How BYD beat Tesla

25:15I also think the fact that it was happening to children, minors, I mean, basically across the board, it's a huge bad thing. But the fact that the company didn't do much about it at all until a ton of countries started talking about or banning X also told me a lot. I think a ton of countries started investigating. Nothing really happened. A ton of countries said, oh, we're probably going to ban it. Nothing really happened. A couple of countries did say they're going to ban it. Okay, now it looks like XAI is starting to make some changes. So I think it was also kind of an interesting example of how much power people have.

25:59You know, a lot of times we feel like we don't have any say in what these platforms do, but we do as a collective. So I think that was kind of a good example of that. And that's also part of why it's a big deal. Not only the fact it was happening and how bad it was, but also the response and what actually ended up making a shift. yeah yeah that's a good way of looking at it and i think that that sort of pace of response that you talk about has been really interesting to watch because i i agree with you that my my immediate reaction was like obviously this is reprehensible and awful right like this shouldn't be happening this shouldn't be allowed to happen uh liz lapata wrote a great piece for us about the the ways in which like tim cook and sooner pichai are culpable in this and i agree with all of it it did seem for a while like nothing nothing would change and nothing would come of it right and And there's a lot of that right now, particularly when Elon Musk is involved.

26:47But there is a sense that this platform is already sort of off the rails and bizarre, and it's run by this person who has sort of proven himself untouchable over and over and over again, that maybe nothing will happen. But it does feel like some combination of the mounting political pressure and the just obvious horrors of it, particularly as it relates to children, it does seem like there are real consequences and that things are going to have to change as a result of those real consequences. Like the nihilist in me says it'll be a lot of yelling that ultimately doesn't really go anywhere. But like you said, there are starting to be like in the UK, this stuff has already started to change because the UK has made and followed through on threats about the platform as a result.

27:35Definitely. And I mean, the Take It Down Act that finishes going into effect in May, I think we'll also have some some authority here because right now it's already not allowed, but plowrooms don't have to really fully figure out how to take these things down until May. So I think we'll see more changes in the next six months. But yeah, I mean, I think the global response to this has been really interesting and moved the needle a little bit. I think the fact that, yeah, like popular celebrities back when they were minors are seeing this happen. And, you know, like there's just honestly a bipartisan issue is like child safety.

28:14So I think that's kind of why this has happened so quickly, because on both sides of the aisle, everyone agrees we shouldn't have deep fakes of children, especially, you know, undressed ones. I think everyone can agree on that, honestly. Yeah. If anything, you can get too much policy done by saying we have to protect the children. Right. It is one of the few things that everybody agrees on, which is which is good. All right. Last one. Gmail AI inbox. this is a thing we haven't really talked about on this show but it is it is like a surface billions of people use all the time and and google is like rewriting a lot of people's email inboxes with ai big deal medium deal small deal okay i don't know how this is like in the full big picture context but to me it's a big deal i think email is the worst it honestly if I'm like being honest about like the big picture, probably a medium deal.

29:09But I think email is like the it's the bane of my existence. It's the worst thing in the world. I truly believe that one of the best uses of AI could be actually fixing email and just keeping track of the actual threads you're responding to. It's probably because we're journalists. You know, it's like I get like 300 emails a day. I give everyone my number because I'm like, please text me because I may miss it in the flood. I think, you know, I would love to have a list. Yeah. What they're suggesting, I think is going to be great. I know other people use certain like AI powered email clients that, you know, help them a lot.

29:41But I think Google's large influence and just the fact that it's like such a ubiquitous tool, Gmail, them doing something to kind of help move the needle here is going to be at least a medium deal for most people, but a big deal for me. Yeah, I sort of lay it in the same place. I think medium deal is probably the right answer at the end of this because we wrote a couple of stories. Jay Peters covered this and tried it out for us. And the comments on his stories were very funny from a bunch of people who were like, what are you, 72 years old? You still use email? And then a bunch of other people who were like, I have 150 ,000 unread emails.

30:17And what I need is Google to be like, here are the two that matter. And I don't know what you're like as an emailer, but I used to be a really religious inbox zero person. I would go through every email. If I had five things in my inbox, it would stress me out. And I was like, very intense about making sure I was caught up on email. And somewhere like two or three years ago, that just collapsed on me. And now I have I can just look at this right now. I have 361 emails in my inbox, which does still make me feel sort of itchy to say two thirds of these I probably don't need to see and will never see again.

30:51But a third of them I should probably reply to. And so the idea of having something that is like a supercharged version of like the Gmail nudges where it'll just pull a thing up being like, you should reply to this. You got it five days ago. Do you care? That could be very valuable. That said, I think email just as a thing everybody does all day is a kind of rapidly dying idea. In part, it's Gmail's fault. Like its filters are bad. We all get too much spam. I think email is just like it's a surface everyone interacts with, but is less and less important to how people sort of do their lives in communications, that I feel like the idea of this even a few years ago would have been monumentally huge.

31:32And now it feels like it's smaller only because email is smaller. Agreed. Yeah, also the search sucks too, I have to say. But yeah, I mean, I think, you don't even want to see my inbox. I can't even tell you the number. You will faint. Do it, prove it, get it right now. Go to your inbox. How many do you have? Okay, my personal one, 313. 13 but that's like I know what they all are it's like I'm just leaving someone red because you know sure my work my work one I only open the emails that I actually need to see so I should I need to mark all the rest as red but it's like there's so many that I really just open the ones I need to see I don't look at the rest um I think you're gonna faint say the number 12 ,000

32:1912 ,000. Listen, I used to be like you, though. I'm not kidding. I used to be a psycho about being inbox zero. I could not leave the day with even one email in my inbox. But my most viral tweet of my life was me saying, basically, you can choose between, as a journalist, having a life, staying on top of email, and writing good stories. And I truly believe I've chosen having a life and writing good stories, but I can't stay on top of my email. I do click the ones I need to click, but I'm like, I can't just like mark all the rest is red. It's just too crazy. So yeah, I'm at 12 ,000 for the foreseeable future.

32:52At least our emails delete every 90 days. Once you get this feature and use it, I need you to come back on and talk about it because everybody gave Jay a bunch of crap. Jay is a person who was like an inbox zero person. He's very organized and very on top of things. And everybody's like, this is not for you. You don't need this feature. People with 12 ,000 emails in their inbox need this feature. So once you get to try it. Sincerely, I think you and I should both test this, see if it matters, and then we're going to come back on and litigate the future of email. It's going to be great. I can't wait.

33:18It's going to be changed my life. Yeah. Until then, we will leave it at medium deal, and we will see how it goes. All right. Hayden, thank you for doing this. Again, there's a lot of AI stuff coming, so you will be back a lot. Can't wait, truly. For the rest of our lives, but thank you for catching up with me. This was great. It's a pleasure. See you soon. All right, we got to take a break, then we'll be right back.

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37:14All right, we're back. Andy Hawkins is here. Hi, Andy. Hello. Tell me about your CES experience just before we get into this. It was like CES is such a car show that kind of wasn't a car show this year. Yeah, it kind of lost a bit of its car show qualities this year. And I think that that was surprising a little bit, you know, because in years past, It has the auto announcement have really just dominated the show. And this year it was a little bit absent. We got more news from Sony and Honda's Afila. But yeah, for the most part, most of the major car companies stayed away. And I think that that was kind of like reflective of a couple things.

37:56The car industry, especially in the US, but also in Europe, is kind of going through some doldrums right now with tariffs and rising costs and disappearing incentives. and I think just like a lot of the the gravity is now being sort of shifted to China which I think is what we're here to talk about and China is not much of a presence in the U.S. so it didn't really make sense for China to come to CES although there was one company and it was Geely Geely did come to CES the movie with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez no although I'm glad that you brought that up because I have lots to say about the movie Geely Geely G-E-E L-Y, the parent company of Volvo and Polestar, which are two brands that sell in the U.S.

38:45That company says that they plan on selling a lot more cars, including their Zeker electric vehicles in the U.S. in a couple of years. So that was a really interesting announcement from them. Yeah. OK, so your point about China is, in fact, what I want to talk about. So you and I have talked a bunch about the kind of global dynamics of the car industry and how they've been changing and the ups and downs of EVs. But at the very beginning of this year, a really fascinating thing happened, which is that Tesla officially lost its title as the world's best-selling EV maker to a company called BYD out of China.

39:19And this, I confess, is a company I have been hearing about for a long time. In the United States, we just don't hear that much about Chinese car manufacturers, but BYD seems to have hit this kind of escape velocity and become a really interesting global brand. And I know nothing about this company. So I have to assume I'm not the only one. So I have brought you here to explain both what BYD is, why it's so successful, and what it matters. Does that sound good? That sounds great. Okay. So let's just start this at the very beginning. What is BYD and where did it come from? So BYD stands for Build Your Dreams.

40:00Incredible. I love it already. I mean, we're off to the races already. It was founded in the 90s as a battery supplier for mobile phone companies, mostly like Motorola and Nokia. And then they decided around the early 2000s that they were going to pivot to become a car company. at that time China's car industry was sort of like in its infancy they had not yet emerged as the dominant car market in the world at that point so it was like interesting timing that BYD sort of founded its car division in like 2003 it's also a very funny pivot it's like that reminds me of Dyson being like well we make fans we can make cars it's like I don't I don't think it's quite that much that simple left turn I think like the battery is sort of the thing that kind of like is at the center of this decision.

40:50And that will become a lot more important later on. True. In that sense, it was very prescient of them to make that decision 20 plus years ago. But when they started, it was going to be like an internal combustion engine company. They had not yet centered on EVs at that point because as we saw globally, EVs were not really a thing in the early 2000s. Tesla had not even launched at that point. So they made their first combustion engine vehicle, I think was in 2005. And then they started exploring hybrids around that around 2008. But there was a couple of pivot points for BYD that kind of like set the stage for where they were going to end up.

41:30The first was in 2008, which is when Warren Buffett decided to take a 10 % ownership stake, injecting about$230 million in the company, which really gave them kind of like a lot of runway to start making cars in earnest. because the cars that they were making up until that point were not well received. They were kind of considered to be clunkers. And I know that they brought them to a few auto shows in the early 2000s. And I was like reading back through some like car and driver articles around that time. And like they were being pretty merciless in their assessment of these early BYD vehicles.

42:10So we got the Warren Buffett investment in 2008. So that really sort of set them on the path. They started making hybrids, and then their first electric vehicle came in 2010. It was the E6. And then another sort of pivot point was in 2016. They hired this guy named Wolfgang Egger, who is a head of design at Audi, I believe, and Alfa Romeo and a bunch of European brands. So they poached this guy from Europe and said, we need a complete redesign, a complete rethink of how we're approaching. Our cars are getting slammed in the press. We need to start taking this seriously. So they brought Edgar on board and he oversaw a complete redesign of BYD's vehicles.

42:54They started gaining some traction, getting some attention. People started to receive them a lot better. The journalists were receiving them a lot better. And then in 2019, you know, China's auto market was really sort of like growing by leaps and bounds. And BYD was sort of riding that wave. And they decided to sort of start to look beyond China. Like, what if we started exporting our vehicles elsewhere in the world? And that really began in earnest in 2020, around the same time that Tesla dropped into China, built its factory in that country. And then it was sort of like the EV war was off to the races at that point.

43:32Like, you know, Tesla started making cars in China. BYD started making its cars in earnest, its EVs and hybrids as well. And then we had a real competition on our hands. And I think that that sort of was the origins there. The timing of all of that is really interesting because on the one hand, BYD timed a couple of things really well, right? It seems like making that decision to say, okay, we want to do great design. We want to be much more thoughtful about making cars that are, you know, good. Timed that sort of perfectly, like right as the whole car market was about to go through a really fascinating transition, both because of EVs and then because of the pandemic.

44:10And then there's a lot of geopolitical reasons like that was the moment you wanted to make that decision if you were going to make that decision. The company, I guess, had also been around for, what, 22 years at the time. So it's like it both managed to sort of it seems like cockroach its way through a couple of decades of strange times, but then also like be there and be ready at the moment there was some space for something big and new to happen. Yeah, I think that that's right. And I think a lot of that had to do with the industrial policy in China at the time as well, which is when China sort of, you know, sort of started deciding that, hey, you know, we think that electric vehicles are going to be the future.

44:49You know, China was having enormous pollution problems, obviously, over the course of the last several decades. And they started pivoting hard to new energy vehicles, as they called them. And so that – I think BYD really was able to take a lot of advantages from this sort of industrial policy that was put in place where there's like a lot of heavy subsidies coming down from the Chinese government and also sort of a direction from the Communist Party that they wanted to really control the supply chain, which meant not only are we going to be pivoting to these new energy vehicles, but we need to sort of – from well to wheel, essentially.

45:27We need to be able to control everything that goes on where it comes to mining the minerals, processing the minerals, making the batteries that would go into the vehicles. They wanted to just sort of have a heavy hand on all of this. And BYD was sort of, amongst other Chinese companies as well, was sort of well positioned to benefit from that policy. Got it. Okay. And I think the being versus Tesla of it all seems like an important piece of that, too. I was reading this story the other day. The New York Times had a big story about this gigantic trade surplus that China has. And it was making the point that one of the things that China has made a point of is what you just said, taking all sort of imports out of the question, right?

46:12Like getting lots of imports is not important. We want to replace all of that stuff with domestic capability. And I think as this was happening, if I have the history timeline here, right, this was when it was like Tesla is going to take over the world. It is the most important company. It's going to go into China and just take it over. And this is going to be huge. And it makes a lot of sense that if you are the Chinese government, you want to have a homegrown domestic, honest to God competitor to Tesla kind of as quickly as you can. And it seems like BYD was one of the companies for a variety of reasons that was really well set up to do that.

46:44Yeah, I think so, because I think the way that they went about the sort of like attacking this problem was a lot more strategic than Tesla. Right. Tesla came into the market and I think that they assumed and they were correct for a while that there would be a lot of demand for their, you know, sort of technologically advanced, well made, well received electric vehicles. It's hard to remember back to the phase when everybody thought Teslas were the coolest. I know. Like, seriously, it's very funny now because a Tesla, even just as an object you see on the road, is such a fraught thing that comes with so many other connotations.

47:20But there was a long run where Teslas were just objectively cool and everyone liked them. And it is useful for this conversation to remember that this was that time. It was not that long ago, too. Yeah. It was very recent that there was this. Seriously. And we're sort of living in a new world now. But yeah, I think that that's absolutely correct. And, you know, I think BYD and how they sort of their strategy was a lot more interesting because because they had this, you know, this legacy already of sort of starting out as a battery manufacturer. So they were able to sort of control the battery supply chain and then also make batteries that had emerged as being a lot better than most of the batteries that were out there.

48:05They were cheaper to make. They started out with these lithium phosphate batteries that were a lot cheaper to make. Didn't have as much range as the nickel cobalt magnesium batteries, but they were a lot cheaper. And that allowed them to bring the price down, which we could talk about, which was that BYD was just really sort of just excelled at these low priced models that in a way that the European manufacturers that were operating in China, most notably Volkswagen, but also Tesla, had not really focused on at the time because it was really expensive to make electric vehicles. still is the battery is the most expensive thing that goes into the vehicle can add costs around seven thousand eight thousand dollars uh for companies like tesla uh thirteen thousand dollars even for companies like ford and gm uh byd was able to bring that down to about six thousand dollars per vehicle um which then when you have a battery that's that cheap to make you can start selling vehicles and they did that were you know around like you know u.s currency ten thousand $12 ,000.

49:11And I think that that really positioned them to grow exponentially, not only in China, but then now we're starting to see how their export business has been building. And there's these, I mean, if I could just with a quick aside for a personal story, I was in Brazil a couple of years ago visiting a close friend of mine, and we took a lot of taxis everywhere we went, Ubers. And I was shocked that the vast majority of the vehicles that we took when we are driving around in Rio were BYD vehicles. And it was kind of like my introduction, right? I have seen BYD vehicles. I've never driven one myself.

49:47We can get to that as well. They're just not really available in the US. And I've never been to China. If The Verge would like to fly me to China, I'd be happy to go. We could go together. It could be a little field trip. But I had not been behind the wheel of a BYD vehicle. And I've suddenly found myself in a lot of BYD vehicles over the course of like six days that I was there and they were extremely comfortable. They handled very smoothly. I talked to a few of the drivers and they talked about how cheap they were to acquire and how inexpensive they were to recharge. And it just was like a great vehicle for them.

50:19Here in the United States, you see a lot of Teslas that are taxis. I just, I think if BYD was able to sell their vehicles here in the US, you would suddenly start to see them everywhere just because of how well they're made. Okay, first of all, And top gear style Andy and David go to China and drive Chinese cars all over the place is 100 % a thing we need to manifest into existence. Let's do it. Nilai, if you're listening, and I know that you are, please consider this a story pitch. the price quality thing is one of the things I want to talk about because you've mentioned to me before on the show that one that that price thing is a really important piece of what has made Chinese cars successful that they're able to make particularly these kind of entry level vehicles just as good and much cheaper and that that ends up being a very powerful tiebreaker right but it also seems like even recently something has changed where that's not the only way these cars are winning anymore.

51:18And I think like you and Neelai are perpetually sharing these YouTube and Instagram links of like influencers being blown away by Chinese cars that you can't buy in the United States. Is BYD one of those companies? Like, is it starting to do interesting new things in its cars that like are sort of objectively cool other than just we're able to do the basic thing cheaper and more efficiently than anybody else? Yeah, I think so. They're definitely part of that conversation. And I think that that is the product of the very intense competition that was going on in China, right? You had companies like BYD, but also like Li Auto and NIO and Geely and a lot of other ones that are, I mean, like, I think I read somewhere that there's like over 150 different nameplates in China, auto nameplates, which is just like insane.

52:13It's like, I don't under, and like the market can't really sustain all of those different brands. And you've seen a lot of them, you know, sort of fall by the wayside. And there's like an intense price war that's going on right now. And BYD is, you know, is suffering, you know, while they have taken the crown away from Tesla, they're also kind of suffering domestically because of this intense price war that's been going on. Well, that's something even the Chinese government has talked about, right? We have to get away from this incredible race to the bottom that has happened because we have had this explosion in capacity and manufacturing ability and all of these new companies that it has become.

52:49They're running towards like being the same business as like Alibaba phone charters. You can get anything you want for four dollars. It's like that's not where you want to go with your car industry. Yeah, it's very the government is doing what it can to try to cool things off a little bit. But then I look and BYD sells a car that is like over$100 ,000. So there's clearly other games to play here. There's a whole range. You've got sort of like on the high end, you've got your Yang Wang U7s and U8s, which are sort of like their flagship luxury sedans that have like insane performance capabilities, like supercar level, like 1300 horsepower, quad motor setups, advanced level two plus plus point to point driving assistance, like Tesla full self-driving stuff, long range capabilities.

53:35The batteries can just go further than a lot of other competitors in the luxury market. And it just offers the interiors are extremely luxurious. People want to use the baked-in native software in these vehicles because of how good they are, right? No one's trying to fork anything to a phone projection. CarPlay, Android Auto is not part of the conversation there. because everything is just like, it's connected to your personal phone, your devices, while also offering like a lot more on top of that. So, and I think like, again, that was part of sort of like this competitive landscape that existed in China, that sort of like you had to advance, you had to hire all of these software engineers and like BYD and others have poached a lot of people from around the world when it comes to vehicle design, when it comes to software, when it comes to all of these things that sort of are making the cars as desirable as they are.

54:34So you've got your Yang wings at the top competing with your Mercedes and your Audis. And then you've got sort of like your mid tier, like the Kin Plus, the Kin L, which are sort of like more compact sedans and SUVs. You've got like the BYD Song series, which is like compact crossover SUVs that are sort of like in the mass market area. And then you've got on the very low end you've got your seagulls which is sort of the one i think that has gotten the most attention uh internationally which is like this ultra affordable uh city car that sells for under ten thousand dollars in china oh wow um and now that has that car has made it to europe where it's being sold as the dolphin surf i love the names of these vehicles they're so great like i like both seagull and dolphin who would want to drive a dolphin surf Like, you know, oh, I just seem to run to the store.

55:27I'll take the dolphin surf. Like, come on. I'm in. That sounds great to me. And then you've also got like the Addo 3, which is also a very successful export for BYD that's now sort of like, you know, storming across Europe and Australia as well as other markets as well. So I think rather than just sort of camp out in one of these segments, BYD has sort of spread itself across the entire market. I think in a really smart way that GM previously has sort of been sort of like the model of how you can compete across all of these different markets from Chevy to Cadillac. Right. And I think BYD has sort of copied that, but it's executed it in a lot more strategic and successful way.

56:16I was just going to ask, is there a manufacturer that our audience might be more familiar with that you feel like is the closest analog to what BYD is doing? Is it is it kind of old school GM? Yeah, I really do think that it is. I think it's very much like kind of a GM story in how they have been able to diversify across a majority of segments, but also, you know, sort of like dominate their domestic market and then become like a serious player in these sort of global exported markets as well. So I think that that's, you know, sort of in some ways is copying kind of like the GM model from many years ago.

56:56I saw a statistic somewhere about how like the last time that a company has been able to achieve the growth success and the export success was GM. And that was like in the 1950s. Oh, wow. So it hasn't happened since then. And while I think BYD still has a little bit of catching up to do in order to become like a top global leader like Toyota or Volkswagen has become, they're nipping at their heels. Like it's not going to be too much longer before I think we see a Chinese company like BYD at the top of the list. So is BYD kind of the singular breakout star of this huge China automotive push over the last, I mean, really couple of decades?

57:44But even in the last few years, as this has really grown, is BYD the sort of true tip of the spear there? Sort of like in the ways that Tesla has emerged over the last few years, if we just ignore the last couple of most recent years, as sort of like the symbol of U.S. innovation. I think BYD is sort of seen in the same way. It's seen as an innovative leader, but also sort of as a symbol of like China's technological self-reliance and how they've like vertically integrated to sort of like own the entire supply chain is like a real point of pride, I think, for people in China. It has like the premium tech allure that Tesla has been able to achieve as well.

58:27and also sort of like that mass market dominance as well, which Tesla has not been able to do. I mean, they have insofar as like the Model Y is obviously one of the best-selling vehicles of all time, but they have not been able to capture that extremely low end of the Toyota Corollas and the Volkswagen Golfs and things like that. So I think they've really shown sort of like, it is kind of like the standard bearer in many ways. Yeah, it's funny looking at pictures of the seagull. It is kind of the car everyone has assumed would come for years now. It's cheap. It's small. It's a hatchback. It's not super exciting or interesting, but it's got a little bit of sort of sci-fi futurey design to it.

59:14it looks like the sort of workhorse cheap EV that everyone has assumed was going to happen since like the first leaf. And it just hasn't appeared in the U.S. yet. And it feels like BYD is the one who just shipped the thing. Yeah, it's super sharp looking. I mean, it just goes to show that you can have a car that is cheap, gets the job done and doesn't look like shit. Right. Like I feel like, you know, the Seagull is just like high bar. It has like these small little led lights on it that kind of make it look kind of mad if you're looking at it straight on like it kind of looks like an angry car but it's you know it has like these like nice creases along the sides and along the hood and it's blacked out in some part in some parts that are it's kind of appealing it's just it's fun it's got some fun lines to it it just kind of like it cuts an interesting profile in it i i really like it i would love to drive it sometime for For sure.

1:00:10So to that point, actually, what is between here and BYD coming to the United States? I guess, A, is that a thing we want in sort of the biggest possible way of asking that question? And B, it's increasingly everywhere else, right? It's clear this is not a we can't make and ship enough cars problem anymore. What are the odds we start to see BYDs on the streets in the U.S. anytime soon. I think I kind of think it's inevitable. I do think that if you look at sort of like the history of the auto industry, like we kind of went through this in like the 70s and 80s, right, where the gas crisis led to, you know, sort of a decline in enthusiasm for domestically made vehicles.

1:00:55And that's when your Toyotas and your Hondas first started to appear on U.S. shores. and that really freaked a lot of people out in America. If you go back and look at some of the movies that were made during that time, there's all these different weird Michael Keaton movies about Japanese car companies coming in and taking over U.S. plants and how much anxiety that was causing American workers especially. I think we're going to see another round of that. That said, there are incredibly steep obstacles still lying in BYD's path, right? It is essentially financially impossible for them to sell a car here and make money, which is not to say that they still might not do it.

1:01:42It's just tariffs are so extremely high. Like they're at about 100%, I think, right now. So you're talking doubling the cost of what the car... And that's been the case for... These are not like new Donald Trump 2025 tariffs, right? This is like a longstanding U.S. policy. Trump put tariffs in place during his first term. Biden cranked those tariffs up even higher during his term. And then Trump cranked them up even higher currently. So they've just been going up. On top of that, you know, vehicles obviously need to comply with, you know, our own safety standards, NITSA, EPA, all of that kind of stuff.

1:02:19So even if like BYD vehicles and especially like their electric vehicles produce zero tailpipes, they would still need to require EPA certification for like their battery standards and all those types of things. On top of that, you have the TAF, the tariffs, the taxes. And then in addition to all of that, you've got bans on Chinese software in the United States. So this was something that Trump started and Biden finalized during his term in office. And it essentially makes it impossible or illegal to sell a vehicle with software that originates from China in the United States. So they would need to lift they would need to find some work around there.

1:02:59That said, there was some interesting news that happened on this front in recent days. Donald Trump was in Detroit recently giving a speech. He got heckled by a worker at Ford and he flipped off that worker and told him to fuck off. But in addition to that, he said he was asked about Chinese brands like BYD and Xiaomi and whether or not he would want to see them being sold in the United States. And he said, sure, let China come in, which was kind of surprising. And I think his conditions are that they would need to build factories here in the United States and they would need to hire U.S. workers.

1:03:34But if they want to make their cars here, European car companies do that. South Korean car companies do that. Japanese car companies do that. why not let China do that as well? I think that that was kind of surprising because obviously he's kind of like all over the place on China in many ways, but they are sort of in the midst of these trade negotiations. So I do think that maybe he's starting to soften on some of those things. And we also saw him recently say that he loves the K cars, the tiny little Japanese trucks. So maybe he likes the seagull as well. Let's get Donald Trump behind the wheel of a seagull and see how he feels.

1:04:08That line about the small cars, by the way, is something that a surprising number of people in and around this space have mentioned to me recently as like, we may look back on that thing he sort of flippantly said about loving small cars as a sort of fascinating inflection point in the American auto industry. And there's no evidence of that yet, but it's just one of those things that has come up in more conversations with me recently than I expected. I don't know if you've encountered that too, but there is like - I have. That put some energy into the small car thing that I think was gone. Yeah.

1:04:41It's definitely very like much in the enthusiast space here in the U.S. It has not really broken out much beyond that. And, you know, a lot of people will say, oh, you know, small cars do not sell in the United States. We've seen dozens of companies try to sort of, you know, market tiny little cars, city cars. You have, you know, like things like Seat and like, you know, the Mini and all of these other kind of brands that have tried to market small cars in the United States. and they have failed because we are just too addicted to giant trucks and SUVs. Right. Instead, we get trucks that you could fit one of those cars in the truck bed of.

1:05:19Exactly. I think the Hummer EV, when it came out, the thing that struck me the most about it was that the battery weighed the same as a Honda Civic. It's just the battery. But that said, there's a lot of things that could happen externally that could lead to a renaissance in small cars. You could have gas prices go up. Obviously, we're in the midst of a bit of an auto loan crisis. Car prices continue to shoot up year after year, and people are taking out longer, more predatory loans in order to afford these expensive vehicles. That's going to lead to some sort of, I think, reckoning at some point when it comes time for it.

1:06:06There's a lot of things that could end up happening. You know, we could go to war with Venezuela and that could cause all sorts of problems in the global oil market. Who knows? You know, like these things have happened before in the past and we've seen sort of, you know, U.S. interest, shopper, car buying interest shift to smaller vehicles. It could certainly happen again. So all of these sort of outward externalities make me think that there is bound to be a just a gray or black market for Chinese vehicles coming into the United States. And I'm frankly already surprised that there aren't car enthusiasts out there driving these things and just sort of hoping nobody notices.

1:06:45So my last question to you, Andy, is if I want one, and I will be honest, I do want one. Is it even theoretically possible to get one in the United States right now? Well, do you have$90 ,000? Let's say yes. Okay. Then yeah, let's go, man. Rock and roll. I mean, because that is like legitimately a$20 ,000 BYD would cost about$90 ,000 to import and purchase here in the United States because of all said and done with tariffs and everything like. So you're talking like Lamborghini prices for what is essentially a Honda Fit. I don't know if that's a good value proposition, but it's not impossible.

1:07:33That's either the coolest flex of all time or you should have control of your money taken away from you. I don't know. It's one of those and I couldn't tell you which one. I mean, like something's got to break because like we talked about the influencers. I did this story on The Verge, you know, a couple of months ago about U.S.-based auto car influencers driving these Chinese cars that have been brought here by a company that's owned by one of the Chinese OEMs. that Geely owns one of the companies that sort of markets these cars to U.S. influencers specifically so they can start to like start to generate some buzz, right?

1:08:09Because they have been eyeing this market for many, many years. So it's totally working, by the way. Yeah. Just to like, it's very clearly been a successful effort. People want Chinese cars. They are like a lust worthy object in a really funny way. I'm sure some of it is a little astroturfy. Like there might be some influencers who are getting paid under the table. to promote these vehicles. But all the ones that I spoke to said that they are like not taking money. They are legit. This is their honest opinion of them. And, you know, like from, you know, from like Marquez to like all the way down are, are loving these cars.

1:08:43And you, it's like, that's going to resonate with these viewers, right. When they are like looking at these cars and looking at the tech that's available in them, seeing how cheap they are to purchase for people in China and wondering, why can't we have that? Why am I stuck with this, you know you know, $85 ,000 Ford truck when I could be driving around in this sleek, fashionable, tech forward Chinese car. And I think that that's going to resonate and we'll have to see what happens. There's a lot of pieces that still need to fall into place. But I do think, I have to agree with the smart people I've talked to in this industry.

1:09:20It will be inevitable that a Chinese car will eventually be available for sale here in the US. Interesting. All right. Well, until then, And here's what we're going to do. We're going to see which one is more expensive. David and Andy top gear their way around China or David and Andy sketchily import a BYD car into the United States. I love this plan. And then we pitch it as think of the savings. You know what I mean? You're welcome, The Verge. Look at all the money we're saving you. It's citizen journalism at its finest. We're just here to help. All right, Andy, thank you. This was very helpful.

1:09:49This was exactly the explainer I needed. Thank you for coming. No problem. Thanks, David. All right. We got to take a break. We'll be right back.

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1:12:09All right, we're back. Let's get to a question from the VergeCast hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. The email is vergecast at theverge.com. Thank you to everybody who's been reaching out with all of the stuff that happened over the holidays. There's been a lot of fun tech support-y kinds of questions that I've been getting in my email and my social inboxes. Please keep them all coming. All the stuff that you went through over the holidays, all the stuff you saw at CES, everything you're thinking about right now. Anytime you're just like, hmm, I have feelings about technology, call the Vergecast hotline.

1:12:36That's what we're here for. This week, we have a question from Rob from Texas.

1:12:40Hayden Field:Hey, David. It's Rob in Texas. I'm driving back from Oklahoma visiting my family up there with my five-year-old and four-year-old. Essentially, my question is kind of like, is a rectangle a square as it relates to kids repurposed iPhones versus iPads? My sister thinks she holds the high ground, thinks my kids are on, air quote, their phones way too much. essentially they've got an iPhone, old iPhone X and an iPhone 12. They're going to wipe and just have like YouTube kids, which obviously I don't love, but you know, necessity sometimes. And Disney Plus. And she is always on me and like kids are always on their phone.

1:13:20And then, you know, of course her kids are really psyched to see technology

1:13:25Hayden Field:because they don't have much at home because they're a little bit of a stricter family. And I was like, well, would you feel better with an iPad? She's like, yes, I would. But I think that's just like a, it's an optics thing for her. And I think for many people that people see kids with their phone and just assume it's like they're on Instagram or social media. Anyway, I just want to hear your thoughts. Yeah. As a technologyist and I guess new parents, sorry to drag into the family drama, but I think y 'all can put this to rest. Thanks so much. Really appreciate y 'all. I have a short answer to this and a longer answer to this.

1:13:59The short answer is that I actually think that in many ways, Not only are they identical screens, I think there are actually big advantages to giving your kid an iPhone versus an iPad. So the reasons people generally navigate towards iPad over iPhone is iPhones are more expensive. Cell phones in general are more expensive than tablets because they're not primary devices. Tablets tend to be easier to lock down. Right. Like if I'm just going to give my kid my phone, it's very hard to quickly put in all the parental controls and turn off all the things that I need to turn off. Whereas something like an iPad is not a device that I'm carrying around to do my own stuff anyway.

1:14:36So I can just have it be theirs much more easily as opposed to, you know, spending another thousand dollars on a phone. But I think an old phone is a terrific thing to use as a kid tablet, especially if it's just like a Wi-Fi connected. Think about it as sort of an iPod touch. I think that's a terrific idea. It's a smaller screen, which has real upsides in terms of not wanting the kids to be sort of too immersed and too engrossed in the content. It's actually easier for them to hold, which means it's going to be easier for them to be able to play games with their thumbs and do things that are interactive, as opposed to just sort of holding the screen and staring at it the whole time.

1:15:11It's a thing that's easier for you to manage. Like you said, it's smaller. It's easier to travel with. There's a bigger ecosystem of accessories that you can do all kinds of interesting stuff with. I think in a lot of ways, if I were to travel with my kid, I would rather give them, I have a bin of old phones back here. And I think rather than give them a, you know, big iPad in a huge case, giving them a small phone in a like Otterbox case that's very hard for them to break, it makes a lot of sense to me. The bigger point, I think, is that I think we need to stop thinking about screen time in general.

1:15:45And this is not an I'm not inventing this idea. I've just been reading about this a lot and talking to a lot of people about it. And I have become very convicted on this, that we talk about screen time in terms of screens and we should stop. We should talk about screen time in terms of what is on the screen, right? Like there is a, there is a meaningful, powerful difference between giving your kid a screen on which they are watching, I don't know, Cocomelon, not to single out Cocomelon, but I think it's, it's emblematic of a very particular kind of content versus giving your kid a screen on which they like read a book.

1:16:16You know what I mean? Like those things are qualitatively different, despite the fact that they both happen on a screen that your kid holds in their hand. even the kinds of stuff that we watch like a thing that my wife and i talk about a lot is i'm less interested in sort of minimizing specific screen time than i am in like the kinds of things that we watch and there's a lot of evidence to back up this thing that like if you want your kids to have a better screen time experience rather than giving them the sort of super fast moving stuff where there's quick cuts and lots of colors and everything is very like bright and sensory re-overloading to have sort of slower things or bigger, longer stories.

1:16:52We watch a lot of Disney movies in our house, and I think there's something to the idea that you should be watching a longer story that unfolds over time and has multiple characters and makes you feel things. And do I think that all of that stuff is better than them turning off the TV and going and playing outside? Probably not. They should turn off the TV and go play outside more. I feel a lot of feelings, including guilt about the screen time that my kids do have. But in general, I think the idea that all screen time is created equal and is bad is just wrong. And we're still learning about what this stuff does to kids' brains.

1:17:28But one thing I've seen a lot of recently is that there's been this push towards like old TV from the 1980s. Like kids shows, you know, the Winnie the Poohs and the Mr. Rogers neighborhood and all of these things that were much slower. and they feel like teeth pullingly slow now. Even to me, these are the shows I grew up with and I watch them now and it's like, my God, nothing is happening on this show. And that's good. And that is actually, I think people are starting to see that meaningfully change the way that their kid interacts with the TV and the way that they feel. I've had the experience recently.

1:18:00My kid is really into Spidey and his amazing friends right now, like a lot of kids are. And I see the thing where a show gets really exciting, there's something going on and he just disappears. Right. Like he barely hears me anymore. He doesn't look over when I talk to him. He's just sort of gone inside of the show. And that that frightens me. And so that kind of thing is the sort of screen time that I'm spending a lot of time thinking about. I'm much less worried about the size and shape of the screen that he's on than what he is looking at on the screen. And I think increasingly that is where the conversation is heading and should be heading.

1:18:35All that said, there are lots of good things kids can be doing on screens. And it is my job and other parents' job to be thoughtful about what those things are and what we're giving them and at what pace and in what quantity. All that stuff matters and all this stuff is complicated. And I'm doing a bad job and I assume most other people are doing a bad job. If you're doing a good job, please let me know what you're doing so I can steal all of your ideas. But the way that we think about this stuff just needs to be a lot more nuanced. And so the idea that like you gave your kid your phone, like, yes, if your kid is sitting in the backseat of your car while you drive scrolling on Instagram for hours at a time and they're whatever, four years old, that's bad.

1:19:13I feel pretty comfortable saying that's bad. But inherently, there is nothing worse about the idea of handing them a phone than handing them an iPad. It's what is on the screen, their relationship with it, what's happening in the world, what's happening to them. All of this stuff is like bigger and more complicated than we want it to be to just say, put here's a limit on screen time and here's how much we're going to do and here's how much we're not going to do. And we will get more careful and more nuanced and more thoughtful about it over time. But for right now, give them an old phone. I think it's fine.

1:19:45I have become totally okay with we need to solve car rides by giving the kids screens because the job is for all of us to get there without completely losing our minds. And look, it's not like my kid is going to be out of the car having, you know, the most intellectually stimulating time. It was like, he's sitting in the back of a car, sitting in the back of a car sucks. Give the kid a screen, watch a movie. I don't know. There are, there are bigger fish to fry as far as I'm concerned. So if you want to give them a phone and let them watch a movie while you drive, you have my blessing. That's all Rob.

1:20:18I hope that helps. And also, uh, if you figure out the real sort of iPod touchiness of it all and how to take an old phone, get just the right apps on it, do the parental controls and get it set up perfectly. I want you to share your tips because I think a lot of people in the VergeCast universe are sitting around with an old phone that should be or could be repurposed for that. And I would like to know how to do it right. So if you've done it, get at me, VergeCastToTheVerge.com, 866-VERGE11. I think there's a lot of stuff we can do in this space that we should keep talking about. Until then, that's it for the show.

1:20:51thank you to Hayden and Andy for being here and thank you as always for listening. If you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or other things you think my kid should watch that won't give him that crazy look on his face that he doesn't even seem to be paying attention to me anymore, I want to hear all about them. Email VergeCast at theverge.com, call 866-VERGE-11. And don't forget, if you subscribe to The Verge, you can get this and all of our podcasts ad-free just by going to your account settings. Theverge.com slash subscribe. Go do it. It's a good website. The Verge Cast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

1:21:20This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. Neil and I will be back on Friday to talk about just all of the AI news that just will not stop happening. It's just going to be that kind of year, my friends. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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