Seeing is believing: recap of the TechBuzz China Autumn 2024 Investor EV Trip
We did it again.
Three cities, five days, 10 companies, numerous guests, great hosts, a ton of conversations and Q&A sessions, a ride in one of the hottest selling EVs from one of the biggest names in electronics going from 0 to 100 km/h in less than 3 seconds, attending the launch of one of the quirkiest EVs from one of the newest premium brands, and everything MIXed (pun intended) in between.
The TechBuzz China Autumn 2024 Investor EV Trip concluded on October 25 in Shanghai, leaving the investors, some of whom visited China for the first time ever, in awe, impressed, inspired, and much more knowledgeable about China’s smart EV, AV and mobility ecosystem through on the ground face to face meetings and first-hand experiences.
It was eye opening even for me, someone who has closely followed the Chinese auto market for nearly a quarter century, and being reminded again that you haven’t seen it all.
For the second time this year since May, in collaboration with TechBuzz China, I helped curate and lead a small group of investors touring just a small sample of the movers and shakers big and small in the China smart EV, AV and mobility value chain. These included players in EV manufacturing, batteries, autonomous vehicle technology, IoT, LiDAR, ADAS, smart cockpit, AI and charging.
The trip unofficially started on Sunday October 20 in Beijing with a Beijing style Peking Duck dinner and special guest Tom van Dillen, managing partner of Greenkern Group, an independent consulting company for future-oriented brand management. Tom has lived in China for some 26 years, nearly half of his life, and I’ve known him for well over a decade. He shared his wealth of knowledge of the peculiarities of living in China and the auto market, giving the investors a first taste of the realities on the ground that they might not read or hear in the news.
On Monday morning October 21, the trip officially started with a bang: a visit to the Xiaomi EV plant in Yizhuang, southern Beijing, where the Xiaomi SU7 electric sedan, one of the hottest selling and newest launched EVs in China, is produced. We toured the experience center as well as the body and assembly shops, and ended the visit with one of the highlights of the trip: riding in the Xiaomi SU7 MAX edition while it accelerated from 0 to 100 km/h in less than 3 seconds under the “boost berserk” mode at the little track outside of the Xiaomi factory. The visit also gave the investors an understanding of the capabilities of Xiaomi EV manufacturing and component in-house development prowess as well as its digital and hardware/accessories ecosystem.
In the afternoon, we headed west to Fangshan, southwestern Beijing to visit UISEE, an AV startup founded nearly nine years ago. We experienced its robotaxi and robobus and spoke to Founder & CEO Wu Gansha, a good friend of mine who has walked the walk in terms of not so much the passenger carrying robotaxis, but driverless vehicles operating commercially hauling cargo in several parts of the world including Hong Kong, UAE and Qatar.
On Tuesday, we visited VanJee Technology, a domest-listed intelligent transport system (ITS) company that tries to improve traffic and transport efficiency through its LiDAR, Weigh-In-Motion (WIM), Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) and V2X products and solutions. The companies celebrated its 30-year anniversary earlier this year and is actually one of the oldest companies that we visted on this trip, believe it or not.
In the afternoon, we visited Enpower Greentech, which claims to be a global leading solid-state battery supplier for drones and EVs that is developing a solid-state battery with specific energy density of 350 Wh/kg aiming to start production in 2026. That evening, we took a high-speed rail train down to Shanghai.
On Wednesday, we visited SenseAuto, a Chinese smart cockpit, AI, ADAS tech startup that is expected to be spun off from SenseTime, one of China’s big four AI companies. The company is active in DMS or OMS in the cockpit and already has its products and systems featured in hundreds of thousands of vehicles in China.
In the afternoon, we visited ECARX, the U.S. listed chip, domain control and computing platform startup founded by Geely Chairman Eric Li and Ziyu Shen in 2017, providing ADAS and infotainment computing platforms currently for Geely Group affiliated vehicle brands including LYNK & CO and Polestar, and integrating the FlyMe Auto OS with Xingji Meizu, the joint venture Geely set up with smart phone maker Meizu. While roughly 90% of its revenues come from Geely Group brands, ECARX aims to become the next Aptiv, Bosch or Continental.
Later in the evening, we trekked over to Hangzhou by bus to attend the launch of one of the latest and the greatest and perhaps the most interesting EV on the Chinese market: the CANOO-styled ZEEKR MIX small MPV with sliding and rotating front seats dubbed the “baby bus.” This is already the sixth model for the 3.5-year-old premium brand and another U.S.-listed unit from Geely. It was a unique experience for the investors to immerse themselves in an EV launch event and see how a product launch is done and the type of stunts involved. This was arranged by ZEEKR since we were going to visit them next morning, and something that don’t normally happen in this type of trip so it was really an invaluable experience.
On Thursday, we visited ZEEKR on the 52nd floor of their new headquarters building with a huge logo atop it (think Renaissance Center for GM in Detroit), it felt like a penthouse. It’s hard to believe how ZEEKR has established itself as a prominent player in the premium smart EV space in just a matter of 3.5 years launching six new models to market, and the investors discussed its strategy and future prospects with the capital markets team.
We then immediately headed back to Shanghai and visited in the afternoon UPower, a skateboard chassis startup founded by a former Continental China and Great Wall Motor executive Paul Li. They’re working with Chinese bus maker King Long on an electric super van as well as a few startup OEMs in the U.S. providing its standard chassis. The company’s strategy is focused on the so-called “car for efficiency” rather than “car for experience.”
On Thursday evening, the investors had dinner with several local portfolio managers and securities analysts who shared their insights into the local and national economy as well as business peculiarities.
On Friday, we visited ZDrive, an autonomous driving company under Chery Group, founded by Dr. Gu Junli, who previously worked at Tesla and Xpeng in very senior roles in charge of autonomous driving. The company is rolling out its Pilot 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 in succession over the next two years covering different levels of ADAS capabilities to be featured primarily on Chery Group vehicles. It was great to see the startup environment in their offices and feel their easy going culture.
We ended the day by visiting ZEEDA Energy, the number one home AC charger hardware provider in China, and talked their assistant to the president Sam Shen, who gave the investors a deep dive into the products and strategy that ZEEDA has deployed, and the ins and outs of charger deployment (hint: nobody makes money for now!). Interestingly, Shen used to work alongside Tom Zhu, who helped Tesla rollout its supercharger network in its early days in China and who currently oversees the U.S. electric carmaker’s China operations.
We ended the trip with a final dinner with guest and my good friend that I’ve known for many years, Tina Zhou, CEO of Gasgoo, a well-known automotive industry information, data, insights aggregator and supplier lead and procurement platform. She gave additional insights and perspectives of the current industry landscape and competitive dynamics in China.
So I mean, it’s a really a small world and then we just had dinner. I mean, this trip we visited just a few of the companies along the EV-AV supply chain, the value chain. And along every one of those companies, there’s competitors. But I think we saw the kind of the startup environment. I think visiting ZDrive, you go into the office and you see people, this whole open space, people discussing. And they were telling me that by the time it gets to 10 pm, 12 am, it’s even more crowded. And that’s how China works at these startup companies. JIYUE, our good friend, Frank Wu, he just posted CEO Zhou Xia, he’s going to do a live stream, 24 hour live stream driving their JIYUE vehicle from Chengdu to some other city to test out their ADAS, the vision-only ADAS capabilities. If you remember, he recently did a 16-hour live stream. So, I mean, we talk about China’s speed. This is where China’s speed come from. These companies, they’re relentless.
There you have it, a laundry list of the highlights of the second edition of the TechBuzz China EV Investor EV Trip. The investors saw a variety of companies along China’s smart EV, AV and mobility value chain, some more established than others, some big, some small, but together they represent just a small sample of the players shaping the industry. Most of them (or their business units that we visited) are less than 10 years old!
The trip offered the investors first-hand and unique insights and experience into the fast-changing China smart EV, AV and mobility ecosystem, and I am certain they walked away with a much better understanding of on-the-ground action and dynamics of how these companies operate and compete. One of the comments from investors about the trip that stood out to me was that no matter how thorough they read the company reports or the news, nothing compares to visiting these companies in person and speaking to corporate executives face to face when it comes to understanding the ecosystem. Likewise, I am certain that for the companies that hosted the investors that their thought-provoking questions, comments and feedback would be equally valuable in return.
I’d like to thank everyone from these 10 companies that either met us or helped with the coordination of the meetings, all the dinner guests, as well as the investors for their patience and support. I’d like to thank TechBuzz China’s founder Rui Ma for coming up with this idea and allowing me to utilize my industry resources to curate some of the company visits. I’d like to thank TechBuzz China’s Freya Zhang for her tireless work and preparation to ensure smooth logistics for the trip.
We are already looking forward to our next trip in May 2025. If you are interested please either contact me (leixing77@gmail.com) or Freya (freya@techbuzzchina.com).
