Ford's Renault reliance? EV Glory to Ukraine? Korea's Chinese EV spied in Australia?

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1:05hello and welcome back to episode three of this brand new podcast the pulse podcast where we are covering the life and death decade of the automotive industry as told by me uh a former automotive engineer imogen bogle and dan caesar an entrepreneur and ceo of the fully charged show hello how are you doing hello imogen i'm really well thank you i'm really looking forward to this discussion today it never ceases to amaze me how every week delivers what are the stories going to be for the pulse podcast this week and it's been another fairly seismic week in the automotive industry ahead of i'm pretty sure an incredible year is coming i just feel it in my bones maybe it's a maybe it's a vibe but i can see 2026 being a year where things really start to fall or fall into place.

1:56And I can see car companies looking nervously ahead at demand, tariffs, China, and all those things. And we're going to cover it here, obviously, on the Pulse podcast. Well, just before we start a click record, we were talking about some of the analysis that we've been doing on the Everything Electric cars and Everything Electric tech channels, and just understanding what our data is doing and what that might mean in terms of episodes we do next year. And it does closely track what's happening with the automotive industry. So, for example, 2024, it was Chinese EVs are coming. 2025, Chinese cars are here.

2:312026, it's sort of saying affordability, we get it. That's a hygiene factor at this point. How is the industry going to consolidate and survive within, you know, changing tariffs, changing policies, slightly more political and divisive nature of our politics as well? So, lots of stories to cover today. But first, how's your week been? What have you been up to? It's been a bit of a quieter week. We're obviously gearing up for the end of year. We've actually had a drinks for Electric Vehicles UK team. And next week we're getting together as the fully charged family as well. So that's all well and good.

3:06So a little bit quieter, doing a lot of admin, planning for next year, obviously. I have been driving around a Ford Puma Gen E this week, actually, which has been very nice. Very nice. And I hadn't driven one of those before. And I actually had one of the old school Ford Puma's back in the day, which I really loved. So I was a bit nervous. But Ford Puma is the best-selling car in the UK. And the Gen E is very, very nice. And due to the Electric Car Grant in the UK, actually, they're selling like hotcakes, I think. So very nice car. Really, really impressed. One thing I didn't like, because I think it's always good to say what you didn't like, was it's got a very big steering wheel, which I found a little bit unusual.

3:45That's interesting. Apart from that, well, is it interesting? I don't know. But I found that was the one thing I didn't quite gel with. But actually, the car itself was really, really good. And it's another one of those cars that does make fake engine noises. And I have to admit, sadly, I do quite like that because it gives you a bit more feedback and a bit more connection with the car. So anyway, good job, Ford. That's a great car. And hopefully we'll be test driving lots more cars in the year ahead. to do it well so this week we've just gone out with our almost breaking news episode in which there is a small clip about driving the cooper profile which i did a few weeks ago i can now tell you my driving experience or my thoughts on the driving experience and it too had the synthetic engine noise it's not an engine noise because they're like well an electric car doesn't have an engine but it is how we imagine an electric motor might sound even though we understand an electric motor doesn't necessarily really make any noise and you could notch it up and down i was grateful for that for the fact that you could notch it up and down but a little little a little bit i can cope with a little bit i don't mind it no i quite like it i have to say as i said before i have the hyundai ionic 5n and that was incredibly fun not just because of the sound effects that it makes you could actually put like a fighter jet noise which i didn't like quite so much but um you know you can do the sort of normal kind of sports car sounds and it's great and i do genuinely think it adds something and i think if we are trying to get as many people into ev as possible.

5:10The fact that they make noise is quite reassuring, I think. Well, I think there's a safety component to it as well, that something that I think a lot of electric vehicle drivers forget when they first get into an EV is that it's very silent. And so you lose that perception of speed and you can accidentally go quite fast, not least because you have instant torque. And so actually introducing a bit of sound, I think can force you or subconsciously force you to drive a bit slower. So that's no bad thing either. Right, we have got three juicy stories for today. We are talking Hyundai, we're talking Ford and Renault and EVs in Ukraine.

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6:30We have a team down under, so we did a lot of work there. What's interesting with the Australian market is its proximity to Asia means you're getting a whole range of different Asian cars, not just Chinese cars appearing down there before they're hitting the market here in the UK, definitely before they're arriving in North America and in Europe. And actually, we had a team meeting this week. There were several brands mentioned that I had forgotten about. And I'm supposed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the EV industry that are now coming to market in Australia. Things like Dongfeng's FAW, Aura's GWM, Aura's Way, lots of different brands popped up this week.

7:13And then I spied this story that Hyundai's Alexio, which is a kind of midsize SUV, we need some more of those, don't we, has actually been spotted driving around Melbourne. And I hadn't heard of this car. And what really stood out for me is obviously Hyundai have branded all their electric cars Ioniq. So I was thinking, well, this is unusual. What is this? Is this a fuel cell car? Obviously, they've had the Hyundai Nexo. So I was trying to work out what it was. And it's actually a product of Beijing Hyundai, which is a joint venture between Hyundai and China's BAIC. So it's going to share the kind of eGMP platform that Hyundai has and shares with Kia as well.

7:59But it is actually Chinese made and that's going to be crossing into Australia and coming out there soon, which I thought was fascinating. The reality is that we are now seeing all sorts of different cars come out. And obviously, Hyundai, one of many manufacturers who've been selling cars in China, have got into joint ventures and are making cars there as well. And this one's making its way to Australia, but it doesn't fit under the IONIQ brand. So it is really a patchwork quilt, the EV market at the moment. But I suppose it's good for the consumer, lots of different choice, lots of different options.

8:37and I know Hyundai is still planning to launch the next Nexo hydrogen fuel cell EV as well next year so it's still flogging that horse we've been consistent about this for years we don't think hydrogen has a major role to play but Hyundai has still been doing that I think in South Korea they have quite a lot of hydrogen infrastructure but outside of certain markets it really isn't getting much uptake as battery EV is just a more efficient better type of powertrain well when you sent me this car immediately i thought well obviously that's the hindai version of the kea ev5 and lo and behold they're on the same platform so it is curious that it doesn't have the ionic badge and maybe there's some rights thing that is far beyond our pay grade with regards to what how it can be badged if it comes through china baic but what i find weird is that you know australia is also a right-hand drive market same as the uk but there aren't that many right hand drive markets really and so it's a lot of effort to put a load of engineering time into producing a car which you may not have any intention to bring over to the UK because if you were bringing it over to the UK it would be badged the Ioniq well what would it be badged actually wouldn't be a five who knows who knows I mean it may carry the same name Alexia we'll get into that the naming conventions there's lots of cars you know that are called different things because the name doesn't make sense in in certain markets um obviously byd dolphin surf as it is is not called that uh elsewhere uh you know and so you know it depends on each uh naming convention depends on each market of course so who knows what it would be called and whether it will reach these shores but having gone to the trouble of making a right-hand drive version it's quite conceivable that it might end up here uh in the uk and europe as well although again And apologies to our North American listeners, probably not in North America anytime soon.

10:31And we know, of course, that Kia and Hyundai sales have taken a little hit in the US this year, totally unsurprisingly, given that all the grants have disappeared under a certain person's... I'll just stop talking. We know who we're talking about.

11:17We'll be right back. water park, wildlife sanctuary, world-class golf course, and so much more. Visit Bahamar.com today. Shall we move to story number two? Yeah, this is a fascinating story. You know, the Ukraine is a country with a rich history, but of course, it's been in the news for the last few years because of an invasion by its neighbor. And, you know, very sadly, that situation continues. But what Ukrainian people have shown is huge resilience and resourcefulness, innovative tech as well. In warfare, I don't want to talk too much about technologies used for war, but I do notice obviously they've been using drones over there in novel ways for warfare.

12:09But also, I think there was a slightly uncorroborated story that actually a fuel cell vehicle was used as a sort of improvised bomb there as well. But that's not what this story is about. Actually, it's about the battery electric vehicle market, which is growing significantly. So in November, almost 40%, 39 % to be exact, of cars sold were battery EV, which is just incredible. And there's some reasons why for that. They have no VAT on those products. But ultimately, it's a steady flow of EVs coming in from China again. So there's this recurrent theme going on. And it doesn't seem to matter what borders you throw up, what tariffs you throw up.

12:53You know, China is extremely agile, has huge capacity, huge export ambitions, and it's making its way into lots of different markets. We get obsessed about the big markets like Germany and the UK, America, China itself, of course. But the reality is that there is a lot of market to go around and China is making inroads in pretty much every country on the planet. Well, it's really interesting. And firstly, this story came from Clean Technica and Scott Clooney, who founded Clean Technica, he was on our podcast. And that episode will be going out on Monday. So, yeah, it is a newsletter that absolutely everyone should be subscribed to.

13:31and he is wonderful. But what's interesting about this to me is that actually, the grid in Ukraine is quite interesting. And yes, there has been some controversy around some bribery and how certain grid projects have got through. Let's park that for a second. In a period of war, what do you discover? Agility needs to be flexibility, need to, well, survival. And Octopus have actually partnered with the grid network in Ukraine, because they're seeing that actually they're deploying distributed energy systems, renewable energy systems at an astonishing rate, because they need to, because they need to replace the infrastructure that's being destroyed.

14:07And of course, what that does is create a world in which electric vehicles can make sense. So interesting that that is the case in Ukraine. But in the same breath, this week, there have been six Eastern European countries who have been also joining forces with Germany to lobby against the EU on the 2035 combustion ban, which may be less surprising because there's a lot of traditional legacy OEM manufacturing capability in those countries. And the BEV market share is so comparatively small. We're talking sort of 5 % to 6%, where the European average is about 14 % to 16%. So, yeah, interesting movement.

14:49Zooming out, it's a mixed picture, a mixed picture, but it is interesting what's going on in Ukraine. There are other markets that are doing well, other markets less so. Also, it's tied back to manufacturing. Hungary, for example, is a hotbed of new manufacturing sites for Chinese companies in particular, like CATL, like BYD. But I think we should say, while the Ukraine market is relatively small, BYD now has 20 % of the overall local market. And that's not the EV market, 20 % of the whole market. And actually, if they think that the government's going to start charging VAT on battery EVs in Ukraine next year, so there's a bit of a surge going on as people try and buy bears before that happens, although people are lobbying to keep that VAT exemption in place.

15:36But really, really fascinating. BYD Leopard 3 is one of the big sellers there. I had to look that up. Again, it's one of those ones you go, okay, what is that? Is it a seal rebadged as a leopard? it actually turns out i sort of googled it and looked online i thought i recognized that i saw that at the shanghai motor show and it's actually a vehicle from byd's other brand fang chen bao and maybe fang chen bao didn't translate as a brand to to go into eastern europe so now that's known as the byd leopard so a leopard can change its spelling at least that's my poor pun for the day but it's also interesting that you know in the same country in the ukraine vw are selling their ID Unix, which is also China-made.

16:21It's basically a rebadged Cooper Taviskan. Toyota's doing the same with the BZ3X again, which is China only. So that recurrent theme continues. There are inroads being made across all of these different markets. And yes, Ukraine, you wouldn't necessarily expect it to have such high BEV uptake. So that really stood out as a story for us. And yes, I'm sure we'll mention the EU and some lobbying moves against EVs within this podcast.

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17:38I also read the Electrive article. So for a little bit of context, Renault will build two battery electric cars for Ford Motor Company on its Ampere platform. And there are some thoughts this could be a route to bring back smaller electric Ford models. What are our thoughts? Well, I think the listener might get sick of me mentioning China, but this is partially a response to what's going on elsewhere. You know, moving into a new world when new alliances are being formed. You know, clearly automotive alliances are not new. You know, Ford already works with Volkswagen using its MEB platform. I think the Ford Explorer is based on that platform.

18:21And now they're working with Renault. Renault, of course, very famously was part of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance for many years. So there's nothing new under the sun, I suppose. But it does seem interesting that some of what would be termed as the legacy automakers are bandying together strength in numbers to see how they can stave off the threat of Chinese and Korean cars taking more and more market share from them. So really interesting. It looks like a couple of cheaper EVs are going to be coming through this tie-up between Ford and Renault. And they'll be coming in around 2028. The speed the automotive industry is moving.

19:01I know it's almost 2026, but that does actually feel quite a long way out. This partnership also includes the potential to work on vans, but it's seen that there'll be a sort of smaller SUV and maybe something akin to the Fiesta will come out of this partnership. And what's really interesting, I think, and good news for us Europeans, and we are Brits, but we still consider ourselves very much European, is that these cars will be made in northern France. So that's kind of really, really interesting. And just to look at it, I always think it's interesting to read between the lines of what the companies are saying.

19:38So Jim Farley, who's the Ford CEO, who we're a big fan of, we've had on the podcast several times before, said it's about scale and cost, commitment to Europe, because Ford has lost a lot of market share in Europe over the last decade. It's gone down from about 7 % to about 3%. So I would say that's quite significant. It's not great. But it's very, very interesting. Renault CEO Francois Provost said we both feel confident that in passenger cars we can differentiate our brands. And sometimes it's about what they say between the lines, as I said. So they both said the two automakers do not plan to merge.

20:15And you sometimes think, do they protest too much when they say things like that? And Jim Farley even went so far as to say, I hope you don't portray this as lovers finding new lovers in reference to Ford working with Renault. because they're already working with VW as well. So it is interesting, but I completely understand it from a strategic perspective. If you're trying to cope and, you know, compete with these super agile new competitors, you have to be agile yourselves. And I do think Ford and Renault and VW are three huge organizations that are doing their best to be as fleet-footed as possible.

20:54But as I say, it's the 2028 thing that makes me think, okay, the world could look very different by 2028. And the automotive industry could look very, very different as well. I don't know if you picked up on this as well, Imogen, but the reality is that actually sales of the Explorer and the Capri have not been a massive hit in the UK. And from the article that I read, which was on Automotive News, it indicated that thousands of unsold vehicles were sitting on the Cologne Neil ground. So it is a hugely challenging market and they are being outflanked but i think this is a sensible uh response and you know if you look at the reno 5 if you look at the ford pumagenny which i've just been driving they're really really good cars but i suppose the question is are they on the software defined basis are they as good as what's coming out of uh of china what's coming out of uh korea and are they going to be cost competitive as well so fascinating to see how this plays out and also loyalty.

21:53A lot of German car buyers prefer to buy German brands, whereas maybe the Ukrainians might not be as loyal. So it really is going to vary, but Ford doing their very, very best to offer lots of different cars at appropriate price points. It's so interesting because I think if there's one thing that we know about Jim Fye having, he's been on the podcast twice, is that he's an incredibly humble human being. He's driven Chinese EVs, he totally acknowledges how brilliant they are. But he also this week wrote an article in the FT. It wouldn't have been him, would have been his PR team, let's be honest.

22:29But I found it strange because it was quite deferential. And it was almost apologetic for this move. And I don't think it quite struck the right tone. And I understand that, you know, there'll be a lot of questions about sort of how secure Ford's position is if they're making these kinds of partnerships. And there was a real plea in there to stop changing or stop sort of any kind of legislation changing so that actually the automotive industry can have some sort of certainty and that certainty that's being supplied from the governments or from the EU, that it can match the eight-year development cycles of the automotive industry.

23:06I mean, the challenge there is that, you know, we know that the Chinese brands don't have an eight-year development cycle. They're much more accelerated than that. And so, yes, 2028 does feel a long way away. And I think the other big thing for me is that, you know, if you have a vehicle that's underpinned by the Ampere platform that is fundamentally a Renault underneath, what's the value? What does Ford have to be to maintain its brand value and create experiences that are so uniquely Ford that people are willing to pay for above and beyond a different brand? Because it's no longer necessarily completely the driving experience or the build experience.

23:43It has to be something else. And I think as we enter this software defined vehicle era that's that's an excellent existential question that all of these legacy brands are having to ask themselves what is their dna what makes them them well it is fundamentally it's going to be the ux it's going to be the the user experience that's going to be definitive i think and the reality is a lot of people now ask if these cars have got google carplay as you know effectively some of the car companies i'm just going to call you out here that was like a that was that was that was that was an old person thing to say google apple carplay google okay now i'm an old person the google version and the apple version yes we know what we're talking about yeah anyway so anyway but people ask for for that you know and it's effectively automakers kind of abrogating that responsibility for for kind of in-car technology to something that people are really familiar with which shows to me that the car industry has struggled to keep pace with what's going on on our smartphones.

24:45Obviously, Tesla has very famously got fantastic software of its own, which feels a bit like Apple, but it is its own. And that's the reality of how difficult it's going to be. I mean, for me personally, Jim Farley has been a great leader and I hope he can help navigate forward through this very, very difficult period of time. but you have to say if he doesn't he definitely will uh have a job waiting for him for a chinese manufacturer as their head of exports you know um because he has been a great leader and he's been driving the xiaomi trying to understand what's going on within china uh he is a very humble guy uh but i you know i wish him all the success i hope ford you know succeeds but it is a very very tough road for them um and they are producing some good product but it does seem to me that his eyes are wide open, the business's eyes are wide open on what they need to do.

25:39But yeah, as you say, it's the software defined piece that's going to be big. And Michael Dunn's newsletter, again, a great source of information on all things China, posited the thought that actually in the future, we'd be looking at brands without factories. And that actually, would someone like Ford, VW and others actually be making a lot of their cars in China? and ultimately exporting those around the world. And you can see with things like VWID Unix, with the Hyundai Alexio that we mentioned earlier and other examples, that seems to me like a strong potential direction of travel. So we're talking about seismic change in the automotive industry.

26:23And the reality is that the EU and other countries have an opportunity to get Chinese manufacturing in their countries, but by pushing back and delaying and lobbying against their targets, actually, maybe they're actually reducing the chance that they will have the opportunity to build cars. Because fundamentally, if you've got car plants and there are employees and they are not able to work anymore in some of the traditional legacy brands, car making plants, maybe their skills will be transferable into new plants being built by other companies. So it is a knife edge, I think, what's happening here.

26:59But I think Ford are really trying to weave their way through the traffic. And it's fascinating to watch. And I wish them and Renault all the success in this kind of endeavor. But yeah, 2028 feels a long way out. If anyone is interested in the future of software-defined vehicles and how that could have an impact on the dynamics of the automotive industry, we did do a podcast with the CTO of NXP Semiconductors. NXP Semiconductors provide semiconductors to, I think, 70 % of the world's automotive brands. So they have this extremely acute sense of what is going on and who is doing what. So we will make sure to link to that podcast that we did earlier this year.

27:38In the show notes, shall we move to winners and losers of this week? Is that what it's called? Well, you try to rebrand it as peaks and troughs, ups and downs, you know, whatever I think everyone knows, you know, what we're what we're saying you know who's who's winning and who's who's losing and in the short term that's always quite fun to pick that out i think we'll start with maybe with the the the sort of down news this week which i saw that uber are pulling back on on evs um uber were you know really sort of blazing a trail in terms of this is what our direction of travel this is what we're going to do but actually their emissions have nearly doubled over the last three years um you can see this story on Bloomberg.

28:22And effectively, of course, Uber is a US-based company, and they are effectively coming out in support of Trump's anti-EV bill. And you didn't mention his name earlier, but it's almost impossible to talk on any podcast, I think, without mentioning the leader of the free world. I'm making inverted commas speech marks as I say that. And, you know, fundamentally, an ill wind is blowing from America into Canada, across Europe. You know, it's certainly fueling some anti-battery EV and anti-renewables sentiment. And that's a great shame. It's actually changing the mood of the market quite considerably.

29:04But to see Uber kind of retreat in that way is, I guess, just a sign of the times. And also on a related note, you may have seen the story that Zipcar is actually kind of withdrawing from London. So Zipcar is a shared car platform that's coming out of London. They have effectively blamed the fact that the ultra low emission zone costs are changing. You know, obviously, actually, if you have an EV in London, you've been able to drive into the centre of London without paying the congestion charge. Well, that's going to come to an end in January. And so at this point, Zip have withdrawn from the UK market.