Episode 127 - Behind the Wheel: XPeng G6, Pony & Toyota Get More Serious, Jetta to use LeapMotor's Tech

Lei starts this pod out with a brief history lesson about Vitesco which was spun off from Continental’s powertrain business that had some roots at Siemens.Lei pivots to talking in detail about his time behind the wheel of the new-ish XPeng G6 including letting the City NGP function take over for parts of his journey. Tu then points out that as the price war has heated up, more and more complaints have arisen from customers who are purchasing these EVs. Tu takes a moment to differentiate between fails vs. (too) complicated design and how the latter can still be categorized as a fail. Lei moves on to a discussion about Xinzhou Wu, XPeng’s head of Autonomous, leaving XPeng to join Nvidia in the US. Lei outlined the numerous reasons this could be and they all could’ve contributed to his leaving XPeng. The pod then shifts over to a discussion of Pony and Toyota co-investing $140M in autonomous vehicles. Toyota had already made an investment in Pony and this just deepens their partnership with Toyota hoping that Pony can be their ADAS / AV solution for China. Tu and Lei close out the podcast with a discussion of the rumor that Jetta was looking at LeapMotor to advance its EV situation by licensing their EV platform, similar to Audi’s partnership with SAIC. If we are keeping score, that’s three major deals for the VW Group with a Chinese partner if we include the VW + XPeng investment as well. Support the show