Every year, China’s Golden Week holiday creates viral images of EV queues at highway service areas. But China now has 21.48 million charging facilities—more than the rest of the world combined. So why the lines? In this episode, Lynn and Erick break down the real bottleneck: peak demand, 48 kW average charging power, grid and land constraints, and the tough economics of fast charging. They also look at what China is doing—policy targets, mobile charging, and V2G pilots—and what the US and Europe can learn. Plus: three practical tips for EV drivers facing holiday travel.

A Dutch insurer stopped covering nine car brands in August.

None of them failed a crash test. Univé, one of the largest insurers in the Netherlands, pulled the cover because of parts — its own example being a Chinese EV that arrived at a workshop with a small crack in the front suspension mount, where the manufacturer’s repair manual says replace the entire body shell. The car is written off.

You can price a part. You cannot price a repair process that ends in a write-off over a body panel.

Ten days later, nine Chinese ministries co-signed the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan for the intelligent connected new energy vehicle industry. In this episode, Lynn and I work through what is in it, and what it means for anyone who sells into, competes with, or invests in this supply chain.

What we cover

**The document itself.** A five-year plan is not a law. It is closer to an operating system: once it names a target, budgets, land, credit lines and administrative approvals flow toward it. Nine signatures means the policy layers are aligned — and that is a bigger change than any single target.

**The metric changed from range to efficiency.** Fuel consumption down to 3.3 litres per 100km; electric consumption down to 11.5 kWh per 100km. Range is bought with battery mass, and battery mass makes every other engineering problem worse. Stop buying range, start earning it.

**The pecking order.** Fifteen Chinese companies are in the Berylls top-100 supplier ranking (Japan 23, US 16, Germany 15), and for the first time their combined revenue passed the Americans’. But Bosch alone is €55.8bn — and Bosch does not make batteries. A brake caliper is a part; a brake-by-wire system is a business.

**Three bottlenecks money cannot fix.** Automotive-grade SoC localisation in China is 5-8%; microcontrollers around 10%; the highest-end nodes and automotive-grade EDA tooling are effectively 100% imported. The constraint is not algorithms — it is the data feedback loop, and you cannot buy an ecosystem.

**The part of the plan nobody quotes.** “Encourage cross-brand overseas spare parts warehouses for key components.” Cross-brand: a government admitting the problem is bigger than any single company. BYD built a parts hub in Italy and passed the Dutch underwriting review. Lynk & Co inherited Volvo’s network. The declined brands never built a regional parts centre at all.

**The invoice you cannot collect.** In June 2025, 17 major automakers pledged supplier terms under 60 days. On 7 September 2026, MIIT and the market regulator issued a dedicated notice: acceptance within one working day for production materials, payment encouraged within 30 days and never beyond 60, interest on late payment, and — the clause that matters — during price negotiations, payment on account of at least 90% of the last contract price. The nominal 60 days was never the problem. The clock never started.

One question

Over the next five years, which breaks first — China’s chip gap, or its overcapacity? Pick one and tell me why in the comments.

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*Insight: Automotive & Beyond is a weekly conversation about the global automotive supply chain, hosted by Erick (20 years at Toyota, Volvo, Jaguar Land Rover and Chinese EV) and Lynn. New episodes every Thursday. Subscribe to get the next one, and if this was useful, forward it to whoever on your team owns after-sales.*

The phone that was ten years too early

In 2014, BlackBerry built a phone with a square screen, a physical keyboard, and the exact footprint of a travel passport. Reviewers called it a brick. It died on the shelf.

In 2026, Apple and Samsung are selling the same shape as the future of productivity — and everyone is calling it brilliant.

Same idea. Same dimensions. Same logic. Ten years apart.

This week on Insight: Automotive & Beyond, Lynn and I use that gap to unpack one of the most expensive traps in business — and in careers: being right too early.

WHAT WE COVER

1. BlackBerry Passport (2014) — right product, wrong decade

A 4.5-inch square display that fit 60 characters per line, built for reading PDFs and financial models rather than short videos. The logic was sound. The supporting hardware simply didn’t exist yet — flexible glass and ultra-thin hinges still had to be invented. It didn’t lose on logic. It lost because the era wasn’t ready.

2. Aiways (爱驰汽车) — right strategy, fatal timing

Long before “going global” became every Chinese automaker’s obvious playbook, Aiways bet on Europe first: EU whole-vehicle type approval, launches in Germany, France, and Switzerland. Looking back, the direction was exactly right. They ran out of money before the tide turned — crushed by factory capex, supply chain build-out, international compliance, and the enormous cost of educating early European consumers about Chinese EVs.

3. What it means for you

If you’re a strong performer stuck in a declining industry, under flawed leadership, or in a role being automated away — the failure of the vessel does not define the skill of the sailor. But “it’s not you, it’s the world” is cheap comfort. The better move is accurate attribution: sort what you can control from what you can’t.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — The new foldables, and a strange sense of déjà vu

02:07 — BlackBerry Passport: the right idea, ten years early

03:30 — Why capital-intensive industries punish earliness even harder

04:00 — Aiways: a strategy validated by everyone except the clock

05:50 — The failure of the vessel does not define the skill of the sailor

06:40 — What you can actually control: four things

07:05 — Half a step ahead makes you a visionary; three steps ahead makes you a casualty

08:20 — Surviving until the wind comes is a capability in itself

THE TAKEAWAY

Being early isn’t a strategy. Being survivable early is.

Protect your cash flow. Keep your skills fresh. Stay patient. If your direction is right, the moment when your “passport form factor” finally gets recognized will come.

New episodes every Thursday. Connect with me on LinkedIn: Erick Yang. Subscribe to Insight: Automotive & Beyond.

I’m Erick. Starting now, my co-host Lynn and I are launching a brand-new podcast: Insight: automotive & Beyond. Every Thursday, we’ll take you beyond the automotive world—into technology, business, culture, and the ideas shaping tomorrow. We hope you’ll enjoy it. New episodes every Thursday. Subscribe and join us for the ride.