about the future, think about electrification and I would say one of the ones that are furthest ahead in their thinking is xpeng. So we've been covering xpeng on fully charged everything electric for, for six years. In fact, when Elliot Richards joined the channel, interview with Robert's interview with Dr. Brian Gouve, Xpeng and Elliot's review of the P7 mostly the first content we, we shared from within China back then and we've been covering the xpeng story ever since. And Xpeng I think could fairly be compared to Tesla in that they've not just got the cars going on, they've got software, autonomous driving, they've got their own robot iron, they've got some low altitude economy technologies including a ridge and another electric vertical takeoff and landing plane as well. So super advanced company but fundamentally at its core it needs car sales to I guess support much like Tesla has support its growth plans around the world. And it's a really interesting story. I've been in contact and come across xpeng two or three times while you've been away and I thought it was an interesting subject for debate. So from a car perspective they're actually, their sales skyrocketed last year. Some of that was to do with domestic market in, in China, but also they have established certain priority markets across the world and the UK and Australia are two of those priority markets. I dare say Canada will be now flickering on their radar as Canada is going to let more Chinese manufacturers in as well. So generally speaking there has been real sales growth. The product itself is great. So I was up in Scotland last week. I was at a fantastic family Owned dealership outside of Aberdeen. They invited me up because they were launching Xpeng kind of officially in, in northeast Scotland and family owned firm had sort of decided to that Xpeng was the brand that they were going to, to, to work with. They still sell other, other brands and they sell used cars but actually Xpeng was going to become the focal point of their showroom. And I got to Test drive the G6 performance. Robert's just reviewed the standard G6 on everything electric cars and the performance model was unbelievably good. I'm not being paid to say this, you know, it was extraordinarily good. I couldn't believe how good it was and that was great to see. Great tech, you know, reasonably priced, all those sorts of things. But what was fascinating was to go into a dealership and see them really embrace this Chinese brand. And then they had about 100 loyal customers come to this event and I was there with someone from representing Xpeng to talk about EV myths and all the sort of normal stuff that we would talk about and it was incredibly well received. The cars were very well received and I just thought, you know, we've come a long way because often with dealerships, some dealerships will try and talk you out of buying an ev. You might go in there with good intentions of buying an EV but come out and buying a plug in hybrid or maybe a self charging hybrid or something like that. So that was a fascinating thing to see. I don't know if you've driven that Xpeng G6 but the new performance model is really phenomenal. I went straight to the near the top of the pile of my sort of favorite EVs.
- [09:34]
B
Yeah, we've only driven it in Australia, not necessarily the performance version but as a team, as a production team we were like, oh, this is, this is really rather good. I know that Robert really enjoyed having it because he had it for a slightly extended period of time before he did the review. And that episode of course is doing very well. You can watch it on the Everything Electric Cars channel. It went out at the kind at the time of recording yesterday but by the time this goes out last week. Yeah, but yeah, I mean fantastic cars and just look brilliant as well.
- [10:08]
C
Yeah. And the driving dynamics on the new one were absolutely phenomenal. I don't claim to be a Jack Scarlet expert on on cars but I, I really enjoyed driving that car and it's that the Xpeng G6 is a new facelifted version. It's now available in the uk. There are other vehicles coming to the uk and it's part of a larger portfolio of vehicles that Xpeng sell. I dare say we'll see some new ones as well in, in Beijing in a month or so's time. But what I find particularly fascinating is you can have great product, but that is really only the tip of the iceberg towards being successful. And I think that's where I see some real challenges for the Chinese firms as they kind of enter the market. A there's a lot of them. They're coming up against some stiffer and stiffer opposition from legacy carmakers who are also upping their game significantly. You'll have seen maybe when you're away, the BMW A3 looks like a great car, you know, and there's a whole conveyor belt of fantastic battery EVs now available. But what's interesting to me is, is the export strategy. So Xpeng selling cars well in its domestic market, but there is pressure, obviously with overcapacity to sell elsewhere. They've identified UK and Australia as two of those priority markets and in Australia there was sort of some relatively big, I guess, inside baseball industry news over the last few days that actually they have the relationship with their distributor in Australia, a company called True EV has effectively broken down. We knew that that was coming because actually, well, True EV were helped Xpeng exhibit at our Everything Electric Melbourne show at the back end of last year and we haven't received payment for that. So we knew there was something strange going on and effectively the relationship has broken down and True EV has gone into administration in the last couple of days. So that's very, very sad news for for all concerned. But it does give Xpeng a problem in market reputationally. What does that mean for them? The products are fantastic. How do they, you know, not break stride, make sure they're able to deliver existing orders to to customers? How do they make sure they're setting up? I think they are setting up or they have set up their own HQ in Australia already. I think they'll be able to to sort of relatively seamlessly kind of, you know, move into a model where they're selling cars directly. And quite often you see this from the Chinese automakers in Australia, BYD sold in almost exclusively, I think through a company called EV Direct originally before broadening, diversifying the way they sell cars down under. So you see that, but you're kind of at the mercy of how good your proxy is in each country. And so the product piece is important but actually if you don't get the whole thing right it can be very, very difficult. And there's a real debate in the industry about what works. Is it, you know, online sales or is it traditional dealership model or somewhere in between. And some of the Chinese manufacturers that have set up shop in Australia, in the UK and elsewhere have done really good job by actually getting out into the more traditionals, you know, bricks, bricks and mortar, you know, car sales businesses and actually getting their brand out, out in, in the marketplace. So really interesting time. So xpeng sales have, have exploded in the last year but one of their, you know, one of their components, one of their part, their roots to market if you like, distributor has sort of fallen by the wayside, which is really interesting. How do you operate as a Chinese manufacturer? How do you get out there? The car is just not the only measure success.
- [13:52]
B
No. And it's something that we've said on this podcast before that yes, when we talk about the automotive industry, we're talking about a piece of technology, we're talking about engineering, but also we're talking about something totally irrational and emotionally led and the value of brand and how you show up differently in different markets and understand the culture of those markets as well is really key. And, and the nature of those dealership models or agency models, whatever they choose is a very core part to that success. But what I think is also interesting is that a lot of these successful Chinese brands are large enough that they can absorb a bit of failure to be like, well we tried that and we're going to do something else and we will pivot really quickly. So I have no doubt that whilst this is a complicated relationship that they have with true ev, they'll be back fighting, doing something bigger and better.
- [14:41]
C
And I think that's right. I think everything we've seen so far indicates to me that kind of more top down strategy that the Chinese brands might have means that they, they can, if they get something wrong, they can trim the sale and tack back quite quickly what we feel sometimes when we're dealing some of the older car makers, as you would expect, there are layers of bureaucracy. So we might talk to them about doing something and it might not hear back for quite a long time and then you know, the information that we've sent over is being digested internally, going through layers of bureaucracy and then you know, we eventually rece, receive a yes or no or quite often no response at all. These are huge, huge organizations but with the Chinese firms they do talk to us much more regularly and they are able to pivot and, and be more agile. And you know, if something's not working, they are able to move on from that quickly. They're not. I guess the sunk cost fallacy is something that probably most of our listeners will be aware of. But you know, a lot of companies, when they have put a lot of time, effort, resource money into something, kind of like to say, well, let's see how this goes, let's keep it going because we put so much time and effort into it rather than cutting it ruthlessly. Where I think the Chinese approach is to be much more sort of cut and dried in that respect. And without wishing to mix markets, I could see open AI, for example, at the moment, really focusing on its, its core offering and just getting rid of some of the sort of side projects that it says. And it's interesting for companies like xpeng, they're doing quite a lot of different stuff. I mean, what they're doing with robotics is, is incredible. But they, they're stretched quite broadly across a range of different things. So I'll be interesting to see if they stick to that. But I think a fascinating company, we've always found them a fascinating company, a really positive force on, on, on the industry. Really, really great tech. And I'm sure they will adapt very, very quickly to what's going on in Australia. But the reality is there's much more to this than just creating great cars.
- [16:40]
B
Do you know, just as a kind of reflection whilst you're talking and I was having this conversation with someone the other day, but if you think about it, I would say in a year I probably speak to about 100 to 150 different organizations. I've been in this particular organization for five years. So let's call it somewhere between 500 and 700 different organizations that I've spoken to. You will have probably much more than that. And the insight that we get through having that huge data set of different types of interactions that we have with organizations, we can infer so much from how those organizations operate, right? From things of like, how quickly do we get a response, how many people are included in that first meeting, what does an email chain look like order to get to a decision? And it does give us this tremendous insight to see which companies are able to pivot and which ones are hampered by the sheer levels of bureaucracy and legacy that exists within them. It's interesting.
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C
Yeah, yeah, there's definitely some paralysis from some of the companies that they can't, they can't move quickly. And others, others are much clearer on what they're doing. I think if you if you know that you're going to sell battery EVs and FEBs only for example, that gives you a clarity of decision making. Some just selling beds only of course, and then there's some others that are kind of hedging and you know, you can see that that immediately complicates all of the decision making process and that's just powertrain. Then there's obviously different battery types, different management styles, all these different vectors through which you sort of see the industry. And the more battles any car company is trying to fight simultaneously, the less effective it probably will be. So yeah, without naming any names, you could see those that are very clear, clear minded on where they're going and those that frankly look confused.
- [18:38]
B
As the old saying goes, you can do anything but not everything. Let's move on to story two.
- [18:52]
E
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- [19:00]
B
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- [19:01]
E
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- [19:20]
B
Visit cisecurity.org Fleet Cheat is your on it headline. Tell us more.
- [19:28]
C
Yeah, I mean it's really interesting to us. Unfortunately Iran and the Straits of Hormuz and the kind of choke point on, on oil supply has immediately got people's calculators out and said well if the price of gas and petrol goes up significantly, what does that mean? Of course that extends way beyond the fuels that we put into our vehicles. That could be fertilizer and it could be materials. Just you know, cost of getting things to places, you know, everything's going to, going to go up of course, but it's I think really focusing minds in the fleet sector as well. You know, if you get a spreadsheet out and you look at the running costs of an electric vehicle, they're actually on total cost of ownership basis much, much cheaper. Running costs are so much lower that even if there is a, an inflated price on the initial buying of the, of the products, actually you will, you will make that back in terms of the running costs and actually servicing and maintenance is very, very low. So it's no surprise really that when it comes to the company car market that is kind of doing very, very well. And actually lots of private buyers are saying well I quite fancy this but my employer is running a scheme salary sacrifice scheme and I will then buy my car by that because that's the most efficient method to do so. So what's been interesting in the fleet market when it comes to light commercial vehicles, for example, is it's been a little bit slower. So we do a lot of work with electric van man Paul Kirby. We're doing some more work with him soon. And I think that, you know, it is frustrating to see uptake of electric vans, for example, being slower. We do a lot of work in Australia. Electric pickups and utes and things like that are also a focal point and there haven't really been too many pure electric products. So there's a bit of, a, bit of a, a gap really. I think a bit of a lag in terms of the product coming through for, for those markets that's getting better and better and better. But the reality is when you do the maths and EY also I think once known as Ernst and Young, I think they're known as EY now did the, did the numbers and their recent study shows that company cars are 64% cheaper for Optimum operating costs and company LCBs are 38% cheaper. So it's those economics, really the economics of electrics that mean they should be a no brainer when you kind of get past the fog of misinformation and maybe some, you know, hardwired desire to drive things that are noisy and, and smelly. The reality is that actually when you get in this, these vehicles, they save you a lot of money and actually there's some huge benefits to be had as well. So we looked at that story with interest at Everything Electric north, which is our next show, and Everything Electric west and Everything Electric Greater London, Everything Electric Sydney. We now have a B2B EV day as well. So our first days of our show are going to be hybrid in nature. Consumers can come on day one on Fridays. But actually they also, there's a, there's a B2B EV day element. And so there will be talks on company cars and like commercial vehicles, there will be a commercial vehicle zone plus the ability to test drive lots of these different vehicles as well. So we're appealing to CEOs and CEOs and sustainability leaders and HR directors to come to the shows. But I think the important thing we have to say to them is look, you know, this isn't, you know, a cultural thing, this is an economic thing. You can save significant sums if you can change your fleet over to, to electric. So this, this report is very, very interesting. I think the government is also trying to stimulate this market as well. There's been some more announcements today about supporting the LCV market from a, from a charging perspective. But ultimately, when it comes to balance sheets, profit and loss, spreadsheets, all those sorts of things, EVs really should win very, very quickly in this area. And I think once that product lag is addressed, once there's more transit vehicles, more, you know, pickup trucks, all those sorts of things, I think this market could move faster very, very quickly once it's kind of established. So we found that was interesting that that cost of driving electric piece has become more and more prevalent over the last year and Electric Vehicles uk, which I founded, actually did a report called the Cost of Driving Electric a year ago and, and now that the cost element has become key part of the persuasion tool, in fact, the key part of the persuasion tool for the EV industry to say, you need to look at this because even if you've got some predisposition against electric, once you see and once you've had a test drive, those predispositions against those technologies should melt away.
- [24:13]
B
Well, it's super interesting because there are very clear use cases where the numbers are indisputable and particularly for point to point transport. So let's talk HGVs for a moment. So point to point, hub to hub, whatever, and high mileage situations, the higher the mileage, the more that electric makes sense. But there are still a ton of use cases where say, for example, you've got a light commercial van, that van is living at someone's home, they may not have a driveway, they're using the public charging network. And so on the one hand, this is moving in a really, really positive direction and the numbers really stack up when they stack up. But what it also requires is that electricity markets also support this direction of travel as well, such that you can see that really, really shiny total cost of ownership piece across different use cases. And I think the people who do low mileage, who don't have a driveway, it's still electric, still can make sense, but it's, it's close. And I think that's the interesting thing here. It sort of proves where it works and it proves where we need reform of electricity markets or sort of other pieces of the puzzle as well.
- [25:24]
C
There are always going to be pockets of imperfection and it's, you know, why let perfect be the enemy of good? I think, you know, for a huge swathe of the population, they can charge at home or at, you know, slower, lower cost charging and you Know, if we, if we incentivize charging at depots, for example, which can also tap into better energy tariffs overnight, the bulk of electric miles can be done on those lower rates. They're always going to be people who cannot access that. But if you're doing relatively low mileage then driving electric, you don't have a driveway. Driving electric should be sort of cost comparable. If you're doing higher mileage then it might be more expensive. That is possible and there are some big issues there, but it is, it's a relative edge case. And so actually I, I occasionally hear people say, well, it's becoming a bit too tier. To which I kind of respond. Well, the world unfortunately is, is made up of tears. You know, could complain about billionaires earning lots of, you know, having far more access. We should never leave people behind. But equally we need to start the journey and figure out as we're going along it, how we can make these things more accessible to, to everyone. But that does take time.
- [26:47]
B
I, I, I think we're sort of almost saying the same thing but slightly disagreeing on one little component of it. And I think what I'm sort of saying is that yes, the vast majority of people, the case to go electric is absolutely no brainer, particularly in the commercial setting and where it makes a lot of sense. It highlights where there are gaps that we need to improve in order to aid that equity of the transition. Such that when we look at the numbers and be like, oh my God, like if you've got a commercial fleet going, electric totally makes sense. And then there are swathes of people who are like, yeah, but all of our drivers are charging at home and they don't have, well, would like to charge at home, but they don't have driveways. Then you're like, okay, well here we've seen how it works and now we see where this huge great hole is. So yeah, you're absolutely right. We have to accelerate where it works in order to find the pockets that need to be improved. And I do think that the two tier thing is like a serious point of contention because if you don't have a driveway, public charging is still so expensive and I still think that you should go electric, but it's still, it is creating a huge disparity in the cost between different groups of society of how much it costs to get somewhere. And that's not good or fair. But the more people that go electric, the more that we're able to see how to plug these gaps and to how to fix them.
- [28:09]
C
That's right. I think, I think we, we're, we're arguing in unison generally. I mean, so just this morning the UK Government's announced a billion pounds to roll out clean trucks and vans and install EV chargers at depots. So that is, you know, once you start the journey, you can then more quickly work out what those gaps are and, and plug them. And I think that's the point I'm, I'm trying to make. We shouldn't, you know, be scared to promote the, the, the, the cost benefits, but ultimately we do need to address those areas and we do need to make the, the transition as equitable as, as possible. But I would, I would argue that the people who sometimes really make a it can't be done argument because it's two tier, they're arguing from a point of bad faith in that. And we come across those people all the time. I would just say to, to those people, not to, you know, if you can't access the EV because, you know, you don't have a drive when it's too expensive, I would say to those people, let's, let's work out how we can get you through that. Let's give you the information as it stands. But to the people who kind of argue in bad faith, I would say, you know, there are bigger inequities in life. Don't see you arguing about them with quite such passion as about this. So yeah, I think we are, we are on the same, the same page. But yeah, certainly from a fleet's perspective, our B2B days around the country and in Australia will be big opportunities to kind of engage with the different commercial vehicles, different fleet company car options, talk to experts, better understand salary, sacrifice, benefit in kind, all those different things and then kind of accelerate along that, along that process. But yeah, if you, if you happen to drive a commercial vehicle and part of that is charging at home, clearly we need to come up with some solutions for that if you don't have a, have a driveway. So, but I think starting along the, along the road and seeing what's what and, and then plugging those gaps is, is probably the, the least imperfect way of, of making a transition work.
- [30:23]
B
Let's move to our third story, oil shocks. And before we get into this, I just want to comment on a LinkedIn post that I think you and I both saw and were both equally baffled and bemused by. I won't name the person in question because I think they may be deluded, but it was along the lines of electric vehicles only last for like one or two years. So a complete con. You're like, okay, where have you got that from? That's interesting. And secondly, like solar and wind will never make sense because governments can't control the wind and the sun, but they can control oil and gas. And I was like, exactly. That's why this is a huge, enormous problem that we're now facing. It was bizarre. So I think this story is an important one for us to talk about. And yeah, I think you did comment on that LinkedIn post. Something along the lines of, are you okay?
- [31:16]
C
I might have done. I mean, I think, you know, you do see some stuff and you think, I can understand how that person thinks this way. It's not correct, it's not up to date. But there are sometimes you see a poster go, that, that's just, you know, that's batshit. Excuse my French. And that was. I think I know which one you're referring to, but I mean the, the reality is that, you know, if you want a pathway, you know, you want to reduce dependency away from fossil fuels. And that doesn't mean, I'm saying electrify everything by the way. I mean that may or may not be my personal view that we can electri everything. But I'm not saying that, but I'm saying hedging is part of an investor's armory. Right? How do you kind of actually, you know, make yourself more energy secure, energy resilient. Resilient to price shocks, all those sorts of things. And renewables are a brilliant, brilliant way of doing that. And so, you know, whether it's battery storage or wind or, or solar and evs obviously with the power to, to ultimately the bi directional opportunities that exist there. Clearly there's a huge opportunity here. But what I was reading was the kind of from an oil shocks perspective and I don't want to sort of dwell on the Iran situation too much, but the chief of the International Energy Agency basically said the amount of oil lost already during the Iran war is equivalent to two price shocks in the 1970s. But the rise and rise of electric vehicles along with renewable energy means this time the world can weather it. So really kind of interesting story, kind of conflating what's going on now with the 1970s and effectively saying it is worse, but that we have some of the pathways out of that. I was listening to another podcast the other day with great interest and I'd actually had, I think on LinkedIn quite a few Americans love America. I love Americans. But there are a few at the moment slightly emboldened Trump supporters who are sort of coming out very strongly against EVs and renewables. And the US has isolated itself to, to some degree. And so you're getting some quite vocal Americans. And I did sort of, there were quite a few from Texas I noticed. And, and my favorite rejoinder is to say to, to some of the Texans in the room, well, I've been to Austin and to, to, to Houston. I've been to those places. I've seen lots of teslas and other EVs. Running point at peak about 60% of your electricity, including all the aircon in Texas, is coming from wind and solar. Yeah, you know, so I, there's a great TV series which is a fantasy TV series called Land man. Have you ever heard of this, which is Billy Bob Thornton vehicle, which is extremely entertaining. Probably sets back feminism and renewable energy and all those sorts of things back about 70 years. But it's a very entertaining TV program that talks about how oil and gas is, you know, is the only way forward. We wouldn't have the world we have now without it. Which I actually agree with that. But actually renewables are, you know, a sop. They're not real. Etc and that's in the state that has embraced wind and solar more than any others. And in fact the oil and gas majors actually have installed a lot of that wind and solar and battery capacity in Texas. So they're saying one thing on the surface, but actually what they're doing is installing that technology. So if you want to insulate the cell from, from oil shocks, you know, wind, solar, batteries, these things are a great way to, to, to go about doing that. And on a personal level, as a homeowner, again, if you, if you, if you can afford solar, perhaps a battery and maybe you can invest in that over, over time, maybe you can again do the economics of that. That is a great way to insulate yourself from future price shocks. It seems to me that the volatility is not only far from over, but is going to be a feature of the economic system for at least another decade.
- [35:20]
B
But it's so, and again, like I, I'm, I say this knowing that I'm definitely not the person with the right kind of authority to do so. But when you just look at the economics of generating energy from, from wind and solar, it is such a no brainer irrespective of how you the planet. And therefore it becomes so blindingly obvious that any opposition to it is purely driven by geopolitics and a lack of, you know, mature Enough supply chain in the US and the US thing, oh Christ, we're really far behind. We need to build our resilience in another manner. Therefore we really need to push the oil and gas drum roll and perhaps even start a war in order to really enable that as well. And so it's so maddening purely from a logic and efficiency perspective. And as you say, you know, yesterday we filmed an episode at a guy who, many people would have seen his house on Grand Designs. He's attempting to build a castle in the UK. It's the first castle to be built in about 100 years. But this castle is not only absolutely enormous, it is laden with clean energy technologies. Meaning that most of the time it'll be completely off grid, completely electrified, no oil, no gas. And his point is like, perhaps I'm a bit of a dickhead for building a castle. I hold my hands up and say that that's a really stupid thing to do. But he was like, but if you can prove that this ginormous, ridiculous, ostentatious castle can run off grid for no bills, then it's just a no brainer everywhere else. And that's just the maddening situation that we live in.
- [36:59]
C
It is. And you know, I'm going to close out my kind of thoughts on this but you know, at the moment in the U.S. there is a huge, huge rollout of data centers for the AI boom and it's gas generators that are being used as the primary technology to make that happen. And so that does matter me because I will quite often see in the comments of life on different platforms. I know China is still, you know, installing coal power and actually if you look at it relative to its installation of clean energy, I mean, clean energy installations are dwarfing what it's doing on coal and it's tapering back its coal installations. America on the other hand, is per person the biggest user of energy and by a distance. And actually with the advent of the AI boom, fueling slop, by the way, not even fueling, you know, curing cancer or whatever, I'm being bit glib, but you understand what I'm, what I'm saying using gas generators to do that, I mean, the mind boggles. So there is a cognitive dissonance operating now in the world and online that is crazy to me. And you only have to look at short form media to say, actually if I could sit down with this person, have a proper reasonable debate with them, I might not win them over, but I could, I could sure as hell make them realize a Few different things, but on the little snippets of comments on social media and it's just, it's just fueling the most brain dead debates about these things that you can't really get into. And it's so polarized. But that's a subject for another podcast, I suspect. But in any event, if you want to wait, insulate from oil shocks, you know, follow everything electric cars, follow everything electric tech. That episode that you mentioned will be fascinating as are all the episodes that you've been filming of late. So if anyone doesn't watch everything electric tech on YouTube channels. Yeah, I suggest you do so. It's a brilliant, very fast growing channel.
- [38:57]
B
It is. And we have some really cool tech on there. And one thing that I'll say about this castle is that not only was it very impressive and had some really cool tech the likes of which we've actually not featured on the channel before. So definitely look out to that episode. But also it had, it was on the top of a hill, so it had a slide built into the hill. Fantastic. Obviously not designed for me, a grown up woman, but for the children who live in the castle. And an embedded trampoline. So I was in my element. Clean tech, castle, trampoline and slide. What more could you want?
- [39:29]
C
Fantastic. What a job you've got.
- [39:31]
B
I know. Well, we normally finish this podcast by the peaks and troughs or the winners and losers, whatever we're going to call it this week, that maybe we should just really stick with winners this week so that we can end on a little high. Do you have any this week?
- [39:48]
C
Yes, that's. What a good idea. What a sensible, diplomatic idea. I mean, I think the BMW i3, the new one, so not to be confused with the original BMW i3, has now come out. Looks like an absolute winner. I think BMW are really, really doing great things now for the EV industry. So I would say that car is a real standout one. But I would also say that very few of us buy new cars. The few of us that do mostly buy them on some sort of lease or purchase agreement. Most of us buy used EVs and out there on the forecourt. So the UK and elsewhere are amazing original BMW i3s. And i3 was my first ever electric vehicle. What a fun car to drive. You can get that now. You can save yourself a fortune on fuel costs right now. And some of the little ones actually come with a range extender as well. So you could have the kind of security of knowing you've got a bit of a Range extension possibility as well. So I would say BMW is great to see the back leading the charge. Pun intended.
- [41:02]
B
Well, I have never heard anybody say anything negative about the original BMW i3 and you just hear the joy that you've just had there of like, it's such a fun car, it's so thoughtfully designed. So I've never driven one. Maybe I'll use this as my excuse,
- [41:18]
C
honestly, because it looks like, I think it looks a little bit acquired some of the sort of two tone color ones. There's some quite nice looking ones and there's some that look a little bit more basic. But I remember having one loving it and I was working at the time, about 40 minutes from where I live, going through country lanes and just leaving people for dead at the lights. I know it's not very mature to say that, but it was, I think it was. It's a kind of a bit of a snub nose, short sort of looking vehicle. It's quite nice inside, doesn't look that great from the front. But actually pulling up alongside sports cars and then, you know, and then leaving them for the dead at traffic lights still fills me with joy. I mean, I, I have grown up a bit since then.
- [42:06]
B
Well, we also will be joined on the podcast by Glenn Schmidt, who is the chief of sustainability for BMW. He's going to be talking all about everything that they've been doing for the IX3, so I can't wait to get into that conversation. And again, another one for all of our lovely listeners to watch out for in the future. But we should leave it there because we've been wanging on quite enough and we have a proper, proper business meeting that we need to attend to after this. So that's it. As ever. If you could do us the honour of liking, subscribing, sharing with a friend, leaving a comment, all of the above. It really, really does help us and I can't tell you how much we appreciate it. But that's it. If you have been, thank you for listening and. Or.