Episode #61 - March/Q1'22 China sales numbers, Q2'22 Challenges, Lei goes to New York (auto show)

Tu and Lei start this podcast by highlighting a WeChat moment post by He Xiaopeng, founder of XPeng warning that if issues can’t be contained and resolved production for the entire month of May could be lost. They then move on to review the March & Q1 sales and registration numbers.  Tu takes a few minutes to explain his prior experience working on the supply chain side back in the US and dealing with production disruptions in the automotive and high tech spaces. Since they talked about Q1 numbers, Lei dives deeper into the brand sales numbers that were reported. Lei points out that for the first time, Ford China reported March sales numbers for the Mustang Mach E. Most brand sales numbers were down from Q4’21 which is no surprise. Tu and Lei agree that the Volkswagen ID Series sales numbers continue to disappoint and Tu takes a few minutes to explain that the opportunity to build sales momentum starts when the product is launched when you have a marketing budget that’s supposed to build excitement for the product. One year into the initial launch of the ID.4 and sales are still hovering around 10K/month which points to a lack of overall enthusiasm for the products. Tu stresses that it’ll be difficult to ignite any real excitement for the products after having been in the market an entire year already. Tu takes a few minutes to rant about Newsweek’s article about automotive disruptors without any mention of Tesla or any Chinese EV makers. Lei then talks about his trip to the New York International auto show and how Hyundai and Vinfast seemed to be the BIG news along with a few American EV startups that he’d not heard of until that event. Support the show