In this latest MAX episode, Tu & Lei welcome Frank Wu, Head of Design at JIDU. Frank leads the award winning JIDU Design team who recently won two Red Dot awards for their concept - the ROBO-01 concept vehicle & ROBO-01 charger. 

Part 2: Frank tells us what it's like to work at an EV startup in China, gets into more detail about the design decisions he made for the ROBO-01 and what the most important details are about the car to him.  He also provides some hints at what will stay on the production version, as well as a "sneak peak" for the second production vehicle. 

**We apologize for some of the audio issues with portions of this recording.**

In this latest MAX episode, Tu & Lei welcome Frank Wu, Head of Design at JIDU. Frank leads the award winning JIDU Design team who recently won two Red Dot awards for their concept - the ROBO-01 concept vehicle & ROBO-01 charger. 

Part 1: Frank opens up about his personal journey, what's influenced his career decisions and compares and contrasts the design processes between the different companies he’s worked for including how he was recruited and why he ultimately decided to take on the Head of Design role at JIDU.

Frank was VERY open and conversational so we've split our conversation with him into two parts. Part II will drop within the next 48 hours.

**We apologize for some of the audio issues with portions of this recording.**

 

Tu and Lei start out the pod with a brief review of June sales numbers and both agreed the market seemed to recover well with the major automakers all rebounding from low April / May sales caused by the lockdown in Shanghai. 

Tu and Lei spend a few moments to discuss the latest news about Covid in China including steps the Chinese govt is taking to restart the sector again. 

Lei that discusses the controversy about the claim of BYD outselling Tesla for the 1st half of 2022 since BYD sells a combination of PHEVs & BEVs while Tesla sells ONLY BEVs. 

The next topic of discussion is about the city of Shenzhen opening parts of the city up to L3 capable vehicles. 

Lei reviews all the numbers that were revealed during NIO’s Power day likely to dispute the short report that came out on them last week. Tu counters the NIO numbers with some Tesla numbers of his own, specifically about the number of superchargers that have been installed in China.  

Tu then pulls back the discussion to what the US needs to do to really help speed up EV adoption in the US including a laser focus on rolling out more EV charging infrastructure. 

Tu & Lei close out the the pod with a summary of the VW battery manufacturing announcement. 

Tu starts this week’s pod with a quick update on what’s going on on the ground in Beijing. Lei then moves on to NIO’s challenging last few weeks, first starting out with the tragic accident at their Shanghai headquarters that killed two people to this week’s bombshell short report accusing NIO of fraud, specifically for their accounting of battery swapping revenues.

The next topic that Lei & Tu tackle was the unveiling of the Volkswagen ID.Aero, Volkswagen’s entry into the premium electric sedan category that’ll start shipping next year from its Chinese factory. 

They give their initial reactions from the unveil, look at the market segment it’s competing in and predict what challenges they anticipate the Aero having in the China market. 

The next topic is the Chongqing auto show and specifically the Avatr brand which is a joint venture between Huawei and Changan Motors, an SOE based in Chongqing. 

In the final segment, Tu summarizes what he thought were some of the most interesting news from the week including TSMC likely overtaking Intel on revenues to become the largest chip manufacturer in the world, Polestar’s IPO and Tesla incentivizing customers to trade in their ICE vehicles for discounts on Tesla vehicles.

Tu and Lei start the pod with their thoughts on Li Auto’s big unveil for this year, the L9. The conversation evolves into a broader discussion about Li Auto’s future ambitions and how they compare to their domestic competitors who are more focused on the international markets.

The discussion moves over to some recent moves by Volkswagen and Mercedes that points to their continued emphasis on the China market.  They discuss how one makes sense but the other may do the opposite of what is intended. 

Tu and Lei then talk about the challenges that Volkswagen faces in the China market and what they should be doing to prep their local team for long-term battle and fight to maintain share even as the players around them seem to be moving faster with better products.

The next topic Tu and Lei discuss is the Qilin battery announcement from CATL that’s going to be in customer’s vehicles next year. 

Tu spends the last part of the pod listing out what he thought were the most interesting things that he thought happened during the week including news about Tesla in India & China, Foxconn/Lordstown Motors, ELMS, NIO in the news for the wrong reasons and DeepRoute’s move to short haul, autonomous trucking.

Tu and Lei start out the conversation with a brief summary of May’s sales and agree that things are looking better but that its still a fluid and delicate situation. 

Tu and Lei then move on to the discussion about the NIO ES7 and Lei poses two questions to Tu about his preferences if he had to choose between certain new vehicles. They spend a good deal of time discussing the ES7, how NIO is doing overall, and what they expect and hope to see from NIO moving forward. Let’s just say that they define success for NIO as having well over 20K units/month in sales by the time 2024 rolls around.

Tu moves over to some of the events that took place that he wanted to highlight. Lei highlights Geely introducing its new pickup brand Radar. They spend a few moments discussing Geely and move on to the announcement that Voyah will be launching their products in Norway and close out the pod with BYD confirmation that they will be attending next year’s CES. 

The pod starts out with Tu and Lei unpacking what Lei calls the biggest China smart EV reveal this year, the unveil of the Jidu Robo-1.

Tu gives an update on the status of Covid restrictions in Beijing including a bit of what’s opening up then Lei transitions over to an update on May sales numbers and how things are beginning to recover from a very poor April. Lei expects June to move towards normal as the OEMs are now more capable of dealing with COVID as being part of the 'new normal' for operations.

The dynamic duo spend the next several minutes dissecting NIO’s earnings and what you should look for later this year from them with important launches still on the calendar that will almost double the number or products they have on offer.

Tu summarizes a few pieces of news which segues to a broader discussion about BYD, and how they’ve surpassed VW Group this week by market capitalization. Lei and Tu then discuss the announcement this week that BYD will supply Tesla with batteries. 

Lei starts the pod talking May sales. Overall better numbers across the board but Lei was disappointed a bit in BYD’s sales. Lei then moves to explain the stimulus package that’s been announced for vehicle purchase and who it’s targeting. 
 
 This triggers a broader discussion about the economy and Shanghai & Beijing beginning to open up and the implications of this along with the subsidies. 
 
 Lei moves the conversation over to WM Motor’s planned IPO and some of the history of the company until now and also talks about Buick’s latest announcements from last week and the recent weakness in China of the GM brands: Chevy and Buick in particular. 
 
 Tu contrasts that with the popularity of the Wuling Hongguang Mini EV which should provide GM would a treasure trove of data that can be used across their brands and products to increase sales for the China market.

Tu and Lei close out the pod talking about NIO’s ES7 and the recent announcement by Ford about investment in Michigan.

Tu and Lei start out with a discussion about the challenges of China’s overall economy and some of the stimulus that the Chinese govt. has announced they’d provide in order to get it jumpstarted. Shanghai is finally opening back up on June 1st, so factories should begin to product more product consistently in June and beyond but Tu cautions that any outbreak could jeopardize the recovery. 

Lei then shifts the conversation over to May sales numbers and how he expects BYD to be much further along in their sales volume than the other EV makers. This opens up a broader discussion about BYD including their boldness in entering the ultra luxury market with a vehicle launch later this year that’s supposed to be in the ¥1.5M price range but they both question whether BYD is stretching themselves too thin?

Tu shifts the conversation over to Jidu and their impending vehicle unveil scheduled for June 8th. Jidu is the brand that was created by a collaboration between Geely and Baidu. Lei laments that their messaging is a bit confusing, specifically the claim on being a ‘autorobot’ and he wonders if Jidu is overpromising what the product can deliver?

The pod moves onto the news about the strategic investment Bosch made into WeRide the Guangzhou based autonomous vehicle startup and the possible reasons for the investment and how they could provide each party access to an area that they currently lack or that isn’t available to them.

Tu and Lei close out the show with a brief discussion on ECarX, the software intelligence startup owned by Li Shufu aka Eric Li, the founder of Geely and then a quick chat about XPeng’s earnings as well as who they believe may be moving to the US market first. 

In this latest MAX episode, Tu & Lei welcome Omer Keilaf, Co-founder and CEO of Innoviz, which designs and develops. LiDAR and perception software for ADAS systems & autonomous vehicles. 

Omer talks about the early days in the Israeli military, starting Innoviz six years ago, why he is confident that this is the right time to enter the Chinese market, his views on LiDAR competition, technology, the difficulties in achieving mass production, and how Innoviz is tackling these issues with unique approaches.