From China to Cheltenham? Is a declining 'West' in danger of a death spiral?

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1:29So welcome to the Everything Electric podcast. I'm joined today by CEO of, well, actually you're CEO of the Fully Charged Show, but let's not confuse people because that's the company behind Everything Electric. But Dan Cesar is here with me and we haven't caught up for a while. We've both been slightly busy. I don't know how busy you've been Dan but I've been slightly busy well I've been in the machinery of the business I would say you know right in the right in the cogs right in the of of running a business and that's all good fun but I think you've been doing something a bit more like I if you ask me what I've been up to I've been locked in in the in the garden office you know just like the kind of the monkey uh meme with the with the keyboard basically uh whereas you've It makes something a bit more glamorous, I think.

2:18Well, I have. I mean, I just want to point out that you are prepping for our next live event, which is critically important. It's all well and good me swanning off around the world. So, yes, I have just been in Rome. Oh, tell us more. Yeah, just I popped over there to witness the unveiling. I mean, it is pivotal. It's divisive and everything else, but the unveiling of the Ferrari Luce. And the person who went to see the car after me was Il Papa, the Pope. went to see the car. Wow. Okay. So that's how, that's the level of... So he was your wingman? He was your... Well, I was his warm-up, let's put it like that, I think.

2:57I mean, you know, I don't think he was aware that I was there. But anyway, I didn't meet him, but that was the day after we were there. And it was fascinating, because I have been to a lot of car launches in the last 16 years. I mean, I can't remember how many. And nothing was approaching this. I mean, they really pushed the boat out. So I think they had, I don't know, it was like many, many hundreds of journalists over the period. So from all over the world. So there were Japanese, Chinese. There was a South Korean guy, loads, every European nation you can think of. Canadians. And I didn't meet any Americans.

3:31I don't know if they were there or not. They could have been. I'm not saying there were no Americans, but they weren't very apparent. But American influence in the, well, Johnny Ive is actually an Englishman, isn't he? He's English. He was a Californian influence in the whole thing, right? Yes, huge California. So Sir Johnny Ive, and Mark Newsome, who's Australian, who was lovely and who watches our show, which is very flattering to hear that, are the two partners in Love From. And I had quite a lot of problems remembering the title of their company. So they're the, I mean, just so people who, the one or two people who might not know, Johnny Ive effectively designed the iPhone and the Apple Watch and a lot of Apple products.

4:15And he's a sort of, you know, a very high status industrial designer, extraordinary. And I think whatever you think of what the car looks like, when you sit in that car and see what they've done with the interior, It is like design and engineering exquisite, you know, nirvana. It's just incredibly well thought out. I mean, one of the things that I think is just, I'm sure, I don't know if other people have done it, but I've never seen it in Rust. It has literally analog dials. Like it has a beautiful aluminum hand ground binnacle with a sort of domed glass that's all a special glass and all that stuff.

4:57And inside is an actual physical needle that can go up and down like a speedometer. But behind that is a digital screen. So it can show you revs, speed, battery temperature, and that the needle changes as you change the background. So, I mean, it's like, it was genius, but also surely someone else has done that before, but I've never seen it anywhere else on any other vehicle. So it was that. I mean, there's so much information they gave us. I mean, this is an absurdly fast, incredibly powerful, luxury five-seat, four-door luxury saloon car is what I would call it. You know, like a sedan or a saloon car with quite a – I mean, you know, the biggest trunk slash boot of any Ferrari ever made.

5:43So it has storage space. It's quite peculiar looking. It doesn't. But I was so relieved when we eventually walked into it. Because remember, Jack saw the drivetrain last year, the battery, the motors, the suspension. So we kind of knew about that. We had no idea what the car was going to be on top of it. And I was just dreading like a big bubbly SUV like everybody seems to make, especially when they first make an electric vehicle. And I went to walk in and see the roof was low. And I went, oh, good, the roof is low. That was the first thing that hit me. Anyway, that was spectacular. I just want to tell you one thing.

6:17which sets it apart from other, you know, car launches I've ever been to. I mean, normally you go to a car launch and you stay in a hotel and then you go down to the big, you know, conference centre and you see the car and people talk to you and tell you about the car, then you do a test drive or whatever. There were no test drives. This car cost half a million pounds. They're not going to let you get in one and test drive it unless, you know, they do trust you. but when for us to get from the hotel to the huge exhibition center where the car was being presented we all got in minivans that's no big deal like that there's loads of journalists i think there are 12 or 14 black with blacked out windows minivans that were very close to each other and we had to wait for ages and we couldn't understand why we were waiting and then suddenly we did start moving and we heard all these sirens and we were surrounded by italian very glamorous beautifully dressed Italian polizai with their big powerful Moto Guzzi motorbikes with a big stalk on them with the blue flashing light, Nina, Nina, Nina.

7:18And they were flanking us all the way along. So you've got to think for the UK, if you know the M25 going around London, you know, a big motorway slash freeway that circles the city. We were on the equivalent of that in Rome, travelling at like 50, 60 miles an hour and all the traffic was at a standstill, but they all had to move out of the way for a bunch of scruffy journalists to go and see a Ferrari only in Italy you know Ferrari is royalty it's just you know we would like the Pope that was and all the journalists that were on I'm sorry the one thing I should say and some people cheated our cameras were complete our phones were covered in stickers we weren't allowed to take any pictures there was a 500 ,000 euro fine if you broke the embargo and they would never talk to you again I mean they They were proper old school, roughy-toughy tabloid journalists were nervous and they were trying not to say anything, you know.

8:14So it was a very extreme event like that. So no one could film it. But of course, actually, some people did film the police. I've got to be, look, it's an old man. It's perfectly fine. About half the police officers were women and they were the most terrifying writers. You can see their hair was coming out the back and they would cut in and they'd point at a Fiat Punto and tell it to stop. They were so aggressive and so glamorous. I mean, all their uniforms were designed by, you know, Gucci, Fiorucci, somebody, somebody-chi. Just, you know, that was just... I mean, we shouldn't be impressed. You know, it's just a silly thing.

8:54But, you know, to go to a car launch where you get that sort of experience is pretty special. And we then had a nice tea cooked by a three-star Michelin, three-star chef. He was a nice Italian bloke. Well, it does sound better than what I was doing in the garden office at the same time. But also, it's given me Italian job vibes. It sounds like an extraordinary thing. Like, you know, I think probably we, as Brits, don't always appreciate how big a deal Ferrari is in Italy. And I'm really fascinated at the response to the car because, let's be honest, it was polarizing, to say the least. And I understand it.

9:30Like you're taking something with huge heritage that emotes a huge feeling amongst many Ferrari fans. And then you're kind of modernizing that and changing the design and all those sorts of things. But I wonder what the response was, whether it was quite so polarized in Italy or if it was just against it or whether it's sort of sacrilege to do something like this. And it reminded me a little bit of when Jaguar launched their 001, as it's now confirmed to be called, in that you can't really win. And actually, in the day of the influencer and in the day of social media, actually, the verdict comes in pretty quickly and intensely.

10:18I hate this. I hate this. I love it. I love it. So it must have been an extraordinary thing if you worked for Ferrari to see that, or if you were Johnny Ive to see people respond. But the design interior looks amazing. I thought the exterior looked amazing. But then again, I haven't driven or owned many Ferraris. I don't really have a lot of skin in the game. So, you know, fascinating moment in time for you to be there, I think. Yeah, no, it was. And it did feel like a pivotal thing because the kind of the idea, the sort of spirit, if you like, the notion of it came out of Silicon Valley, came out of Love From, who are a Silicon Valley company, died in the war.

10:55They're all ex-Apple, Microsoft, Google, all that. That's who makes it up. And there are engineers as well, but they're from that world. They're from very much that sort of consciousness. And what I thought was interesting was when I first heard about electric cars, which is now like 25 years ago, all the people I heard from were nerds in silicon valley who knew how to manage batteries who knew how to run battery management systems and control systems to let you send power from a battery to an electric motor you know that all came out of silicon valley not detroit in america not europe you know european car makers not japanese car makers not korean car makers definitely not chinese car makers even though they were making batteries you know they that came out of that area and that you know the idea in that time, nearly 30 years ago in Silicon Valley was, you know, Silicon Valley was innovation and creativity and probably quite liberal values of my limited experience of being there.

11:56It ain't like that now. But, you know, what is interesting is this little thing has come out of it. This design group in San Francisco who are amazing, you know, what they've achieved. Because they, you know, we don't even know half the things. So they design furniture and buildings and, you know, all kinds of others, you know, a lot of aerospace stuff. So they do a lot of interiors of aerospace. So it's very strongly, you know, influenced by aerospace design. Like, you know, your private jet has similar air vents to the Ferrari. But I remember you always... Sorry, Robert. I remember you always talking about the genesis of the fully charged.

12:35It was California, it was battery management systems, it was things like that. And it is fascinating, isn't it? We haven't gone full circle at all, because actually America's role in this is diminished very significantly. But there was a headline today and obviously there's a lot of furore over Ferrari. And the reality is that, you know, I saw an article in the Telegraph of all places today by a journalist called Ambrose Evans Pritchard. I think I've met him once who is a very intelligent guy. And he and he wrote the electric car takeover is now unstoppable. So it is a moment where, whether the traditionalists like it or not, Ferrari have to get into that game.

13:18I wonder if they'll sell quite a few of these cars in Silicon Valley. Oh, I think that's – I mean, I can so imagine a multi-billionaire Silicon Valley tech bro getting in his Ferrari. It's so – it's a foregone conclusion, I'm sure they will. I mean, and I'm sure a few traditional petrolhead-loving, you know, Ferrari owners that collect Ferrari. Imagine being able to collect Ferraris. I mean, none of them are under about£250 ,000, you know, up to£750 ,000. You know, even though it's nearly half a million pounds, it's not the most expensive Ferrari. You can spend more than that on a Ferrari today if you really need to.

13:57You know, so it is, you know, I was a little bit conflicted about it because it's a super elitist car. It kind of, you know, there's expensive cars, like there are£150 ,000. They're kind of, I feel, more uncomfortable than the one that's £480 ,000, whatever that is. It's so expensive, it goes into another realm. It doesn't affect the likes of you and me. You know, we might get to see one in the car park at Waitrose. Actually, they're not going to go to the car park at Waitrose. I do wonder if the Pope's tried to blag one. I reckon he really wants to get his hands on one. pulling a few strings.

14:34There's one thing it does that I genuinely don't understand, and the lovely Italian guy that spent hours trying to explain it to all the Brit journos, it wasn't me, none of them could get their heads around it, is that if you sit in it and you do the launch thing, and the launch, I won't go into it now, the launch thing is extraordinary. There's a physical way that you launch the car. Foot on brake, other foot on accelerator, hard-pressed both of them, and you let the brake off. it will go from 0 to 192 miles an hour, roughly that, so 250 kilometers an hour, in a certain time. But if you use the gears, it gets there quicker.

15:10I don't understand, because they're not gears. They are gear things that give you the emotional, this is how I explain it, they give you the emotional feeling of a gear. I mean, it's explained for hours, so it's not mechanical gears, but it keeps the torque of the motor at the maximum. Here's one other data fact. This is just fabulous. The electric motors, there's four of them, one for each wheel, are tiny. They're really, really small. Because we just saw the Yasser motors. Imogen and I went to see Yasser motors, which make these incredibly powerful motors very small. These are small and they're only 250 horsepower each.

15:45And there's four of them, so it's a 1 ,000 horsepower car. But they can spin, not when they're connected to the car, but on their own. a test they do is they spin from zero to I think it's 43 ,000 RPM in under a second. So they go from that to in under, I mean, it makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, it just, so everything they've done is at the absolute pinnacle of human achievement at this point. I think that's what I found fascinating is the best batteries, SK batteries made in Korea. Although they do have a big factory in China. and they did have a big factory in America, but they've closed that down.

16:25Anyway, you know, so it was an exceptional experience to do that. And then today, to contrast that, I've been driving the Leap Motor B10, but you've got to say, if you're looking for a compact SUV, I mean, the review will be probably on the show by the time this goes out, but it's a very, very nice car to drive. This episode is brought to you by Hongkook. The Hongkook Ion tyre is built exclusively for electric vehicles, engineered to deliver what EV drivers need most, confident grip, quietness, energy efficiency and long mileage. As the official tyre partner of Formula E, Hancock proves its EV technology is at the highest level of performance and brings that same innovation to every ion tyre on the road.

17:07Well, what a wonderful segue into the next topic. I've been driving and I've got, for those who can't see, I've got an Xpeng polo shirt on. and I've just come home in a rush and just thrown this old thing on. But actually, I've been driving an Xpeng G6 Performance for the last... Oh, because I know the G6 quite well, all the performance. I've got to say, it is exceptional. We'll try and get you... I just, like to say, I borrowed it very, very temporarily. I'm not being paid by Xpeng for this message, but it's right up there. It's right up there. We'll have to get you a Performance version because it comes with the black wheels and all the rest of it.

17:44Anyway, I digress. But what I'm going to ask you, and this is a kind of segue, is I live in the Surrey Hills, the flat bit of the Surrey Hills. Very flat bit. But I see electric cars everywhere, and the number now I see of Chinese-made electric cars is extraordinary. Are you seeing the same phenomenon play out in the Cotswolds? Yeah. I mean, our village is an example. So I don't know the exact number now. That was a while ago that I went and asked everyone. So it's 28 houses, a very small village. And for years, I was the special bloke that lived just on the edge of the village because I was special because I had solar panels and one of those fancy electric cars.

18:35And now there are, I think, 12 households with electric cars in the village. So, you know, that's a transformation. you know i mean because if you think it's not met that many houses about half the houses just under half houses have electric cars here lots of mgs uh definitely uh one xpeng that someone's got a black xpeng g6 uh i can't think but the others are teslas tesla i'm just going through them no one yet has got a renault 5 i'm going to be bitter when they do it's bound to happen not in But the ones I see around here is loads of electric cars. So the school where my children went to primary school, that car park would have been always, when we were there, always full of Range Rovers and Land Rovers and maybe some BMW saloon cars.

19:22Now it's every type of electric car you can see of them, and it's very, very common. And I'm not saying they're on a par with Range Rovers, but you can see loads of Jaycoo 5s around here. You can see loads of Emodas, BYD Sea Lion 7s, the Xpeng G6 that I've just mentioned. I actually did see a GLE X5 today as well. I drove one of those recently at our show in Harrogate. And it's just the changing market share must be blowing people in traditional automotives' minds. because you've built up, I guess, a moat called brand loyalty. Yeah. And it seems to me that that has been ripped up and torn to shreds.

20:14I mean, I think without making this too clumsy, we've got some interesting brands coming to our next show in Cheltenham. Yeah. We're doing our first ever show in eight years in your backyard, relatively speaking. I know. Which is very, very exciting. So coming to Cheltenham in about 10 days after this podcast, you know, get your tickets from everythingelectric.show, et cetera. But if you look at the brands that are there, Tesla are going to be there. They support mostly everything that we do. And then also BYD, MG, IM, Geely, Polestar. And then, you know, others like Nissan and Renault, they were the OGs, right, of the industry.

20:57the likes of Hyundai, Ford, Mercedes, BMW. We've just got some vehicles from Kia, from Isuzu, KGM. You know, it's a really kind of interesting and eclectic lineup. But now of the company... About half of them are Chinese. Yeah. Or built in, I mean, Polestar, you know, if you say Swedish, but it's built in China. Yeah, we don't have a Moto GQ at this event, but I'm pretty sure they're coming to the next one in Twickenham. And there are other brands on the way, you know, like GAC Ion, Neo Firefly, Xiaomi is coming early next year, Zeke is coming in the third quarter, sorry, fourth quarter of this year.

21:32I mean, it's not even like the Armada is, you know, it's fully come to the horizon yet. So it's really, really hard to map forward and think, well, what does that mean? And, you know, I've heard this a million times and everyone's bored of hearing me say it, but are there enough consumers to go around? Yes. But clearly the Chinese, The Chinese have been very clever because they've adopted a multi-powertrain approach. If the EU thought it was maybe throwing up some barriers that made it hard for them to come into Europe and compete with the European OEMs, the Chinese have been super flexible with their super hybrids, as well as obviously their pure EVs as well.

22:13So I'm looking forward to maybe a quiet test drive, the IM5. Maybe we're going to go and see MG soon in Gloucester before this event. Well, that's where you and I drove in the urban. Is it called the MG4 Urban EV? MG4 Urban EV. Yeah, I've got the hang of it now. It feels smaller than the MG4. I think it's a bit shorter, isn't it? Yeah, it is. So you're reviewing that shortly, which is great. And then we also have a company there called Big Motion World who actually sell and test drive used EVs. I was so happy. So I got an email from someone saying, I came expecting to hate this car, and it was a Tesla Model Y.

22:54Test drove a used one, and now I've got one, and I absolutely love it. So it's great to see the show having an influence. So, yeah, tons of test drives on the day. And while I'm sort of completing the thought bubble, I suppose, about the next show we've got coming up in Cheltenham, we've also got lots of home tech stuff there as well. So State is packed full of that sort of stuff, including Chook that we covered recently, which is sort of the first electric lighting efficiency company that was swarmed at Harrogate, and we just did an episode on them. Their founder has sort of built the sort of first, in inverted commas, castle in the UK for many years.

23:37We've got Valent there with their heat pumps. Heat Geek, you can get a heat pump. Heat Geek is amazing. Quote, we've got 11 Energy with their sodium-ion battery, with Summer Energy, and quite a few more. But certainly we would say that in Canada, we've got loads of car companies and loads of companies in general. Actually, the shows are a bit more compact than years gone by because we've taken them outside and we've done that quite consciously because the home energy market is quite tough. I would say, I don't want to use the word, I sound like Alan Parch and use the word moribund, but it's a bit like that in the UK home energy sector.

24:12It's a tough market at the moment. Whereas on the flip side, on the other side of the world in Australia, we've got everything electric Sydney coming in September. And it is fecund by comparison. It is unbelievable what's going on there with energy. So it just shows and the economy, it just shows the difference that politics can make. But one thing I wanted to say that I think is kind of joins the energy and car ecosystem is that BYD are launching their flash chargers soon. And they're launching them while they're announcing them in the UK. They're going to be at London Tech Week imminently. but then Bono who is the UK country manager for BYD is going to come to the Cheltenham show and you're going to have a fireside chat with him and yeah just to kind of recap what what flash charging means they're capable of speeds up to 1500 kilowatts enabling 10 to 70 percent charge in five minutes first model to showcase flash charging in the UK will be Denza Z9 GT which we hope to get our hands on at some stage.

25:11And a five-minute charge can have up to 223 miles of range. In five minutes. Each flash charger is equipped with two energy storage batteries, a combined capacity of, best part, 400 kilowatt hours. Energy is drawn from those rather than directly from the grid. The batteries themselves can recharge at speeds of up to 500 kilowatts according to charging demands and local grid infrastructure. So really interesting to see that get launched in the UK and hearing directly from BYD at our Cheltenham show about how that's going to roll out. But for a long time, Tesla Supercharger Network has been the premium experience.

25:51So it'd be really interesting to see that dynamic potentially change over the coming years. I mean, from what I understand of BYD, they'd not built that to be an exclusive BYD product. It will charge any car that's capable of taking that charge. I would be talking out of my head if I said I knew that. We'll try and find that out. I had read that somewhere, but who knows? You're probably 100 % great, but I will check that and we'll put a link about the flash charging in the show notes for this particular episode. But, yeah, it will be amazing to do a show which is, without wishing to give away where your house is, it's not half an hour from where you live, right?

26:33you know without which to be too specific and uh you know to see a whole group of people that presumably haven't been able to come to Silverstone or Farmer or London or Harrogate over the years so I'm really looking forward to that yeah and also I mean I just want to say aside from anything else Bono G who is sort of head European head of BYD is just a brilliant talker very entertaining very you know just a really engaging guy to interview he's one we've interviewed him a couple times before I saw him not long ago. He's just so funny. He just cracks me up. Comes up with some, you know, slightly off-colour remark, which you don't expect from a, but, you know, not offensive, just sneaky.

27:13You know, he's a very funny guy. He cracks me up every time I see him. Actually, that is relevant, I think, to what we were talking about in terms of the Chinese companies here, because so many of them are, will be, within the next two years, will be building cars in Europe. That's, you know, they're opening factories. and it was just, I didn't know about Leapmotor. Leapmotor have just literally in the last few weeks opened their big factory where they're going to make all the Leapmotors that you can buy in Europe in Zaragoza in Spain. And they didn't choose Coventry or Reading or Bristol where there is an engineering history going back 150, 200 years.

27:51It's strange that. And I can't work out why that is. They didn't even consider opening a factory in this country. Because at one time, like Nissan, they built this incredible factory in the north of England, but still functioning. I mean, you're trying to drag me onto very controversial ground that, of course, I will willingly go to that controversial ground. But the reality is that it is fascinating. We are going to see some Chinese manufacturing assembly in the UK, but we haven't been first on the list. And there's a very, very obvious reason that no one needs to say out loud why that has been the case.