Reeves ruins EVs? Porsche envies Hyundai? Is XPeng the new Tesla?
Hello and welcome to the Pulse podcast, a brand new podcast for your feed which is all about the life and death of the automotive industry as told through the eyes of a former automotive engineer and an entrepreneur, Dan Caesar. Dan, do you want to give the audience a little bit of an overview as what to expect from this brand new feature? Well, we have a ringside seat, don’t we, on what’s going on in the automotive industry. We’re at that kind of junction point of electric vehicles taking over, but it is a fraught changeover. And there are so many stories daily that we actually felt that rather than Robert’s almost breaking news episodes that we do monthly on our channels, something a bit more regular that kept pulse, so to speak, of what’s going on in the automotive industry would be useful. It’s a time of great consolidation. So, we’re going to cover that uh here for you every Thursday as well as, you know, offer some little nuggets and tidbits from across the industry. Hopefully, keep this super interesting. And you’re so right, we do have these ringside seats and we have to learn so much and read so much and we’re like, we should probably do something with this knowledge and share it a little bit perhaps. Um, so that’s kind of how this came to fruition. Um, but yeah, we’re excited to see how it goes. And this is going to be part of a family of podcasts as well. So we’ve got the regular podcast that you and Robert host with uh industry uh insight on on talking to people. So that’s going to be called Spark as of uh now. And also we’ve got a new one coming in the new year called Tech in China. As well as Robert’s Almost Breaking News is going to get a bit of a juzjup and it’s going to be called fuse from the new year as well. We’re not busy at all. We are twiddling our thumbs doing absolutely nothing at all times. Um, but of course because this is the Fully Charged Show Productions umbrella, all of these podcasts will be able to view if you want to see our lovely faces on YouTube, but you can listen to them straight into your ear holes on any podcast platform as well. So Dan, before we get into our three stories today, what we’ve been up to, what’s been occupying your world in this automotive transition? Well, we’re very lucky to get invites to lots of different events. Uh, we’re actually through the our own event season. We’ve just completed Everything Electric Melbourne. We’ve got a bit of a break now before Everything Electric Sydney. So, I get a bit of time to meet up with different car companies and find out what they’re up to. So, in the last few days, I’ve been with MG uh and I’ve been with uh BYD as well. And it’s extraordinary to see uh the progress those companies are making. I was with uh MG and I got a chance to test drive the MG S5 uh test reviews. that’s not really my my wheelhouse. I’ll leave that to you and to and to Jack and and to Robert, but it was interesting to to give another new car a try. I’ve tried quite a few recently and I I really just sort of reflected on the progress that that British brand has made globally. I mean, we all know that MG as is now owned by a company from uh China. But isn’t it extraordinary? We’ve taken a British brand and the progress. I think at peak it probably sold about 100,000 cars a year back in the day and now they’re sort of zeroing in on a million sales peranom around the world. They’re in 120 countries. Uh top markets are China. Uh the UK is second as you might expect. India, Mexico, and Australia. And they’ve got a huge range of battery EVs. The MG S5, S6, the MG4, which I think was the one that really kind of uh catapulted them into the mainstream. the new IM5, the IM6, the Cyster, and with more to come as well. And sort of life comes at you fast, right? You know, if you’d said 10 years ago, uh if you’d asked them about the MG brand, they would have said, you know, oh yeah, I used to love it. I’m quite fond of it, but it wasn’t really doing a great deal. Now it’s absolutely uh transformed into a major player on the national and international stage. Do you know? So, at one of our live shows, I can’t remember which one, but I had to do the live EV review of the Cyber. And I just the whole way through I was like, you know, wouldn’t it be great if they were like, you could just have this, like we’ll just give it to you, no problem. And I also felt a particular affinity to it because um you know, you can get those blue plaques on the outside of buildings when significant people have lived there. Um very very near my house here in Oxford was uh is the blue plaque for William Morris who was the original inventor of uh MG. So, I was like, well, you know, it’s just crying out to me. I need this in my life. Um, I’ve actually been driving though this week the Pstar 3, and I’ve had it for a week, and I’ll be honest, and this is going to be a controversial opinion when it comes to you in particular. I had the electric G Wagon the week before. Ah, okay. Yeah. The review of that is coming soon, and I totally accept that it is an outrageous, ridiculous car that nobody needs, and yet was such a guilty pleasure. Um, it was really fun. Terrible EV, I will say. Terrible range. But anyway, so in getting the Polestar 3, it felt comparatively very sensible. However, I have been absolutely blown away. I drove um up to a shoot in Leeds yesterday, came back obviously. It’s it’s amazing. I would genuinely again love to have one. And that’s the problem. We drive so many good things and it’s hard to whittle down the list. Yeah, I know. I’ve been very fortunate to drive a lot of very good cars this year, including Polestar 4, which I which I loved as well. It’s a bit like being a kid in the candy shop. But, you know, really, when you’re actually looking to put your money down and buy one of these things, it’s it’s a totally different ball game. But the offering now, the amount of different cars available, electric cars, is just extraordinary. And it really is actually, we’re spoiled for choice. Um, yeah, if you’re going to buy one, it’s very, very tough. Hence why we do and lots of other people do lots of test drives around the world because that’s a great way to compare and contrast. Well, I think the latest stat is that there are over 130 different electric vehicle models currently available in the UK. Um, but that probably is a perfect leaping off point for us to talk about the highs and lows of this electric vehicle world. Um, all of that to come. But first, a teeny tiny advert break. This episode is brought to you by Hongok. The Hong Kong Ion tire 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 tire partner of Formula E, Hong Cook proves its EV technology is at the highest level of performance and brings that same innovation to every ion tire on the road. Story one. What have we got, Dan? Well, I noted this week that Xpang have hit the million car mark and it was kind of interesting because we’ve known about that business for a long time. Uh we’ve probably featured them on the fully charged show as was Everything Electric through the eyes of Elliot Richards uh in Shanghai over the last five five and a half years and they definitely fall into that bucket of the companies will they make it now? They’re actually doing really quite well at the moment. We all know that in China, the five-year plan, the new five-year plan, for example, EVs are sort of deprioritized. They’re not one of the top sort of priorities anymore. And that’s a sign of the market maturity. It’s a sign of China effectively saying off you go. You now have to survive on your own two feet. And we think Xpang have got one of the most interesting businesses out there. ju just position is Tesla because actually what Xpang is doing extends way beyond the car and I remember when we first started covering uh Xpang back in uh 2020 or thereabouts there was actually some controversy around the fact that an engineer exes engineer had stolen some of the source code and had used that for autonomous driving with the Xpang. Now, Xpang were exonerated uh from that. There were sort of forensic people who went into the source code to see that that was not the the case. Um so that kind of passed off and and Tesla and Xpang came to some sort of legal agreement never to talk about that again. But the the the trajectory of Xpang since then has been kind of interesting to note because they’re not content with just producing cars. So they just had a million roll off the um reached the million mark. uh they sell you know just to remind people a few cars under the Xpang brand but they’ve also got a sort of more affordable brand called Mona as well which we’ve seen uh in Australia doing very very well all of their cars are pure electric apart from I think the new X9 which I think has an e-rev version a range extended uh version uh as well but actually to look at Xpank now you have to look at the whole story and so they very famously have had flying cars uh I think they’ve got some some EV toll stuff they’ve got autonomous uh technology loads of different interesting things. Software is very very a very very high standard. Um, and the thing that I couldn’t help remark recently, I don’t know if you saw it, was they actually unveiled their iron humanoid robot in the most spectacular uh fashion. So, um, uh, her Xiaopang has actually kind of beckoned the iron robot onto the stage at a recent launch they did. uh and there were insinuations that in fact it wasn’t you know it was it was it was a man or a woman who was actually in a suit basically because its walking style was so lifelike. So on stage actually they actually cut uh the the the leg of of the robot open to and to show that it was just you know circuits and actuators beneath that kind of uh synthetic uh skin and I just sort of had to remark to myself what you know where are we this is the kind of future I suppose we all read about and watched and sci-fi as kids and it’s it’s becoming reality uh in real time and it’s just extraordinary to see the progress. So, Xpang is a really really fascinating uh company um backed obviously by the kind of the might of uh you know this huge kind of um Chinese industrial revolution and it’s just fascinating to see how that is going to progress. I don’t know if you saw that. Um I did the footage I’m talking to. I I had a couple of thoughts because I think in this day and age like if we think about the role of robotics, there’s robotics everywhere. You know, anyone who’s got a Roomba Hoover in their home, that is a robot of some description. And there’s a lot of questions around what’s what is the purpose specifically of a humanoid robot? Especially when you think about the things that we need to do from an industrial perspective. like actually humans aren’t always particularly well suited to some of those functions. And so having a robot that takes the form of a human. Is it really useful or is it a technological flex to show that absolutely we can do this and we’re at the top of our game. And I’m tempted to think that it’s the latter. I also think there’s something around how we picture humanoid robots as we still need to be in control of them. They are subservient to us. Blah blah blah. So I was like, of course they had to put it in a woman, like in the shape of a woman and not only like a woman’s body of this robot, but a very sexy woman, I would say. I was like, for God’s sake, like that is just so obvious. Um, but it was so juxtaposed by I don’t know if you saw the footage of the Russian humanoid robot that just had a little tumble on. I did. I did. Too much vodka, I I I suspect. Well, that was it to be stereot. Oh god, it was just such a shambles. We should definitely link to the video in the notes because it was it was outrageous. But the my um I have a friend who is an industrial designer and he also works for a humanoid robot company and as an industrial designer he’s responsible for designing all sorts of things but his current focus is bottoms of humanoid robots. And actually this is an interesting challenge because you can’t make it too sexy or you can’t make it necessarily look like too much thought has gone into this design process either. And so I say that because I’m like it’s just fascinating that we live in a time where that is even a question and work stream being considered and you know you say it all the time. The future’s already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet. But that is such a good Can I say never introduce me to that person because I won’t be to resist the temptation of saying, you know, how did you get into robots bottoms? You know, childish as it may be. You know, what a what a what a career. But I mean, the reality is that to what extent, you know, as you say, are robots going to be real? Whether they’re going to be in humanoid form, they’re going to be doing other things. You know, fundamentally, we’ve got that phone attached to our hands most of the time. Now, we’re sort of, you know, part cyborg. I’ve got some glasses that I can talk to and can translate. um people uh talking to me. So we’re in that kind of that in between area and where it goes remains to be seen. But I think what’s fascinating is you get these tech firms uh like Xbang doing really really interesting work and to what extent is the robot is Iron sort of you know a halo technology to actually get people interested in in in the company itself because the Xpang P7 the new one that they’ve more recently unveiled the kind of refreshed version of that I saw it in Munich uh not so long ago is absolutely stunning car fundamentally I mean they’re still a car company but like Tesla they’re sort of flexing uh in other areas and yes what is real what is fake that is going to be the defining question I think of the next decade for all of us and and I think just listening to you there actually you said tech company to xpang as a tech company and I think that is absolutely the crux of this because about 10 years ago sort of following VW um dieselgate scandal transition to EVs etc there was all this like oh automative companies need to behave more like tech companies and actually the new ones can because they don’t have that legacy um to kind of you know plunk that tech focus onto and the legacy OEMs are still functioning largely as legacy OEMs with a little bit of tech sprinkled on top and so yeah we’re seeing very much that bifocation of like who will be a tech company and tech forward and lead with the tech that exists within an EV and who is a car company as we know them who happen to produce EVs That’s probably that probably occupies most of our debate generally, I think. So, and also autonomous plays a huge role in that. We’ve just had um supervised full self-driving Teslas rolling around Melbourne as part of our recent uh event. Uh Xpang has some very sophisticated autonomous technologies. Um we’re really interested to see where that goes. Pretty keen that progresses. I think Whimo are coming into London next year for example, but also slightly skeptical because it’s been quite difficult to persuade some people to give up their keys of their combustion engine car uh and get into an electric car. So persuading people to get out of cars entirely um will be an interesting uh challenge I think. But I mean we literally live on on in this extraordinary era. I think, you know, the last five years have been incredible and I think the next 10 years have will be uh even more so discombobulating, confusing, and that’s I guess why we’re here on this podcast to try and say what we’re seeing and and give our our take on it. Now, you mentioned there reasons for people to get into an EV or not, as the case may be, and I think that segus perfectly onto, drum roll, budget. So, we are recording this on Thursday morning. It will go out on Thursday afternoon. And yesterday Rachel Reeves announced it was the budget announcement here in the UK. There were some positive things in there and safe to say there were some things that we need to unpack. Do you want to give us the highlights and lowlights? Yes. I mean the reality is that uh we have the luxury of taking a big helicopter view looking globally. I take a particularly keen interest in the UK but I have to say I kind of look at it slightly as scans. I’m kind of thinking well what what is going on with policy around the world you know what’s going on with uptake around the world and UK is just one of those markets but what’s been interesting in the UK is it definitely plateaued between 2022 and 2025 as a result of EV up EV uptake a range of subsidies being withdrawn um weakening of the zero emission vehicle mandate uh and the last 12 months have actually seen us sort of start to to grow again so now at the point of recording uh about one in four new cars sold is pure electric. The used market is getting uh some traction now and one in 20 cars sold in that market is now pure electric. Um and as we know when people get in electric cars typically they don’t go back. So progress is being made that’s for sure. Um but we look with real interest at what’s going on around the world and I would say you know everyone talks about Norway of course they do but they’ve had consistent stable policy support for EVs for a couple of decades. Similarly in China has been very consistent support and then what we’re seeing is you know this kind of flick of a switch on and off from politicians all around the world in other places. So uh in the US and Canada rebates have been pulled. The the result has been you know huge downturn in in in EV uptake in those countries. We saw the same in Germany 18 months ago. At the end of last year the Dutch market which was flying uh saw some increased taxation on EVs which meant that EV sales sort of collapsed temporarily. They’re up again. And there’s this kind of seessaworing effect which is an absolute nightmare in the if you’re in the automotive industry because you want to plan you want to know work out where sales are coming from. At the moment the UK is relatively stable and I think we have to be positive that generally we’re in quite a good place. The market is growing. There is an electric car grant that’s just been extended by another 1.3 uh billion pounds. So this is the £3,750 that’s available off an electric vehicle below a certain price point. I think it’s below 35,000 I think 37,000. But the reality is that that full grant’s only available to a handful of cars. Most of the cars are getting the£,500 grant. But nonetheless, it is that was announced in the summer. It has had a positive effect. A few people are debating how positive that effect has been. I can tell you I was in a Ford dealership two weeks ago uh with the department for transport with Ka who’s the uh new minister uh for for that area and I talked to people who just bought Ford Puma jennies very nice car and they had done so because of the electric car grant and so we’ve done some video on that I’ve got video proof people saying no I wouldn’t have made this move unless the electric car grant existed so that’s really interesting to to to see and hear that directly from uh buyers. Yeah. And and actually um I saw a news article on Autotrader that in and this was published in October earlier this year and they said that searches for eligible models since the electric car grant has been announced are up 118%. So they are seeing a profound uptick in that interest. Um, but of course there is there is an argument that actually that grant and its eligibility is it necessarily attracting the right kind of people because would have they would they have purchased an EV anyway yada yada yada. Yeah. Well, I spoke to three people and two of them said actually this this was decisive. I wasn’t necessarily EV. This was decisive. This is a straw poll of three. It’s completely think so lean on it too heavily. A wise man said, you know, surveys are for for, you know, like lampost there for for illumination, not leaning on. You know, the reality is I spoke to three people. Two of them said actually I this made the me buy one. And one other guy who said I was on the cusp anyway and I kind of got lucky. But the reality is that just the government standing up and saying actually we support EVs gives that technology a degree of subconscious legitimacy that means that people do go actually okay this is the direction of travel. I will go in that direction because people in the UK are kind of quite scared scarred I would say by what happened with diesel you know government recommending people get into diesels and and look how that that turned out. So the electric car grant has had a positive effect. It feels like a bit of a sugar rush you know a bit of a low calorie way of getting people in. We think education is the best way to get more people in to make them realize that these cars are actually cheaper and better and just repeat that as a as a mantra. But what we’ve seen in the budget longest answer to your question ever is some other little little tweaks. So pay per mile now is something that is being mooted for two per mile. Yeah. Uh and also that was off the back of the London congestion charge uh which the EVs were exempt from changing in January next year. So you’ve getting very very mixed signals. the opposite of joined up thinking I think from from government and obviously you’ve got department for trade, department for transport, you know the list goes on. You’ve got treasury, you’ve got all these different stakeholds to satisfy, but it is a little bit of a mixed bag. Now I my battery is half full. That’s the way I kind of choose to live my life and the reality is I’m very positive that EVs will win out over time. But we want to make it as frictionless and seamless as possible and when you do send out these negative signals it can be difficult. I think as an individual I’m pretty sanguin about the fact that the reality is that the congestion charge zone is there to reduce congestion. There are loads of easy EVs in central London now and that’s not the point. So I think you know that’s right that that exemption comes to an end but the language maybe confuses people and then the paper mile announcement is interesting. It’s only going to come into effect from 2028. Technically it’s a consultation but in government speak that’s normally we’ve decided this but we’ll we’ll we’ll give you a little think we’re having a chitchat that you think we’re having a conversation. Um certainly there will be people trying to urge them not to do that. There’s a 3p per mile um uh rate mooted for EVs and a 1.5p per mile rate mooted for for plug-in hybrids as well. But I do think that anyone who’s sat there driving their petrol car thinking, “Oh, I’ve not been uh you know taxed in that way.” failing to see that ultimately governments want to move to a per mile solution across all fuel types over time and this is a way of introducing that process. It just happens to be EVs and plug-in hybrids that are going to be the canary in the coal mine on that. But be under no illusion, governments have long wanted to bring something like this in and it’s really controversial because of course there are specific groups that will feel particularly penalized by a pay per mile irrespective of whether you’re driving an electric vehicle or combustion car and you know take for example yesterday um I drove to leaden back that’s a long way and I do that kind of trip every week. I mean fortunately I’m expensing that so thanks Dan. Uh but the point is is that that not everyone is able to live a really local life and of course you know actually house prices are cheaper if you live outside of the city. So there’s also an equity challenge there as well. But of course this is all motivated by the fact that if we all transition over to electric vehicles there will be a 13 billion pound deficit not recovered from sort of um the taxes currently on fuel. But what irritates me a bit about this is that okay so I think this will equate roughly to about £250 per year for the average driver the 3p per mile but these it just feels really like for like it’s like oh we don’t have the tax that we get from fuel so we’ll put that tax on in another mode of transport and it’s like but also what money is the government saving by having improved air quality in cities what impact is that having to the economy by reduced absenteeism or reduced asthma or reduce having to kind of clean buildings that are were previously really dirty from from fumes. Equally, it’s like, well, if you’re going to increase a cost elsewhere, how are you leveling that out with supporting public transport and making other options much more easy and available? And you said joined up thinking, and I think that’s the thing that bugs me with this. Ultimately, it’s not a huge cost, but it just always feels like this tip for tat. And I don’t feel that that’s particularly strategic. Well, we live in a world where, you know, I think it was Churchill said that kind of, you know, history is rewritten is written by the victors. Basically, we live in a digital age now where, you know, we could live in different histories at the same time depending on who we read. There’s evidence to support lots of different claims. You know, the algorithms have a way of kind of, you know, telling us what’s going on and we choose to believe one version of events or or or another. And I think at the moment the UK government and other governments around the world have got themselves in a situation where media and algorithms are perhaps quite negative on electric vehicles wrongly in my opinion and it’s very hard to find a journalist. It’s very hard to find someone who runs a big tech firm even or a politician who drives electric really understands it. And the bigger picture as you say, you know, has to be about all of transport, you know, how does it all fit together and health as well as you say and manufacturing and all these different things. And if you have, you know, if you don’t stand for anything, if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. That’s the old saying. And the reality is that if you don’t really have a philosophy around transport and how we can improve the world, then you will be pulled around by the latest bit of news. You know, are EVs only for the rich, for example. Well, I can say categorically that if you get an EV and you have a driveway, you can save a fortune whether you’re rich or or or or or not, you know. So, the the reality is that we live in a very sort of difficult time in terms of information. And unfortunately, I think politicians there’s a lot of shortterm thinking based around electoral cycles and those sorts of things. Sometimes even much shorter cycles, you know, headlines, you know, how can we kind of uh we’re giving with one hand, we’re giving electric car grant on the other hand. how can we kind of make sure it doesn’t seem unfair rather than standing up and say this is why we believe in electric vehicles. This is why we believe in more public transport etc. And ultimately in politics we’ve got ourselves into a little bit of a a mess really I think and that’s coming through. I’m very very confident about the uptake of electric cars. It will continue to grow in the UK but it seems to me to be really really important we get up to about 50% of new car sales are pure electric by the end of the decade. I know the ZEV mandate targets are higher, but it seems very very important that we get to about 50% by probably the next general election, which in the UK will be in 2028, 2029, because once we get past that point, I think the network effect kicks in. Most people have seen people with EVs understand that they’re enjoying them. You know, all the problems that the Daily Mail might have you believe are coming don’t actually exist. And I think that’s going to be a sort of crucial tipping point because the next election in the UK, for those that don’t follow it closely, I think is going to be highly consequential. And I think if another party from the more right right side of of politics gets in, I think that EVs and clean energy more generally will be in their crosshairs. Oh, 100%. And I think that is something that we definitely need to continue talking about in this weekly podcast. But it is interesting, I think, those sort of the different things that happen at the different percentages of vehicle uptake. And a lot of the policy support that we had in the early days was at a point in time where the EVs weren’t as brilliant because that’s what happens with a new technology. It takes time to mature. But also you have these bunch of early adopters who were just kind of willing to accept inconvenience because being first is cool and they can be really passionate about these technologies. And obviously you need a bit of incentive support to get that kind of ground swell going. But equally these early adopters will just do it anyway. And then it’s strange when you tip over into that early mainstream because whilst people absolutely may care about the environment in a world where the cost of living is our number one concern actually cost, convenience, comfort are the priorities. And in order to maintain those things, you also have to have that consistency and that consistency of policy support. And it was interesting. I did an interview yesterday and this was not to do with electric cars. It was actually to do with uh electric heating. And the CEO of this company, I said to her, you know what what would be the one thing that you’d ask for from the government? And she was like, the government is incredibly good actually at supporting innovation and ensuring that we can sort of come to fruition initially. She’s like, they are less good at providing that long-term consistent support to ensure that we get that ongoing adoption and can tip over into those really critical percentages that just mean this becomes, you know, uh the momentum is such that you don’t need that same kind of push. And I just hope that, you know, loads of things in here that are positive. For example, the fact that the electric car grants been extended, things that kind of feel contrary to that 3P per mile, blah blah blah. It just requires that consistent message. So people can be sure that this is the right direction of travel as well. In my very humble opinion, we need we need to build as they have the Norway cross party consensus over the long term that actually EVs are a good thing. And reality is that organizations like electric vehicles UK, which is something I’m involved in, are trying to build that consensus cross party. But it does seem to me that as an industry, the EV industry has got too hung up on charging, let’s say, and infrastructure as an Achilles heel and has focused too much of its time on that. So the industry has in fact been leading with its chin. You go into a fight, you want to use your, you know, your best weapons. And that now is the cars themselves. They are exceptional and they can save you a packet. So, you know, our kind of whole attitude really is to say we should lead with that. They are cheaper, they are better, and let’s get people in in the cars uh and try them. And that’s the way the way forward. Um and that includes politicians. Let’s get them in the cars. That includes, you know, people from from the media. Let’s get them in the cars because until you’ve really sat in one for a little while, you you don’t know. But I’m telling you, these cars are superior to what’s been out there before. And I’ve saved a fortune. That might be tougher over time if the paper mile thing comes in in 2028, but that’s still three years away. And as we’ve seen, a lot can happen in politics in three weeks, let alone three years. And also over that mileage, you’re saving a,000 like a roughly £1,000 in fuel and then you’re paying about £225 in the three people per mile. So it everyone needs to do the maths for themselves. Per mile, you know, driving EV is is far is far better economically. So the reality is that nothing changes but you know certainly is time for uh you know uh time for more doubt I think which we can avoid. So, just before we move on to our third story, third and final story for today, I’d be really intrigued to get Rory Sutherland back on the podcast because, and I’m basing this on nothing other than my own brain, but I do think that there’s a weird we as humans are not always totally rational as we know. And my perhaps grievance with the 3P per mile is that it forces you to think about every mile that you drive, which long-term is a good thing because we should be reducing the amount that everyone is driving to reduce congestion. Whereas like money that you get at the start of the purchase, you can be quite short-term and you can kind of forget that that happened. So it’s like what could have been more effective? Having the electric car grant, so the £3,750 off a car or free charging for a year and then you really see your total cost of ownership reducing on a month-by-month basis compared to combustion engine equivalent. Anyway, I’d love to get Rory back on to talk about impacts of like like flash in the pan versus sort of ongoing support and how that sort of changes your reaction to a new technology. The budget that could be nonsense. The budget is a big stick, but Rory would talk to nudging, you know, techn how do we nudge people in the right direction? How do we do it without them even realizing, you know, the budget unfortunately is a big broad brush and uh it has some positive and negative impacts, but yeah, I mean, battery’s half full. EVs will be the the dominant powertrain. that’s the way it’s it’s going to to go. But how quickly we get there depends on, you know, making this journey as frictionless as possible. And we will link to the podcast with Roy because it was brilliant cuz I had to do so little work because he is absolutely fantastic and his brain is astonishing. Talking of batteries that are half full, our third and final story today is that Porsche are a little bit concerned about just how good the Hyundai Ioni 5N is. Can you tell us a little bit more? I can. I I absolutely love this car, the Ioni 5N. I don’t know if you’ve driven I know you’ve spent quite a lot of time in Ionic 5. Um it’s really interesting in a lot of the story at the moment is around EVs is China and people are kind of overlooking Korea. what Kia, Hyundai, uh, Genesis, uh, have have done uh, and also uh, hat tip to KGM who are just releasing a formerly Sangong who are releasing a new ute, in Australia, for example. But the Korean car market is extraordinary. They they’ve done incredible things and the Ionic 5N is the sort of culmination, I think, of that technology. The Ionic 6N is coming out soon as well. And for those that don’t know, the kind of N series really is where the Hyundai engineers have their most fun and create kind of performance racing uh vehicles. Um you can buy an Ionic uh 5N uh in the UK and you can have an incredible experience. And Porsche have noticed this. We did an episode, Jack Scarlet did an episode not long ago when we actually asked the uh the question, you know, has Hyundai really outdone Porsche? And and in terms of the money, if you took a Ioni 5N and and a Macan, you know, you you’re going to enjoy both of those experiences, but obviously one is much cheaper than the other. Uh and the reality is that the Porsche engineers have have noticed, the Porsche management have noticed, and they’ve been praising or envying uh what Hyundai have done recently. And I I have to say, I had a couple of weeks with that car. It was unbelievable because for all of the, you know, grownup thinking I like to do the there was a little boy inside of me when that car makes a lot of noise and you put it in, you know, grin mode, it is a great great feeling. So, I thought I’d grown out of cars making noises to to to be honest, but it was great fun and I sort of said it sort of all the rooms but none of the fumes. I mean, that was the kind of the kind of the the selling point for that car. And yeah, Porsche have recently been looking at the Ionic 5N and saying, you know, it’s been eye openening. Um, they kind of were really looking at it and going, how do we kind of emulate some of the things that they’ve done? And I do wonder the Porsche Tyan, for example, is a stunning car, right? No one would say that it isn’t. I do wonder if often the the legacy brands have kind of looked at their vehicles go, well, we’ve got the brand, we’ve got the brand loyalty, we’ve got aesthetically beautiful cars, whereas Hyundai have gone, okay, but how can we compete? and where some of maybe the legacy brands have been caught a bit flatfooted by that. I don’t know if you’ve driven that car. Yeah. Imagine. So, I’m kind of chuckling to myself because um am I going to confess this? I It’s time. I’ve not told you this and actually we’ve kept this very within the production team. So, we actually had it in Australia um not this year, the the previous year and it was such a coup because obviously it wasn’t here in the UK at that point. So, we had an opportunity to drive it. I did drive it, but driving in Sydney, if you don’t know Sydney particularly well, it can be quite stressful because you can end up in that tunnel for like 15 minutes in the wrong direction. Um, so I absolutely was not maximizing the potential of that car, but was irrespective of that, totally blown away. Um, we’d done a shoot, we parked that car, we all went off to get some lunch, I had the keys, all of our kit was in the boot, and by kit, I mean camera kit. That is tens of thousands of pounds of kit. Uh I can’t believe you’re confessing this to me live on on the podcast. I know this is ridiculous, but I’ve been carrying this heavy burden of this secret. Um anyway, we like went off to get some sandwiches or whatever and dispersed because people wanted different things. And then I get a call from Louis about he’s on our team about 10 minutes later say, “I imagine the boots open.” And so I have never sprinted so fast in my whole entire life with the key back to this car. And astonishingly, not a single bit of kit had was missing. But initially, we were just a reduced team. We were like, we cannot tell anyone else in the production team cuz they will be so angry with us for like exercising not particular care about this very expensive kit. And to this day, we’re not sure if it was user error, i.e. me, or if it was the car. And I would like to blame the car, but given how good it is, I think actually that’s not totally fair or possible. Um, but there we go. Nothing was stolen, but it could have been a disaster, especially because this was two days before the show and we needed all of that kit. So, well, I I absol I absolve you. Thank you very much. I have confessed my sins. Oh, stressful. I’m I’m hot. I’m My hands have got clammy just thinking about it. Well, we have had kids stolen in London, right? Oh, yeah. And that was we were in a secure underground car park. Um, so it just felt really cruel that someone had obviously seen us do that. And what was really upsetting about it is that they stole all of the bags from the back of the car, smashed the windscreen. Um, and obviously took Katie’s bag, opened it, saw that it was just her pajamas and her wash bag, and just we’re like, “No, we don’t need this.” Threw it across the car park. She was like, “Oh, cheers.” didn’t even want that. Um, yeah. So, that is a bit of an occupational hazard sadly. Anyway, I 5N is a great piece of kit and Porsche have noticed. Well, the other thing I’ll say, and I believe the embargo lifts tomorrow, so I’m going to have to be uh vague, but last week I drove the Kra Reval. This is their latest urban car, which I think given its price point about €26,000, they’re very much pitching it against the Renault 5, but they’re also very much making this about the driving experience, much like the Ionic 5N, about introducing so much fun into the drive and the noise. Um, so I’ll share more on that another time when I’m not under embargo, but I think it’s cool seeing this wave of performance funfocused EVs. Well, the Ford Puma Jenn has got some of that feature as well, and I’m going to get my hands on that soon. And that’s Britain’s bestselling car, the Ford Puma, and the Gen now is selling really really well as a result of the electric car grant. So, yeah, that’s that’s good news, too. But yeah, it is interesting, isn’t it? sound and how that engages you and connects you with a car. I mean, Jack as a kind of an automotive person has been talking about that for a long time. When I got in the Ioni 5N, I really realized actually there is there is something there’s something in that. Although I do I do enjoy the fact that the cars are much quieter in general terms. So, I had in the G Wagon, it has this sort of soft rumble that’s definitely a synthetic noise, which actually I quite enjoyed, but you can turn on the G raw. Ridiculous name. And that was that was an awful sound. And it does. And there was a few sounds in that car that were extremely high quality and a couple that were very strange like um the sort of to warn you that there’s someone in your blind spot. That blind spot noise was very cheap. And it’s incredible to think that actually you can build and design a sense of quality through sound. And it’s not the speakers, it’s the sound itself. And I think that is such a talent. Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, you just don’t think about it. You know, the world is so so visual. The sound is so much more subtle. But I was in a Pstar four, I think it was, and it’s got an indicator noise which sounds like a little sort of synth synth noise. It’s really, really subtle. And then I’m in another car at the moment which I won’t mention that has an indicator noise that sounds like a car from the late ‘9s and it actually just sort of sticks out. Uh it is it is it is bizarre, isn’t it? But yeah, sound does a play does play a part in even in this silent revolution. Um well we have successfully waffled for 40 or so minutes. So we probably should leave it there. Uh not least so we can save some stories for next time. Um, but any concluding thoughts before we before we close? Well, as it’s pulse, what I thought we would do is just have a quick couple of quick ups and downs. You know, what’s going on in the marketplace? So, I’ll keep it short. My my up really this week would be for for BYD. Um, I spent some time with BYD and it’s really interesting how they’ve grown. They’re now in the top hundred of the Fortune 500 for the first time. They are already number three in the world for cars sold. Uh they are well on track to to selling a million BEVs and FEVs this year. They’ve just gone through their 14th million vehicles so far. They’ve seen extraordinary growth up 500% in numerous European markets. They’re in uh 32 33 countries I think in Europe. Uh now they’ve got more than a thousand stores. And they said to me this is just the beginning. They’re going to go to 2,000 stores uh in the new near future. They’re also adopting kind of made in Europe for Europe strategy. So they’ve got a plant in Hungary which is building the Dolphin Surf and the AT 2 with more models to come. And get this, they’ve got a million staff globally now, of which over 125,000 are are in R&D alone. And they have recently broken more Nurburging records with the Yang Wang uh U9. And they top speeded the car. I think it’s the fastest car uh around the world now at 496.22 22 uh kilometers an hour and I was sat there listening to BYD thinking okay there’s lots of talk about open AI and SpaceX and and things like that but is BYD actually the most exciting business uh in the world and then in terms of downs I think you know we can get into this in future podcasts I think my my down would be the American consumer is really really missing out now there are so many great EVs and they can only access a fraction of them. But maybe that’s a subject for a future episode. I think it is. And maybe we can get a little voice note from Ricky, um, our correspondent based in San Diego, to to share his views as well. Um, I just want to say the thing I the stat that I find most shocking about BYD is the a million people one. That’s just incomprehensible to me. You know, I I used to work at Jaguar Land Rover many many years ago, and I think at that time there were 40,000 employees globally. Admittedly, at that time, they were producing about 400,000 cars a year. So, it’s a different scale, but 40,000 people to me seemed incomprehensible. I cannot I cannot wrap my head around a million employees of one organization. Bonkers. I mean, we’re definitely going to see consolidation in the automotive market in China for sure, probably from back end of 2026 onwards and and elsewhere as well because obviously new manufacturers are are putting more pressure on the legacy manufacturers. So, there is going to be a squeeze. Um, but BYD is not a company I worry about uh whether they’ll make it through uh this period. I think they are the one that’s kind of most nailed on I think to uh to to make it through. um they’re producing some great cars. I’ve been driving the BYD seal at the moment. Amazing. Um but yeah, we will share, I guess, all of our insights, the events we’re going to, the things that we’re seeing kind of behind the curtain of the automotive industry uh every Thursday on on this Pulse podcast. And we look forward to getting into more detail. But I think probably talked enough today, right? I think we’ve had quite enough. And uh we’ll uh we’ll say thank you to George from our team who will be editing this particular episode. And as ever, that’s it. If you have been, thank you for listening or watching.
NEW! It’s a ‘life and death decade for automakers’, but keeping your finger on the PULSE of the industry has been almost impossible; until now. As part of a new weekly podcast, engineer, Imogen Bhogal & entrepreneur, Dan Caesar, pull back the curtain on the carmakers. Is 2026 the year that the ‘House of Cars’ collapses? Who’s on the up, who’s hitting the skids, and who’s going up in smoke? This week, Imogen and Dan discuss XPeng, Hyundai, Porsche and reflect on Rachel Reeves’ budget.
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