SAI Weekly 15 - 25: An INSIDER's View of AutoShanghai2025
April 30th marked the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. It also is my family’s anniversary for leaving Vietnam. Congratulations to us! My dad, who was in the South Vietnamese Air Force could’ve moved us to France, an easier life for him.
He decided that his kids would have the chance at a better life if we sought asylum in the US, but it would make for a much harder life for him. That’s after already spending the majority of his life fighting in a war.
I don’t remember anything about the days leading up to the fall, I was too young, but it reminds me that I should ask my brothers and sisters who likely have vivid memories, all different, about what it was like.
My dad was right. The US has been very good to my family and it’s not something we take for granted, congratulations to us!
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I’d also like to clarify something from last newsletter which was two weeks ago, so this is well overdue.
In it I’d mentioned that Steve Levine had quoted an analyst and he was actually just summarizing a note the analyst made to his clients. Next, I get a little fired up with my rants and this particular rant could be read as me trying to call Steve out.
Let me clear, I have a ton of respect for Steve, that was not what I was trying to do – He is one of the most knowledgeable people I know in the world covering the evolving electric vehicle battery space so I wanted you subscribers to know that my pointed opinions wasn’t meant to be pointed at Steve, just a few others in my sphere.
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BYD had an event to show off their new tech and guess who was invited?! That’s right. Yours truly. I had the chance to test drive the new BYD Han L and Tang L.
Before we headed off to the megacharger demo, BYD wanted to show us that the Han & Tang L could also dual charge.
We then drove about a half hour away to a dealer mall where there was a megacharger where I watched with my own eyes BYD’s megacharger at work. You know, the one being marketed as charging 400 km in 5 minutes. It's as fast as pumping gas. I am not really one for hyperbole, but folks THIS is a gamechanger. Not just in and of itself, but because on the heels of BYD’s announcement, two other companies - Huawei and Zeekr - announced their own entries into the still rarefied air of megawatt charging.
Let that sink in, not only is it real but it’s also not some exclusive feature that’s available to only premium car buyers. The top end Han L and Tang L will run you about ¥300K or less than $45K!
After test driving the Tang, my seat time moved over to the top end Han L - the one that goes 0-60 in 2.7 seconds. Wow, that thing pulls. And was stable. I was impressed. Very much so.
The only other time I felt that type of G-Forces was when I got a ride in the Lucid Air Sapphire. The other speedster I think of when we get into sub-3.0 second times in the 0-60mph is the Model S Plaid. Let’s make sure we understand that it’s absolutely unnecessary to have anything that stupid fast, it sure is fun though! BUT there needs to be care when behind the wheel of that type of machinery. That’s my disclaimer.
The last thing I’ll point out - the Sapphire starts at $250K while the Model S Plaid at $100K. The Han L you ask? An eye watering ¥279,800 or about ~$39K. I say eye watering because WE CAN’T have it here in the states! And yes, that’s the badge on the back of the Han L that makes it different than the others.
One last thing - Yes! I tried out God’s Eye. More thoughts on this in the next newsletter though - TMI for this newsletter - and the internet is driving me crazy due to how content heavy this edition is!
I just left Beijing and am currently typing this from Taipei because May holiday starts and the country shuts down for a few days. I’d spent almost a week in Shanghai so let me unpack through pictures what I did aside from spending a three full days at AutoShanghai2025. 20K steps / day.
A separate CATL event that highlighted three things:
- The Naxtra sodium-ion battery brand. CATL previously launched its 1st gen sodium-ion batteries in 2021 so look at this as more of a formalizing of product lines including branding. Improved numbers and a focus on commercial trucks.
- Next generation Shenxing LFP battery that leans into ultrafast charging. Not to be outdone by BYD who weeks before announced its 1MW megacharger, something I got to see first hand yesterday, but more on that later. BYD’s megacharger mates with a blade battery pack that boasts a 10C peak charging rate. CATL’s peak charging rate? 12C.
- Freevoy dual-power battery. I don’t want to get too into the details of this, but this reminds me somewhat of Our Next Energy’s (ONE) promise of a dual chemistry long-range battery. The CATL Freevoy solution seems to go much further than ONE’s, and this will likely see production before ONE’s as well. Making it real.
One other major point of emphasis throughout the preso was all of their battery’s performance in cold weather. As many of you know, cold weather usually slices a good percentage of range off EV batteries today, not the case with the new iterations of their three products.
For more details on each of these announcements, here’s a link to the CNEVPost article that outlines them in detail.
There was also a Zeekr / Lynk & Co brand night on the Bund. A couple of quick observations on this event. It was completely in English. There were a good number of foreign press and dealership groups represented. I met folks from a few different countries in Europe, the UK, Middle East, even the Philippines.
The purpose of this event was to outline how for all practical purposes, how bringing together Lynk & Co and the Zeekr brands is going to work. The design leads for each brand also both took the time to explain both brand’s differing design philosophies. You could’ve probably cut out about 20 mins from that part of it. But always love events on the Bund!
I also happened to be invited to a private dinner for an investment bank that was hosting some of their investors in Shanghai, unfortunately it was in Hongqiao (HQ) and after getting behind in time to attend to a last minute work call, I did my best to race to HQ during rush hour traffic, which in Shanghai is notoriously slow. I should’ve taken the subway…
I was again doublebooked the next evening with a carwow and Alix Partners event on the same evenings. Thanks Philippe and Mark for those invites!
All of the above is to show that Shanghai, and if we zoom out a bit, the Chinese auto shows are both the biggest automotive events in the world. Plenty of people all over the globe do their best to make it. Well, except for the Americans anyway. I didn’t see or bump into many of them.
As the US automakers and western tier 1s face existential threats from their Chinese counterparts, you’d think they want to know (meaning see, touch, feel, drive, scrutinize) what they’re up against. A bit disappointing if you ask me. I have been approached by entities in the past about setting up a ‘tour’ of these companies and until recently, it’s not something I wanted to get into. But that may change in the near future so stay tuned.
Onto the show. First, let’s talk about the no shows. The Koreans, the French, the ultra-luxury brands (with the exception of Bentley) and Tesla.
Some simple statistics about this year’s show:
~1K exhibitors
1.4K vehicles
93 world debuts
360K sqm or for the Americans, about 67 football fields. For reference, the NYIAS that was the week before was about 17 football fields big.
BIG THEMES
- Foreign legacy focused on Chinese customers while their Chinese counterparts introduced themselves to the world.
- Tariffs or not – it was business as usual, just not with many Americans
- Styling is not very differentiated anymore. Exterior, interior while features are common across a number of brands, think massage function, karaoke, crab walking even. I had a quick chat with Sam Livingstone at the show and we both agreed that we’re moving into this phase post price-war apocalypse where the Chinese brands will need more than price to differentiate themselves and this is likely where brand comes in.
- The first two days weren’t that exciting nor electric, but that third day when it was open to tradespeople, that’s when you felt the excitement and the crowded booths.
- Tariffs weren’t spoken about, but they definitely attended.
- Everybody and their mother has L2+++++++ intelligent driving. That isn’t a differentiator anymore in China and for the brands that lack the feature, they’ll need to partner with Chinese tech companies in order to keep up or they will ultimately be left out of the market.
Another point that Sam made when he asked me what stood out – Outside of the Firefly brand / vehicle, it took me a second. That tells me (and Sam), not many vehicles were that memorable, including the concepts. Although I’d argue that the Mercedes Vision V MPV concept is memorable for all the wrong reasons. That seems to be headed to the US too, so will we have a renaissance on the MPV side? I guess the Pacifica has been the incumbent for too long, let’s get more styling and tech injected into the segment!
Lastly, a bit of fun, some celebrity sightings!
Top left: Elliot Richards (Fully Charged), Mark Rainford (InsideChinaAuto)
Top middle: Mark Rainford, Jiawei Zhang (CN EV Post), Lei Xing (China EVs & More), Danny Lee (Bloomberg), Jill Shen (Technode)
Top right: Lei Xing
Middle left: Felix Hamer (ElectricFelix), Patrick George (Inside EVs), Christian Peter-Clausen
Middle middle: Jeffrey Johnston, Saurabh Bhatnager (CBO, NIO US), Ganesh Iyer (CEO, NIO US), Feng Shen (EVP, NIO)
Middle right: Frank Wu (Zeekr Design)
Bottom left: Herbert Diess
Bottom middle: Lin Lin, Yin Hon (CNBC)
Bottom right: Ethan Robertson (Wheelsboy), Jiri Opletal (CarNewsChina)
QUOTED
Was on the recent episode of the Economist Money Talks podcast with Ethan Wu. By now, I’ve been a guest a few times so we agreed that I am an old friend, but it’s still pretty cool to see they tagged me in a X post!
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I was also interviewed this week by the BBC who asked me about the Legacy Automakers and some of what stood out at the show:
Too much going on to post into one newsletter so as I get more of my video content sorted, will try to post to the next newsletter and onto my youtube channel so stay tuned everyone and thanks for your patience as I bury myself out of this hole I dug myself.