Losers' Lame Excuses? Ute Lunacy! The BYD Supremacy?

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1:05Dan:Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Pulse podcast, the podcast where we delve into the life and death decade of the automotive industry. You are joined as always by myself, Imogen Bogle. I am a presenter on the Fully Charged and Everything Electric show or Everything Electric show under the Fully Charged umbrella. Come back to that. and Dan Caesar who is the CEO of this illustrious organization and the founder of EV UK. Dan how are you doing?

1:34Imogen:I'm really well I'm actually quite upbeat I think it's because I've been in Australia and I've been reminded that the sun shines. If anyone's listening elsewhere obviously we're based in the UK generally and it has rained every day for I think about 70 or 80 days it has been super depressing winter from that perspective so yeah i had a a week uh in sydney well actually three and a half days on the ground and if that sounds like it's you know uh indulgent i think i had about 30 meetings within that uh particular short period on the ground but it was incredible to see the sun talk to most australians uh and see what's going on uh down under well i've

2:15Dan:actually got a fact about how many days it's continuously rained for because um over the past three days we've been in wales doing a road trip across the well down the a470 which runs from the top to the bottom of wales and it was damp it was glorious it had a real scandy noir kind of vibe but um in doing that journey we found out that there has been 68 days of continuous rain in wales and I'm sure it's a similar number here in England. And it has been, it's getting into the soul.

2:51Imogen:Yes, it's a life aquatic here. It really, it's not been the best winter. But anyway, you know, I'm sure spring will be here before long. And, you know, as always, we'll try and be upbeat and positive on this podcast.

3:08Dan:Well, do you know what? I have heard some birds chirping, chirping, and that has definitely given me a little bit of hope that spring is maybe in the air. And obviously to fuel that positivity, we've got three wonderful stories to get into today. Shall we kick off with story number one?

3:26Imogen: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. This is a kind of UK-focused story, I think, but it's got real resonance everywhere else. The reality is that when you've got a new technology, you need to prime the pump. You need to get people ready for it.

4:06Imogen:There's a huge amount of education required on the subject of electric vehicles. And it does require subsidy. I mean, let's be honest, fossil fuel industries still have subsidy to this day. These are important policy levers that are required to make markets grow, to stabilize markets, etc. And when it comes to electric vehicles, quite a lot of subsidy is required because there's quite a lot of ignorance and education that we need to tackle. The reality is, if you think about all the misinformation we've seen, especially since the Shanghai Motor Show in 2023, the Shanghai shock where all the automotive execs from Germany went to the Shanghai show and saw that China wasn't selling cheaper Conor boxes.

4:50Imogen:They were selling incredibly high quality software-defined vehicles. We've seen torrents of misinformation, industrial scale amounts of misinformation for the last three or four years. EVs have always suffered from that to a degree, but it's been even worse. So there's always going to be a value to that. If you look to that in misinformation, in advertising value terms, we're looking at billions and billions of pounds of information advertising against EVs. So of course, that costs us because that means we have to spend a lot of money to get people into EVs. Now, I might sound biased, but I'm pretty convinced after over 10 years of driving EV, that are just simply better.

5:32Imogen:I know that they're cheaper over total cost of ownership as well. So it's a real frustration. And I would say, we wouldn't need some of these subsidies if there was less misinformation. There was a cost, there was a literal cost to that misinformation. So in the UK, to bring people up to speed, we have a zero emission vehicle mandate that has two timelines, 2030 and 2035. And the 2030 date means that you really, I mean, by 2030, things will change a little bit. And again, by 2035. So the idea was that by 2030, you could only sell as new cars, battery EVs or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles or plug-in hybrid vehicles, combustion vehicles, maybe I should call them.

6:13Imogen:And that was tweaked last year, tweaked to the extent that actually some mild hybrids were included in that 2030 to 2035 phase-out period. And that from 2035, it's battery EVs only. And there are lots of people saying, well, why is this necessary? Well, we do need to prime the pump. And we do need to set targets because the car industry as a whole would rather things didn't change. Change is expensive. So there has been a Z mandate. It has been diluted a little bit. And it's under threat again. The problem is some people will never be satisfied and people will try and slow it down. And so what we're seeing with the ZEV mandate in the UK is that there are voices offstage very obviously calling for ZEV to be weakened again.

7:03Imogen:The idea was that 80 % of car sales by 2030 needs to be battery electric vehicle. And there are a few dissenting voices saying that that shouldn't be the case. And I think, you know, there is only a few of the car makers, but they're actually sort of trying to bully the government and back them into a bit of a bit of a corner. The last time we spoke on the Pulse podcast, of course, Kia Starmer had just been to Beijing. And it certainly looks like there is something of a thawing in terms of or an acceptance of the fact that Chinese cars are going to be a big part of the future here in the UK. So there is a bit of a narrative going around, an insidious narrative, which says that Z targets are unviable, they're unachievable.

7:46Imogen:And we've even heard that from the SMMT, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. And we know that's coming from two or three manufacturers in particular. but the reality is actually if you look at it statistically new automotive a great company that we work with here in the uk they actually know that the zev targets uh the real zev targets are offset by uh other things credits and such like and actually a whole bunch of the car makers are actually kind of pretty much on track nine oems or nine plus oems are kind of overachieving it's the real ZEV targets. Three OEMs are within two percentage points and about 10 of them are nowhere near.

8:27Imogen:So when a car company comes out and says it's unviable, where are they? How are they doing? That's the question we should be asking. And it's starting to sound from a small coterie of car companies that they are making excuses just because their EVs aren't selling at the level that they would hope, the level that meets these targets. Others are doing really, really rather well. Can you guess who those are, Imogen?

8:52Dan:No, I'm still doing well. Well, obviously, Tesla will be doing super well. I assume Renault has done pretty well this past year. Hyundai, I bet, is up there, but I think might not be as good as we think. And I think that's probably because we just see the electric vehicles and we forget that they do other stuff as well. and i'm gonna wage a bet that in the bottom a little um jaguar land rover perhaps well it's a

9:21Imogen:good guess so yeah tesla obviously only sells battery uvs so clearly it's it's doing very well byd the byd organization which isn't just byd brand or other brands is almost 60 percent of its sales a battery uv which is which is great gili which has its own brand but also Polestar, Volvo, et cetera, is doing pretty well, just shy of 40%. There's a whole mix of brands there that are unaccounted for. I think it's some of the new Chinese entrants, which accounts for just over 30%. BMW doing quite well, just under 30%. Renault just under the 28 % target, but doing well. Obviously, they've got some great cars, some great product at the moment, which helps.

10:02Imogen:Mercedes not too far off and BMW not too far off, but all of those companies listed actually are are meeting the real targets if not the 28 they're meeting the real targets then there are some that are what i describe as near as damage so ford aren't too far off ford have been in the news a lot recently clearly being based in the us and with kind of regressive policy going on there it has been tough for them and the shundai group are not too far off as well obviously that includes uh genesis uh and and kia too um a little bit of a shout out for stellantis all hope is not lost they're nearish to their numbers, but they're certainly very visibly stressed as a business.

10:42Imogen:We've spoken about that on this podcast quite recently. But yes, it's the companies near the bottom of the list that I think is probably the most interesting. And yes, JLR, which is owned by Tata, of course, from India, are down right at the bottom, along with a lot of the Japanese brands. sadly that includes nissan who were an early ev leader but also includes toyota and honda and other brands as well and japan i think is uh was in the driving seat and now isn't uh and you know particularly from from toyota as we know they're kind of lobbying quite actively uh quite actively to kind of slow down their targets and things like this but they are making excuses because meanwhile in Norway about half of Toyota's sales new car sales are battery heavy so it can be done it's so fascinating and I really want to be careful in how I say this because I haven't

11:43Dan:done my research so I'm going to say this I'm going to go away and come back with you know more facts but I think one of the things that's so interesting about electric vehicles is that Obviously, there's like energy security in there. There's also protecting legacy industries. That's why UJLR is a flagship British brand, all this sort of stuff. And people want to ensure its survival, yada, yada, yada. There's consumer choice of what is the better vehicle to drive. There's obviously the climate question. And of course, there's that sense, you know, for Japan of where is the energy coming from?

12:17Dan:and following the nuclear disasters that they've had there I think there is fear around supplying sufficient electricity to that market and therefore their vehicles being totally dependent on electricity as well but as I say I need to take that away and verify all of those facts because I have mentioned that on a podcast before and actually Robert totally disagreed with me I think it's the first thing we've really disagreed on. He was like, that's utter nonsense. That's such a bullshit excuse. But I would be really fascinated to understand a little bit more about the history to see where that fear of electricity generation has maybe impacted an automotive strategy as well.

13:03Imogen:Well, I think it's completely counterintuitive. Just to focus a little bit more on Toota, They're not the only company in this space, but the reality is we know they lobby in multiple countries against battery EVs. They've obviously been pushing for hydrogen and hybrids for a long period of time. No one serious now believes that hydrogen passenger vehicles are a thing. Obviously plug-in hybrids are probably going to enjoy something of a resurgence, although long-term, the trajectory for us is very clear. It's battery EV because of efficiency, because of cost, who wants to lug around to powertrains, et cetera, et cetera.

13:42Imogen:But I think it's super counterintuitive in that in Norway, there is competition and pressure and most car sales now are battery EV. So the reality is that in Norway, Toyota is selling a huge percentage of its cars, over half of battery EV. By arguing to lower targets in the UK, meanwhile, they're never really fully committing, then they don't really have to kind of hit those numbers. And these targets, as I said, they need to exist. Car companies, I think it was Ford and Lee Iacocca back in the day, sort of resisted seatbelts, for example. Car companies are conservative. They don't want to spend more money unless they absolutely have to.

14:24Imogen:So I do understand that and it's a difficult uh it's a difficult line for car companies but the reality is the targets if everyone was meeting them then the targets are too low there needs to be targets if you know you're saying actually the real targets actually over half of the companies are kind of making it there's a few that are not so far away and then there's a maybe less than half are below it i would argue the targets are absolutely spot on The targets are there and designed to actually drive behavior change in the automotive industry. And to me, it's working. So from our perspective, with my other hat on working for Electric Vehicles UK with Dr.

15:03Imogen:Andy Palmer and Tanya Sinclair, I would say to government, talk to us. Don't just talk to the car companies that make cars here in the UK. Talk to the whole automotive industry and talk to us so we could talk you through the bigger picture. because just because one car company is kind of making excuses, being very, very noisy, doesn't mean that the whole battery EV revolution is at risk. It just means that that company is struggling. And I think we really, really need to talk more closely with people like Keith Dahmer, Rachel Reeves, with Peter Kyle, a very senior level in government, to make them understand actually that even if you weaken Zez, I'm afraid people will still want to weaken it further.

15:47Imogen:So I think they should stick to their guns. And I'm kind of a bit fed up with the excuses I'm hearing now from certain car companies. It's starting to get to the point where you're thinking, you know, this is becoming a bit of a joke.

16:01Dan:I do think two things because there is the counter argument that like okay targets are good incentives are good they prove a direction of travel there is still the argument that actually rather than sort of saying how many what percentage of electric vehicles should have been sold it should have been this percentage of your fleet needs to be this amount of efficient and actually what people would have found is that the most efficient powertrain is electric and that would have happened by accident but the technology choice would have been led by the automotive brand so I can like see where there's been some frustration but I think it's also slightly splitting hairs but the second thing I think is that obviously we can like group these different car brands into how they're performing and there should be a normalized standard of like here's our A stars here's our A's here's our B's here's our C's and you know suddenly if you had these luxury marks like JLR being branded a D brand or an E brand like actually would that inject some kind of you know want to do better or perhaps i'm just totally exposing how competitive and grade focused i am um but you know it's like arguing for for the requirement to get an a star to be lower it doesn't serve anybody really well over many years we've run the fully charged live

17:15Imogen:shows now everything electric shows around the world and so this news doesn't really come as a surprise we know who the car companies are that really want to sell battery b's because you'll see them at those shows i think we've had toyota one show out of 22 uh in eight years uh and some car companies have been almost ever present and it's those car companies that are at the top of this list and are doing best so it is a strange world where some are really committed really trying their hardest to sell sell ebs and and others are doing almost everything in their power to to to avoid that but i thought it was an interesting story and um you're going to see a lot more of this in europe and and elsewhere there's a lot of arguing with toss and unfortunately some car companies are going to suffer a lot more um and you're going to see a lot more kind of excuses made but i would just say it's really really important for everyone to well we know one car company sales if they're poor does not mean that battery ev cells are down generally uh if that was the case then uh the likes of byd wouldn't be doing quite as well as they are but there's plenty of room for growth.

18:19Imogen:And it's an interesting story. But yeah, I want a real frustration, I think, for us to see things like the ZEV mandate potentially weakened again, because that will hit the UK in the pocket. The last tweaks that were made around a year ago to change mild hybrids going back into that phase-out period cost 2 million car sales out of a potential 6 million by 2030. That's£70 billion worth of car sales alone. And that's not including the ancillary losses from home charging, route charging, energy tariffs, all the rest of it. It's a huge, huge cost to emergent EV industry in the UK. And if it gets weakened further, I think it will be lights out for quite a lot of companies.

19:03Imogen:So let's hope that the government sticks to its guns because I actually think the Z mandate, for all its faults, is generally driving us in the right direction.

19:43Imogen:We'll be right back.

19:51Dan:Shall we move to story two? Ute lunacy. What on earth are we talking about here?

19:57Imogen:Well, I've been in Australia, so I haven't quite started to pick up all the vernacular. But for those who aren't really familiar, I guess a Ute is a kind of a pickup truck or a sort of commercial vehicle in Australia. They are huge, literally, and in terms of sales as well down under. So I saw a lot of those around. But actually what's going on at the moment with government levers in Australia is there is actually a sort of a fringe benefit tax that is being reviewed, basically. And it could, if that is reduced, could really affect EV sales in Australia, which aren't quite where they are here in the UK.

20:38Imogen:So I guess for awareness, everyone knows almost every car sold now in Norway is battery electric. If you go through the Scandies and you look at Netherlands, for example, lots of those countries at 40%, 50%, 60%, 70 % car sales. China is growing very, very fast. UK is at about one in four car sales. Germany is not far behind, but Australia is less than one in 10. So it's still quite early for that market. It's still a fragile market. And equally, they have had to start their ramp up in that kind of post-misinformation age, I think. So it is a different ball game now um there's lots of pickup trucks driving around lots of lots of evs but there is the fears that the fringe benefit tax uh if it is change will actually have a big negative impact on on battery ev cells there meanwhile and i've got this actually off uh off linkedin i'm over there quite a lot as as you might know his name is uh francis via boom uh i don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

21:37Imogen:Apologies, Francis. But he is actually the CAO at Rewiring Australia. And he said, what do you think of my new Rewiring Australia company car? I was joking, of course, but he was pictured in a Dodge Ram at one of those huge sort of pickup trucks. And actually, the reality is that there is a tax breaks, basically, for buying utes in Australia. So actually, loads of people are running around with them, even though they don't necessarily need them for work. And they've got, you know, obviously, they're very, very heavy, but they're tax deductible, you can use them for work. And there are about 50 % more Utes than actually tradies, I think, in Australia.

22:18Imogen:So this is something that people have been kind of jumping on, getting these huge kind of vehicles, which weighs sort of a ton, you know, put out a ton more of CO2. and actually the government is effectively gifting uh sort of 1200 in tax breaks so it's basically a reverse carbon price um and the argument is going from the ev industry in australia maybe if you are struggling for money and you want to shuffle money around maybe don't look fringe benefits tax maybe look at um the the benefits that the utes are getting so it's it's a really interesting story i thought um and the reality is that i think governments have got to just look at it not just through carbon but also the size of vehicles road size you know all those other things the road surfaces in sydney aren't aren't great actually and a lot of that will be down to to the the heat i think but um there are some huge huge brakes pickup trucks etc riding around one occupant at any given time.

23:21Imogen:So there are ways in which if the Australian Treasury is looking to kind of tweak and save, there are some other ways to do it rather than kind of cutting battery EV cells off on the knees.

23:33Dan:It's so interesting. And I'm sure there'll be people listening thinking, yes, but in Australia, people do huge mileage. And I will say to that, that a few weeks ago, we had Tim Jarrett from Ausgrid, the equivalent of like National Grid, but in Australia on the podcast. And he was like, yes, the edge cases of vehicle usage are much, much, much more extreme in Australia. And of course, for those edge cases, not suggesting that they need to get themselves into a BYD Dolphin Surf. However, for most people's mileage, it's the same as the UK.

24:05Imogen:Yeah, I think actually the average is lower in Australia. So I've been, as I say, lots of meetings in Australia. So there's definitely that edge case perception. What if I need to go this far, but the reality is people don't. And I think Francis, who I mentioned earlier, made a kind of interesting point. He said, we're spending large sums on tax exemptions for huge cars that can barely be defended as work vehicles. While we talk about repairing the budget using the only measure, the EV discount that's actually working so far to drive a shift to a transport sector that runs on Australian-made electricity instead of imported petrol.

24:40Imogen:And that's the point in Australia that market should be going super fast. They have huge, huge amount of solar potential, rooftops covered in solar more than any other country, batteries being installed at a fair lick as well. They have that resource and they could talk about resilience, self-reliance. They could be providing all electricity for most of their vehicles rather than importing petrol. And I think that's a key point if I was speaking to the treasury. Let's not be too siloed and just look in one area. This is a huge benefit potential for Australia that I think is sat on a renewables gold mine.