Australia EV News: Tesla FSD, BYD Atto 1 & 2, Zeekr 7X, Xpeng & Dongfeng

Good evening everyone, welcome to the EV show by Ludacris Feed Live. How are you all doing?

Good to see you all in the live chat there. Thanks for joining us. Today is Wednesday the 22nd

of October 2025. Lots to chat about as always in the EV space. If you joined us live, drop us

a line and take a day. Hopefully it's not as hot where you are as we are in Sydney, or it has been

anyway all day. If you're watching us on replay, hello as well. Nice of you to join us

and good day to you also on the audio podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in.

Yeah, lots to chat about as I said early on, so we'll get straight into it. But before we

do, let's say thank you to our sponsors as always. That is of course Hancock Tire. Check

out the ION EV tires with a very long warranty. And also thank you to Power Shop. They've got EV,

day and night plans as well to suit your needs. Check them out. And also thank you to

CarLube Data2Empower, Australia's EV Revolution. Speaking of CarLube, let's join, well let's

welcome our regular co-host as always. Hello, Mr. Ruzakta. How are we doing?

Hey Tom, hey everyone. Good to be on. I'm not in a bonza lounge tonight, but it's the

next big thing. It's windy Melbourne. It's not hot as hot as it is for people up north,

but it is very, very windy down here. So let's hope the power stays on. But I've got a backup

bonza plane powering the house in case something does happen. But yeah, looking forward to tonight,

we've got lots to chat about. Yeah, don't forget the Spectre Ruz, the Spectre V2H

powering your home too, I'm sure. Well, look, I think it's V2S. It's vehicle to street

with the Spectre. The battery is that large. It just shares it around.

So generous Rolls-Royce. So generous of Riz as well.

Let's hello to Roland from Zapt YouTube channel. Hey Roland, nice to see you.

Hey Tom, hey Riz. Good evening all. This is my best friend today, the good old Aircon Pop.

Yeah. Yeah, I've got it on right now as well. So good. The lifesaver.

And nice to see Roland as well this week at the, well last Saturday at the X-Peng Paramata Grand Opening.

Yes. What an opening. So many people there. Yeah. I missed the Lion Dance at the beginning,

but I heard it was quite good. Yeah. It was very loud. Typical like all of the, I don't want to

do wrong by them, but the drums and everything. Yeah. I saw a real ones of Chinese Lion Dancers

without the costume. They're pretty phenomenal. Yeah. Very acrobatic those guys. So amazing.

They went dripping in sweat after the switch. Yeah. It was a warm day. Yep.

If you want to check out Roland's YouTube channel, there it is, youtube.com slash

zapt.au. Thanks Jason for putting that on. Let's say hello to our regular viewers of

TuneIn nice and early. Hello to Sensei. Thank you very much Sensei for joining us and

giving us a ludicrous feed membership as well. To Mark, who scored one. Hello to Gaffa.

Hello Andrew confirming Riz's Windy Victoria. Also very windy where he is.

Hello Jim. Nice of you to say to the best show of the day. Hey, that's very kind. Very kind.

Hello. Anyone see the 60 minutes thing on the weekend? A ludicrous feed clip. Very,

very short clip. I think they showed two of our videos very, very, very briefly.

Just our FSD test. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting take on the whole thing,

isn't it, Gents? Anyway, we'll get into it very shortly. Hello, Sennacher Mansa. Hello,

it's only Dale, tropical Canberra today. Yes, summer has definitely hit for sure.

Hello, Muzza. Hello, Espadaville. All these early, early joiners. Thanks so much.

Yes, Jason's got the AC as well. Yeah, thank goodness for the AC.

Alrighty. Well, let's get into, yeah, it's only Dale said I couldn't watch

that with a hangover on Sunday. Just a late hangover is on Sunday night, dude. Wow.

That's great. Yeah, this great 60 minutes. Yeah, look, you know, clearly it was supporting

some sort of narratives they wanted to share about FSD and Autopilot. It was very sad what

they were putting on with that story, with that person losing his partner. But still,

it's, there's more to that story, isn't there, guys, with FSD.

I think they were sort of using a lot of Autopilot, the old Autopilot software,

I suppose, to compare it to the new stuff that's, Riz, you've driven it. It's pretty good too.

Yeah, look, Tom, I think we've just, we've chatted about this offline and, you know,

I'm faithful to this channel and the EV community. I have not watched it apart

from what was shared on the ludicrous feeds, social channels and around the place.

But I think it's that this thing has got to continuously sort of evolve, right? Last

year we had the whole thing around, or maybe it was earlier this year, the whole thing around

nickel mines. And now we've got autonomy that is obviously

self-driving cars that are a bit of a scare. But then if you look a bit deeper into the surface,

you have Uber that is doing autonomous vehicle partnerships with any company

they can find that's credible. So they've got partnerships in the Middle East,

they've got partnerships in many different parts of the world. They've taken this very seriously.

Obviously Tesla is doing what they're doing. There's about at least a dozen relatively

good startup and scale-up companies in China that are doing that. Waymo is doing the same thing.

So I think it's probably a one-hit wonder for our friends at 60-minute.

Create sort of the fear while they still can, while we don't have services

like Waymo and Tesla's robot taxi and others that are like Pony and others that are in China.

But at the end of the day, I'm at a stage now where any publicity is good publicity

for EVs and autonomy. So it's the way it goes.

I think I'll get rolling stores in a sec. But I think the problem, as Ruth said,

there's a lot of companies doing autonomy and AI driving, it's not just Tesla. But I think

there's a problem with Tesla's name. I think that's what the general public are concerned with.

It's a little bit deceiving, full self-driving. It's not full self-driving, obviously. I think

that's the main issue. Same with autopilot. I think it's still a hangover from that kind of

advertising marketing. Roland, do you agree or do you think it's too simplistic to consider that?

No, I think it's a mix of all of that. The full self-driving is a deceiving thing

in all fairness. If you go shopped, imagine this was someone's first time being exposed to the brand.

So they go on the website, they shop. And prior to the update with the supervised word in brackets,

says full self-driving. Without reading any further into it, and I know they've got

explanations, you scroll further down these videos and whatnot, but face value at a quick

glance, that makes you think, as a consumer, right, that's full self-driving. And so I think

that doesn't help. And then along with the whole CEO thing, that's not getting to the full politics,

but it kind of paints that bad name. And they know, as media companies, they will get the clicks.

So that's why they continue to do this. And by anyone watching it, it's sort of like

you are indirectly feeding the algorithm to kind of prompt them to whether it's paid for

advertising, all of that stuff clicks like, you know, they're loving it.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's that's how media make the money. But yeah, very interesting.

I have to just quickly point out, Elizabeth makes a very good comment.

God is watching us.

Yeah. Look, I guess that's quite a fanciful name, right? Like, surely no one thinks God's watching

through the idea. I mean, maybe years. But I think, yeah, I think it's still come for me.

Anyway, I think it comes out of the name that you tell the average person on the street,

they think Tesla was already doing that. It was already driving itself, right? We

obviously follow it very closely. We know that's not true. It's been under development and still is

over the years. So it is a little bit deceiving to the average person, I suppose. So anyway,

we'll leave it at that. We've got, I've got some more about the FSD subscription coming up,

so we'll touch base on that very shortly. We will have it just quickly talk about the

fact that there are a couple of EV shows coming up in Sydney and Melbourne. We're very

blessed here on the East Coast with the Sydney International EV Motor Show coming up on the

31st, 1st and 2nd of November, which is next weekend. So not this weekend, the next weekend.

And there's a link in the video description below for buy one, get one for your tickets

if you want to attend the show. Risen myself will be there. And Roland will be as well.

So it should be good. Lots to chat about as always in the EV space. And if you can't

make Sydney, there's always Melbourne as well. So at the Melbourne show grounds,

which is in Flemington, the everything electric makes its debut in Melbourne. So Risen myself

will be there as well doing a couple of talks and panels. So that should be good to see.

Looks, it looks like he were, you know, they've listened to feedback and they are branching

outside of Sydney, which is great. Hopefully more cities in Australia to come in coming years.

Cool. So that's a couple of EV shows there in Australia. And big news this week at a BYD,

speaking of BYD launching Atto one and Atto two, no pricing as yet, but they have released

some specs guys. Obviously, what is the magic number? What do you reckon?

20. Yep. Roland suggesting 2888. I thought 1888 might be a better number.

But I'm a car expert suggesting about 25 grand. So I mean, that'll be all right. I think 25 grand.

I'll just quickly show you our spreadsheet here, which we talked about in my video. So

if you look at the Dolphin, it's 29, 990 before on-road. So I'm thinking Atto one will be

under that given it's a smaller car. So I think 25 grand is not too far off the market

there, Gents. We'll see. Now, I had a bit of research about kind of the cheapest

ICE cars in that price range, Rhys. Would you say it's sort of early 20s for an equivalent size

vehicle? I'd say like a Picanto or the Mazda 2, for example. Yeah, MG3 is a little bit more

expensive now, but it used to be around the $20,000 bar. These more affordable fleet friendly

cars have sort of gone up in price over the years. We used to have like the Hyundai Gets and Hyundai

Accent and even Kia Rio at one stage, but they've sort of and Kia Picanto and they've sort of

increased in price to a stage where everything's over 20 grand now. So yeah, if it's playing in

that sort of, you know, mid 20,000 space, it would, you know, it would help. My only

thing is that we've had the Dolphin Essential for a while now. Well, introduced in January this year,

didn't really move the needle much until about July, August, when my suspicion is that's when

BYD first started to deliver those Essentials, although they were supposed to be delivered in

April for the first batch. But they were starting to get some good numbers, you know,

over 450, I think, Dolphin Sales last month, which the price is finally starting to make an impact.

I'm just not too sure whether this is too small of a car. I drove it last week at Lang Lang and

every time I drive this car, I just love it. It's just so much fun. But I'm just not sure,

unless we can get some big fleet customers like those car share sort of companies that operate

in the inner city pop car and I think car next door or whatever they're called, unless we can get

some of those big fleet operators purchasing these, it might start with a bit of a slow,

slow sort of sales for first couple of months, and then it will pick up sort of like the Dolphin.

Yeah, that's right. I'm just bemoaning the fact that they didn't keep the Seagull name

guys. I mean, Seagull would have been quite iconic. Someone said in my video that it's like a Seagull

scrapping for a parking spot. It would have been perfect in Sydney. I'm sure Melbourne as well.

If you squint, it kind of looks like a Lamborghini, someone said. You agree with this?

Yeah. Yeah. European design influence. Yeah, I get it.

Can I just ask though, the official name for that colour I've had to look it up

is sprout green. It really looks yellow. It looks yellow. I haven't seen it in person.

So what do you all think, Gens? And what's everyone thinking as a realist? Is it green or is it

yellow? It really looks more yellow, like highlighted yellow. I'm with you, Roland. I've got all the

media assets from BYD that all look yellow to me. Seriously, there's no, I mean,

I'd be lime green maybe, but it's yellow in my books. Once again, if you squint,

it looks green. Hey, you can be whatever you want. Seriously,

whatever colour you want to call it. Sprout green. Yeah, it's all good.

Question here, I think it was, will it be released at the Motor Show? I think there's a special

launch in Sydney in mid-November, so we'll find out more. Yeah. So Richard says, maybe a sprout

that hasn't gotten enough sun. It's a bit, isn't quite bloomed yet. Yeah, looks yellow, says it's

only down. Yep. If you feed the seagull chips, does it mean it includes the ADAS? Nice. A lot

of dad jokes. So in China, it does come with a very entry-level godzai, which on the vehicle

that I spotted or the one that I drove, they only had one right-hand drive car and it didn't

have the godzai cameras. So I guess that's still a China-only thing if we're talking about sort of

the tech that it comes with. God is not leaving China with a seagull, staying in China.

Yeah, interesting. All right. Well, that's good. And the A2, of course,

is also going to be launched for the price very shortly. So that's good. Lots of new cars

from BYD, C-Line 5, C-Line 8, they're the hybrids and then the denser brand as well. So lots to talk

about from BYD. One just quick highlight before we sort of move over to the next topic. I was

actually impressed with the spec sheet, 11 kilowatt AC on even the seagull. Hey, BYD is

widely listened. Good. It's good for city dwellers because if you're charging with the

curbside charger because you don't have access to off-street parking, then you could top up the

essential version, which I think has a 30 kilowatt hour pack in about two hour parking,

you get two-thirds of the battery. That's smaller than my home battery at the moment.

Tiny. Yeah, that's right. That's true. 11 kilowatts for a 30 kilowatt battery. That's pretty

impressive. You won't need to DC charge it too often. It's good. And I think the,

what's the other one? Is it dynamic or premium? Then step up premium. It's 40 something?

3, 4, 43, 44. Yeah. Yeah, it's not a bad offering. It's good. All right, we'll keep it on the price

for sure. Yeah, Sergio says the 11 kilowatt AC is faster than the SEAL, I agree. Interesting.

All right, let's stick with BYD. So this definitely made the news this week. The fact

that BYD are storing cars at the Jamburu theme park or the action park just south of Sydney,

about 100K south of Sydney, where you control the action. Clearly BYD are controlling the cars down

there. Now, I mean, it doesn't look odd to me, cars at a car park, but someone's clued on,

someone's complained, and the climate council not happy with the fact that they're storing

imagery cars in this car park. Jen's overblown or legit concern? What do you reckon?

I personally, I'm with you, like it's a car park. You've got cars there. So for me personally,

like I don't understand, why do you need to submit a DA approval to put cars there? Is it

because they're not classified as cars? Because they're technically not road registered and

they're classed as inventory or something, but like they're cars, they're multi,

they're making multi use, right? Like if Jamburu isn't open, they're doing a good favor to BYD,

being able to work out their partnership to store cars. I think that's a good thing.

Yeah. Riz? I wonder how much the residents concerns around just lack of information

around electric cars, because still pretty common news that you know, or news worthy for many

that, you know, EVs, there's a risk of fire. So people, you know, we'll jump on Facebook,

someone posts this said about 40 people say, oh, it's got a burst into flame,

uneducated, of course, guess is there. But to people living in the area, it's far too close

to home. They think they're living next to Chernobyl. So there is a bit of fear mongering

that would cause this, but I agree with your role. And if it's, if they're making use

of a car park that is not being used, and it's a private arrangement between the park operator

and let's say BYD, I don't see anything wrong with it. And these are transient vehicles, you know,

like this old 1800 of them last month, I can't imagine they're going to be sitting in that lot

that long. Unlike the early days when we had parking lots full of the arrow threes,

I think it was the second half of 2023. So yeah, maybe people are quite alarmed based on

the lack of knowledge and information around these vehicles.

Yeah, that's right. I think it's only it says cars guide have done an update to this. So let's

have a look at that update. So apparently it's to do with the distribution changeover.

Here we go. Like the situation that Jamburu

changed over from EV Direct's distribution to the brand new factory being opened. So it's a

temporary housing basically. I also read in the ABC article that it was because

they were concerned about big trucks being in the area, hauling these cars back and forth.

But as we know, those trailers aren't too big. And the owner was saying, well, the buses

that bring kids and so on to the theme park are about the same size. So I don't know if that's

a legit concern. Anyway, I think it's overblown. Honestly, I'm sure it happens everywhere and

obviously must be slow news day. But yeah, it is what it is. There you go.

Yeah, that's right. Good news story anyway, for the main press. Now let's stick with

BYD for the moment. So there was an update this week for Cline 7 to version 3.0.0. A few things

getting updated there optimizations mainly navigation info display and head up display.

A few preference settings as well. Someone was emailing me this week saying that there was

an issue with the ICC, the intelligent cruise control. So I don't own a BYD anymore. So

I'm a bit out of the loop. So anyone in the chat who owns a BYD, let us know.

Has the version 3.0 affected your experience, particularly to do with intelligent cruise

control? Let us know. Let us know. Yeah, there it is, this person here. So this person sent me

Christopher, sent me some info. And yes, so publicly asking the question, is it affecting

ICC since the OTA? Keep your thoughts on the chat, guys. Thanks very much.

And just staying with BYD and it's been a recall as well. Riz and Roland, I'll show you

whether you guys read calling some older vehicles we don't get here in Australia. I think the Tang

was one of them. And was it the Yang, sorry, Yuan, Yuan Pro, which we also don't get here.

It's just to do with, I think, the battery, something like that.

Quick question around financial review and the coverage of cars that we don't get here.

They rarely cover cars we do get here, let alone the stuff that we don't get.

But I'm not sure which executive that's going to be reading this paper. This will be

relevant to, or for, but I guess they're into global coverage now, but

yeah, need to be more factual around what is happening. Yuan Pro, as you said, we don't get

here. We get the Yuan Plus, which is the Ado 3. And this is the AFR, so Australian Financial

Review as well. So yeah, it's weird, Riz, you're right. It's coverage of a big brand like that,

not really relevant to us just yet, but it is, here we go, reduction.

Sorry, floor and the battery waterproof design could lead to reduction of power output.

So there you go, just want to throw it out there, just to be fair with coverage overall.

Thank you, Jason, for the five memberships. Much appreciate it. Thank you, thank you.

Jason also says, don't have a sea lion just yet, so no info. So let us know if you're on a

sea lion seven thoughts on the new update. Okay, what else have we got? All right, let's

move on to Tesla FST. So obviously FST subscription is now available for hardware for $449 per month

and $159 New Zealand dollars per month. And also if you've got enhanced autopilot, it's $75

Aussie and 80 New Zealand. I think from what I've read, EAP is now gone. You can't buy that anymore,

right? And it's just FST or FST subscription. So there it is. And just as a PSA, just be

very careful if you've got hardware through, you can actually subscribe to this, but you

won't obviously get the FST supervised features. You'll just get what used to be EAP, right?

So just be careful if you just want it. I'm sure if you want to test it for $149,

it's a cheap way to do so, but it's not what hardware for guys and girls are getting

with that experience. You won't care what's in the media, what they've been showing.

That's it. And in fact, Alex on X did that for science. And from what I can read off his post,

it sounds like it's just EAP, which has been available for Yonks previously. So nothing new

from that point of view. So you've been warned. Do not subscribe to this unless you just want

EAP. You won't get the full thing. Yeah, Andrew's saying lots of angst from hardware

through owners. Yeah, just don't pay it. I mean, it's not, you won't get it if you've got hardware

through. Does it come with ASS, actual smart summons? According to Alex, smart summons there,

I'm not sure about ASS. Which is the next generation smart summons? Yeah.

Yeah. Gaffer paid for it six years ago. Lots of people pay for hardware through FST.

What's going with the class action? Is that still going on?

Was that sort of dying? Still going? Yeah.

Stuart's still no reply for refund. Oh, yeah. Oh, for the subscription, right?

Yeah. Yeah. No, smart summons doesn't work. Error is saying Wine Park in public car park.

There you go. Okay. Good to know. Roland, have you tried it yet? FST supervised?

I have not. I have not got a fine time. Yeah. I'm one of those. I've got it on hardware 3 on the X.

So I'm just waiting. Maybe I won't even have the car by the time it's available.

Oh, gosh. What are you eyeing? What's next? What Roland's back?

Nothing. You just constantly like to think about what's next, but who knows?

Window shopping in your mind. I'm always window shopping.

Even if I get a new car tomorrow, I'll be window shopping again.

It's a bad habit. Come to my place. I've got the IM5 at the moment.

That's a beautiful car. Yeah. Oh, it's Roland's back as well.

Do the race box timer for the people?

Oh, I should. I should. I've still got it. Man, it's such a step up from the Nissan area,

I've got to say. It's such a night and day. Seriously. Oh my goodness.

It's such a nice drive. It's so quick. So responsive. And, well, $80,000, right,

for all the drive, phenomenal value. Yeah. It'll be getting a good review for sure.

Gaffer says, the way I see it, I paid $10,000 six years ago back when Tesla was in real danger.

If they can't give it to me as promised, I'll take $10,000 worth of shares.

Shares from like since then, $10,000 or $10,000 six years ago that's been now priced up.

That's how I really am. So Gaffer saying $10,000 from back then. So way more now.

I'll take that too. Definitely. Save.

Yeah. Tony says, iron looks really good. It looks fantastic. It looks great.

What color? What color? It's that blue, the iconic blue they've got. Yeah.

Yeah, it's phenomenal. It's a sedan too, guys. Makes my heart sing. Not another SUV.

It's good. All right. Moving right along. So now did you guys hear about this

this Tesla fire just in northern New South Wales?

I think it was Neatari. So this, we will send our regards to the family of this person that

was involved, not this person in this photo, but there was a critically injured driver

from that crash. So I think, I believe this person hit a tree before the Tesla ran into,

went into thermal runaway. So it is a legit car fire, but there was obviously trauma before

it happened. So there it is, their pick of it.

Yeah, it does happen. So that is actually the 12th EV Fire since 2021, according to EV FireSafe.

So they are the facts, guys. 12 fires since 2021 in Australia.

So shout out to Emma and the team for looking after all that data. It's good.

More than 350,000 cars since 2021, 12 fires, pretty low risk, which is just harking back to

what you said, Riz, about the general population still concerned about EV fires.

Yeah. Not bad stats. That's right, Tony. I agree. Pretty good. Very, very low rate.

Is that NMC battery? I don't think we've got any of those details just yet.

Only thing I could say from the pictures, the performance feels, I think.

That's what I was looking at.

Good start. Very good. Yeah, they look like uber turbines.

Unless it's a cap, but then you've got red calipers too, I think.

So it's got to be NMC, right? If it's uber turbines.

Look, they are at their high risk, but they're still pretty low, right? It's statistics.

It's like 10 times worse, but they're both very small numbers. So this is a very rare case,

thankfully, of an EV fire.

Sergio is saying Roland, ex-CaWSMGT. That's my next car too. Not just Rollins.

Where's Andrew? Where's Ika? You're bringing it on.

Yeah. Surely Andrew is watching. He'll text something soon.

He loves our show.

So just on that, I've been thinking recently, well, we want wagons in this country, right?

I guess car enthusiasts, performance vehicles, and just the practicality factor,

then I sometimes think if they were available, would we genuinely put our money down

on a station wagon? I love the 007 GT. I think it looks, and I would personally

put money on a car like that. But apparently, the reason why a lot of the manufacturers are

not selling any wagons at all are because people have just stopped buying them.

So yeah. But then again, every now and then, I'll see like an Audi RS6 or a C63 wagon,

or one of them, and UK is getting electric wagons. So maybe there needs to be a resurgence.

And the G-wagon doesn't count. It's not a real wagon. Sorry, Ron.

I was going to say, I've never seen someone unhappy in a wagon.

Yeah, like unhappy with their wagon. Like everyone who's got a wagon, always over the moon.

Totally. Even the Volkswagen's got a wagon. What's it called?

There's a Passat wagon. That's it. And Golf had a wagon too.

Golf had a wagon. Yeah. Yeah. Like the IM5 this week, the sedan just feels so much

more stable. You're just so much more planted on the ground. I know you're lower.

I think people just like riding higher, right? Just because there's so many big cars on the

road. That's just a trend. You just want to be around. I want to see over everyone.

That's it. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. It's sad, but it is the truth, unfortunately.

Yeah. So that is, that's the 007 GT. Bring it soon, Andrew. Let's talk about this.

So this is new V4 Tesla Superchargers coming soon at Glenorchee in Tasmania.

Finally happened, Charles. It's finally happened. Nice.

Four stalls. That's good for Tassie. It's great.

And V4 as well. So hopefully all accessed for all cars too. That'd be good.

And this one is, let me just check my notes. Where was this one from?

This is a viewer photo in Mansfield, Victoria. Where's that?

It's kind of thin. Yeah, from Johan. Let's have a look. Which part of Victoria?

It is in the northeast. East. Northeast. Bonnie Doon is nearby.

Okay. Jamison. Mount Buller. That's Strath Boogie.

Yeah, it's all a high country. Yeah. There you go.

It's good to learn about Victorian geography while we're at it.

Oh, thanks, Gary. On the way to the snow fields. Thank you.

And Richard. It's no country. Thank you.

Awesome. Yeah, cater for Mount Buller. Nice one. That's good.

Good for winter next year.

And also this pick as well. So this is obviously still under construction

in Mansfield, but hopefully ready for next winter.

Yeah. How's the Serenity? Bonnie Doon. Nice. Nice castle reference.

Okay. That's good. Just quickly wanted to talk about our sponsors real quick.

So thank you to Hunkook Driving Emotion, EV Tires. Check them out.

Hunkook Ion Tires, Long Warranty. Thank you to Power Shop as well.

Power Shop to EV Plans for day and night, depending on your needs.

Check them out. And also thank you to Carloop,

data to empower Australia's EV Revolution. Ruiz and the team. Thank you.

Okay. Now we talked about earlier with Roland, the fact that the X-Ping

Parramatta is still launched and it's going to be a full service centre as well, Roland.

Oops. It is.

It is. And then I also found out it was posted on Facebook. Michael, I think he's one of the

employees at X-Ping in Port Melbourne. And you can see that there. They will also become

an official service centre too. So when I was speaking to one of the guys at Parramatta,

they were saying you can pretty much choose whether or not you want to go with Altatune

or if you want to go direct. So they're doing warranty work already like at Parramatta. So

it's good news for owners who didn't want to just specifically go with Altatune.

Now's you've got an option to go direct. So I think that's a good win.

Nice. It's good to see a DC charger as well in the car park Roland in Parramatta

if you need it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure where they can charge that full 240 or 250 kilowatts,

but still something's better than nothing. Gotta try it. Gotta try it. Yeah. Bring the G6 over

there. And what a great spot. Hey, it's an auto alley Church Street Parramatta, the home of

cars, I suppose, in Western Sydney. Great location. They've chosen well.

I just, I guess X-Ping, I'm just a bit confused at the moment, right? We all,

it's no secret that HQ's coming in. So it's a bit of a bit of a bit of flux at the moment.

You know, what's, what's the direction for when are the cars coming? And particularly the new G6,

G9, X9, a lot of stuff, a lot of cool stuff coming out of China, but we're just not getting

those dates like the other brands like BID, Zika. Where is any thoughts? Any, any insights

from your end? Well, they've got an FAQ page that they updated a couple of months ago on

the current Australian website. And they were saying that the, I think it was the X9 that

was going to be here in late Q4, maybe Q1 next year. We still haven't seen the G6 performance

that was supposed to be here by June. So maybe they're waiting for the new change over,

but I don't think there's a performance variant in the new model. So I guess time will tell.

I also heard some other markets, maybe Malaysia got the, the new G6. So it's getting, you know,

closer, but yeah, hopefully Q1 next year. Yeah, I got some people I know looking forward to the G9

as well. They just want that bigger SUV. So yeah, hopefully Xperia can get their act together.

Yeah, wouldn't mind seeing the new G6 as well. That's a nice big one.

X9, we need the competition here for the people move the market.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, they talked big when we went to Hong Kong earlier this year for

their brand night. It looked really good, the X9. So hopefully it comes next year.

Otherwise they'll fall behind, right? You got Zika with their 009,

got BYD with Denza coming in. Lots, lots to choose from now that people move a segment.

Even potentially GWM's Wave brand, WEY, they might be bringing I think a plug-in hybrid

sort of people mover, pretty luxurious as well. So yeah, quite a bit of competition

started to emerge in that space now. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, Daros's Indonesia has the X9.

So hopefully we'll get here soon. That's good. That's great. That's another right hand drive

market, I think. Could be wrong. I think they are, and they're assembling them there.

Oh, very good. Oh, here we go. Marius says the M4 services, Ampol, I think, both

East and Westbound now open online. That's great. Five DC fast charges.

Yeah, it's a great spot on the M4 there, around Eastern Creek.

I have to go for a test, maybe in the IM, just test out that speed.

Do we know what that battery is called? I mean, Zika's got the Golden Brick,

but does IM call a special name? Is it a Platinum Brick or...?

Yeah, I'm just trying to think. It's one of those, what is it, Alibaba and

SAIC joint venture. Oh yeah. So I should, yeah, I don't know, maybe Alipak or something.

Need a catchy name, hey? Golden Brick's pretty good.

That sound cool. That sound good. Or is it green, guys? Yellow, gold or green? It's hard to tell,

right? Got a squid. Hey, actually, speaking of Golden Brick, this week, there is the pre-sales of the

updated Zika 7x in China. So that's already sort of started, but, you know,

like most things, that's probably another 12 to 18 months away in international markets. So China

first, as we learned in the Zika trip last year, that there's a lot of things, such as zero gravity

seats and a whole lot of other features, screens that move from one end of the Zika X to the other.

All of that sort of stuff is China only first until they feel comfortable and then it goes

into international markets where they're allowed to have it. So new Golden Brick battery in the Zika

7x, the new variant, more power. And I'm sure they've done a lot of other interior tweaks as well.

But last week when I met, you know, the first 50 odd owners in Sydney, they were all very,

very happy. Very high demand, that particular car at the moment. And, you know, I think

both of you have driven it. I think, you know, Tom, you enjoyed it, some videos and

Roland, you've spent quite a, seems like you spent quite a bit of time with it.

What do you think, Gents? Like, based on what we have in that vehicle, what other improvements

could they possibly make? Like, I think it's pretty good.

Yeah, honestly, I think it's a great package for that price. It's really, I mean,

all drive, that's what I had under 80 grand, seriously, in New South Wales, very hard to beat.

And, you know, that's what it has over the G6. It's got the all drive variant, which the Xperiax

doesn't have, it's missed the boat. So I think Zika have done very well, price it well,

good inclusions. And look, those China first things, I mean, sure, no zero gravity, no

starlight thing at the front, but I think all in all, the way it drives, it's very comfortable,

very planted. I think Roland will agree. Yeah, honestly, for the price, there's nothing else.

If nothing else that you could just easily go, it takes this many boxes.

Yeah. Yeah, agreed. And if you're lucky enough to get to a fast charger, then you can, yeah,

golden brick the battery out of it. It's amazing. It's very fast.

Yeah, here we go. We've got a seven X owner right there loving it. Good, congratulations.

Yeah, end of October EV sales should be good. Riz, I think looking forward to that in a few days time.

Yeah, fingers crossed. I'll try and have something for us next week, just as a preview to see what

it's looking like. I have a suspicion that we're going to get close to 10%. I think we might be

a little bit of a dip compared to what we had in September. It appears that end of every quarter

seems to be some sort of a quarter rush. So we see a bit of a surge. But if the overall vehicle sales

are sort of starting to come down a little bit from their highs, then we might have a pretty

good month. So yeah, let's watch this space. Yeah, we did approach X-Pung for you guys,

me and Roland, when we were there, we asked them, why aren't you reporting to FCAI or UVC?

And they said, watch this space. So we did ask the question.

Hopefully, it'll materialize soon because we did say, look, if you report,

the numbers will definitely be better. So it's for the greater good. So we are pushing them.

It gives more confidence to the brand, right? Because that's the moment it's unknown. And

when people get the unknown answer, it always goes negative side first. They're like, well,

we're not selling. Correct. They had a better month in September. They doubled their previous

averages to just over 200 and something vehicles. So look, it's, you know, it's doing

relatively well given, you know, that the car has been around for nearly 12 months now in the

market. But yeah, I wonder what the, what that would, you know, how that would change if

they did start to report their numbers, because more people will be aware of the vehicle.

That's right. We'll just amplify it on the show. Absolutely. That's what we said.

Here's a good point here. So Nakramanta says, I recently learned that the Zika 7x and the

Brabus Smart Hashtag 5 are the same car. It doesn't surprise me. I mean, you know,

it's a Geely car on the Smart cars as a Zika. So probably share some common parts there.

Richard says, the 7x is the only car who's charging is faster than anything

available on the market. The fastest charger in the country is 400 kilowatts. Very true.

IMS, they're pretty quick too. Are they? Are they 400?

I think they were getting close to 290, 300. Okay. Yeah.

I guess for all intents and purposes, like sure, the numbers are big, but I think in terms of time,

it's probably very similar around the 15 minute mark. Yeah. Same with G6. It's pretty fast as

well. If you get a charger that can work. Has MG sold any cybersuiters? I will ask Richard

that question. I did see one in the wild the other day. I was very, very happy to see it

in my neighborhood. I think they are selling very few, like a couple of months, but I'm not sure

how that demand will continue in the future. It might be one of those cars that just remains a

Halo car. To be fair, the IM interface, it's very similar to the Cybersuit. You've got the

three screens. So it just looks more refined, right? But it's, yeah, same sort of platform.

Chau says he knows of one owner in Tasmania. Good. That's one car. Sergio asks, do you think

the Starlight will be an option for Australia one day? Ooh, ADRs, Jets. Apparently, that's

like insane. But I mean, you know, it's that, I think we touched on it last week that

it's always a balance of how much kit you add onto a car and what that price is going to be

versus what is really important to the buyers at the end of the day is we are price sensitive

to get our foot in the door. And, you know, maybe in some top trims one day, but it's a lot of

compliance work to sort of get it to that stage for such a short sort of number of sales or

small number of sales. Yep. I think you could have done all the basics, right, you know,

ride quality, suspension, comfort, inclusions, infotainment system, ADAS, I think it's all

ticks the boxes for that price. And yeah, they've concentrated on what Australians find important

in a car. So hats off to that team for Zika doing that. Yeah, I agree, John, if Performance

G6 is in and it was supposed to be, as we said earlier, then definitely a competitor for the

Zika 7x all-wheel drive. 100%. Watch this space. I need to bring it in. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Now, speaking of green or gold, this is definitely green, guys. Jolt. Jolt's following EVs footsteps

and introducing auto charge to their hardware. So auto charge just in short is basically

set up in your account, your vehicle, and you can just plug it in like a Tesla supercharger,

it'll start charging because it'll handshake knowing that it's your car, which is

pretty handy. I think when I first talked about this in EV, there was some security concerns around

auto charge. I think there's a competitor to auto charge, but all in all, I think it's a

good step forward, makes it easier to use a DC fast charger in Australia. So hats off to you,

Jolt, for doing this. Does Jolt still have the free seven kilowatt hour a day charger? I think

they do. Finish what they do. Yeah, good. That's only a third of the Seagull, I don't

want battery guys. Yeah, that's all you need, right? Yeah, thanks to how they still do. Good.

Oh, here we go. Jolt's only for the paid tier, right? Not for the free tier. Okay, look.

All right. Free is free, right? So cool. Oh, James used it yesterday. Cool. Nice. Thanks for

verifying that. That's why I love this show. Just ask a question, it gets answered. It's fantastic.

Now, the king of ADR speaking of Roland. Let's walk through this. Dong, what a great name. Do

you want to sound this? I was going to say, I'm waiting for you to say the name. Oh, man.

I'll get in trouble. Okay. Okay. So first of all, Dong Feng. All right. I think it's

lost in translation. It's a funny name, but isn't Dong Feng, it means Oriental, right, Roland?

In Chinese? We have to ask someone in the chat here. I don't know. I'm going to look this up.

Dong means east in Mandarin. I know that. So I think it is. I'll be watching a few

C-Dramas here. I think it means Oriental. No? East wind. East wind is what it means.

Right. It's east something. All right. Good. Sort of that out. So Dong Feng,

genially forthing Joyer T5 EV. Wow. What a mouthful. Jeez. Who thought that up?

It's coming though, isn't it? It's coming. It's approved. And I mean Dong Feng supposedly

according to Google, found in 1969. So it is an established company. It's not just a new one

that's popped up, say, in the past 12 or so months. So yeah, it does say there is 1,500 kilograms

maximum towing mass brake trailer. Front wheel drive from memory about 160 kilowatts.

Yeah, 150. Yeah, seems to be the average thing coming out. Like if we've got base entry-level

cars coming out from China, things like they're all around 150 kilowatts if they are roughly

that size vehicle around 4.6. Yep. Yeah. Dong is good. As Tony said, just call it the Dong.

I love it. Yeah, that's right. What a Dong.

I do like the M-Hero. I think Riz, we saw that in China. Looks pretty cool, that military style.

Very tough. Yeah. Now, based on what I understand, Dong Feng has got a couple of partnerships in

China, including one with Nissan. So they build, you know, youths and other things for, and I

also believe they build quite a bit of military equipment. So I think that, you know,

from an automotive point of view, they are pretty big. And they're already in Europe.

They sell a vehicle called Nami Box, which is like a seagull or like another one.

And they're also selling the Nami Box in New Zealand. So yeah, quite a lot of,

like, well-known brand in China. They seem to be, they seem to know how to make cars.

And if they are coming to Australia and New Zealand, it means that they are looking at the

right-hand drive markets pretty seriously, this could be one of many models to come.

Yep. Another brand. That's right. Another SUV to start with. Yeah. Someone said,

look, it's a competitive, the SS7. Yeah. Okay. Right. Hope for the same sort of price

as well, sub 50. And Darryl says the fourth thing. I keep reading this as frothing. The fourth thing

is a sub brand. Okay. Right. Darryl. Very good. And they've got a youth as well, according to Michael.

Okay. That'd be good. Yeah. Definitely have a sense of humor. I don't know if it's a sense of

humor or they're just aware of... Could be just a conversion of a name,

lost in the organization, but... I mean, East wind sounds pretty hardcore, right?

Imagine driving a car that's East wind. That's a bit, I don't know, palatable than Dongfeng.

I feel like if it was East wind, like it's got to be a Lotus, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Lotus is a quite nice name as well actually. So Dongfeng and the Yang Wang, if you have a drag

race between those cars, I think the Yang Wang Extreme will win, but the Dongfeng

frothing may be more comfortable. Yeah. I'd be frothing at the U9, definitely.

A U9 to be dancing on three wheels. Yeah. Well, okay. That's the Dongfeng. We'll

keep an eye on that. Jumping to the other side of the world, Cadillac, Vistik, ADR approved,

six seater? Six seater, two variants, no towing. So if anyone was interested,

you're going to carry six people, but you can't carry anything else.

And it is heavy, nearly 2,900 kilograms. That's a heavy boy. That's a tank. Yeah.

Yeah, look, I confess, I quite like the Cadillac Lyric. We had that for the week. That's

quite a luxury kind of vehicle. Look, it's expensive, but it's different, right? It's not

Chinese. It's not the Tesla. It's not Japanese. It's different. So I'm sure there's a market for

it. And rolling with the new Sydney airport, you never know. This could be good for airport

shuttles for the hour journey out west. Yeah. In black, for sure, it'll look quite

sleek, quite nice. Speaking of which though, I have seen one Lyric on the road. I saw

my first one earlier this week. In the world? In the world. So I don't know how many numbers

they're selling, but I've seen at least one. Yeah, I'll have a look at that. But I guess,

Jens, this or the Zika 009? Hands down, 009. I don't know. Sorry. Yeah.

America versus China. Tough call. And then they're selling, I'm actually pretty impressed

with how many 009 Zika is actually selling. Every month, it's generally between five and 10,

which is a lot for that car, for that type of vehicle. We're talking of people who were

talking 150,000. Yeah, 150,000 plus. It's a lot of coin.

So and the 009 just looks so different on the road. Black, you know, with that silver

grill at the front, maybe the grand edition, which I've done this live stream from the

back off in Chatswood once upon a time. So yeah, look, there may be some people

that have an affinity with the Cadillac brand. But, you know, everyone that I've met that

knows the Cadillac brand from back in the day is not willing to fork out anything more than

60 grand for a car. So, you know, time will tell. Yeah. I was speaking of Chatswood,

I mean, around the North Shore, there's a few 009s running around. I see them a lot. So,

yeah, doing school runs. It's a pretty cool car. I wouldn't mind being picked up in that,

which we did actually with Zika when I first went there back late last year. So,

nice to be picked up in that from Shanghai. Great car.

Yeah. Well, anyway, there's an alternative in the Cadillac Vistic.

Hopefully another launch, Roland. We'll see you there.

Yeah. I do think that they will probably price against similar to the 009,

because if we think the Lyric was about 120, right? Yeah. And that's this being an even

bigger SUV. It's got to be more than that. No brainer. Now, get this, kind of like flew

people to the States before they were going to launch the Lyric. So, I don't know how

many people will be willing to fly to the States now, if they were to do another launch.

With this sort of car, it's basically like an Escalade, where you do need to be going through

some rougher parts of Compton and other areas to really feel how protective and big you actually

feel. So, if anyone's interested, we're always keen to head over to the States to find out.

But, you know, I'm quite happy in the Turac East at the moment.

Well, if you get past the US customs, and yeah, I'm sure be happy to see what Cadillac have

got to offer. Anyway, that's Cadillac. And just staying with the American theme,

Costco. Costco are continuing their Leap Motor discounts, ending in nine days, guys.

If you want a Leap Motor C10, $2,500 off Costco. Costco membership is about $70,

that's a pretty good deal. Huge discount. There was a poll star had some an incentive

with Costco at one state, and they do other automotive brands as well, brands as well. But

good to see Costco is being part of the EV journey. I think it's Costco people go there for the

bargains and the bulk buying. And if you can get an EV that is a bit of a bargain and cheap

enough to run, that's basically, I would call it a affordable man's Porsche.

You know, you pick up a hot dog, you know, pick up some bag of oranges,

pick up a coffin and then a car. Yeah, why not? I love Costco, honestly. Love Costco. Except

when you buy stuff from Costco, you come home and it's like, hey, it wasn't this big in the

store. What happened? That's good. Costco's good. Yeah, Darryl says if they do a similar

deal with the B10, they could fly at the door 100% before it's in the flying car. That's that's

X-Pak. That's different. Yeah, Costco needs to provide EV charging stations. Agreed? 100%.

So what do you just roll up and buy at Costco? Yeah, you probably could drive through.

It is American. Yep. Yep, only petrol stations, no EVs. Very interesting.

Oh, selling gold bars. I think, yeah, gold's very popular at the moment, the way the world is.

Selling gold bars in the US. Interesting. You buy and bulk to save money. Yeah, why not just

why not buy two while you're at it? Buy one for me. Yep, thanks, Jason. And just to end

off, guys, the New South Wales, we're seeing the first EV bus depot powered up in Sydney.

That's great. Very good. Towards a cleaner, greener future.

I like seeing that gantry there with the charging above. Very, very good. How big are those batteries

on one of those electric buses? How many kilowatt hours? I think there are 300 to 400 kilowatt

hours. I was going to say 15 to a couple of hundred. Sure. Yeah, you have to, a lot of

these buses don't do more than 150 kilometers a day. 200 kilometers a day. I mean, depending

on the road, you know, sort of the routes they go on, even Uber drivers, most of them don't drive

more than 250 kilometers a day. So there's enough range for all of them. So yeah, it's

quite, quite cool to see. I mean, electric buses in China are like at different level,

like there's multi-storey bus storage sheds with like charging, fast charging on all levels.

And just, yeah, electric buses, Shanghai, Shanghai, Guangzhou, just everywhere.

But I'm glad that we're starting to go on the journey. And I really feel New South Wales is

leading the charge on electric buses compared to Victoria is a little bit slow. And I think

other parts of Australia are doing pretty well as well on this transition. So congrats to the

New South Wales team. It's so nice when an electric bus passes you or when you're walking

on the street. It's just so quiet. You don't hear the diesel, rattle. It's just great. And

I've seen a few electric school buses too, which is even better. So, you know, looking

up to the kids health. They're so quiet. They're so beautiful. And just having them

around, I think we need more electric buses. So if you have any interactions with your local

transport authority, let them know we need more electric buses that are a lot better than diesel

on the road. Makes sense to me. Makes sense to me. Alrighty, cool. Gents, that's all we have time

for tonight, right on the our mark. So good to see you both. Thanks for joining us once

again, Ruiz and Roland. What's up this week, Ruiz?

So tomorrow morning is Tesla's Q3 earnings call, which of course I'm eagerly waiting to get up

at 730 to listen to because there's always some interesting bits that get dropped.

So looking, you know, that's that's one thing that's happening. Apart from that,

obviously next, so not this coming weekend, the following weekend is a Sydney EV show. So a lot

of prep around around that. They're even going to have I think a new car reveal sort of stand as

well. So worth checking that out. And yeah, just preparing for the show. And next week,

there's also all energy for anyone that is in Melbourne and is interested in battery and

sort of tech space. So all energy happening in Melbourne, I think it's Southern Hemisphere's largest

renewable energy show. And they have an EV area as well this time around. So that's sort of what's

going on. Fantastic, Ruiz. Busiest man in the space. So good. Glad you got the spectre to

drive you around and bonza lounge. That's it. Roland, what are we driving? Nothing at the

moment. I just handed back the new Genesis G80 Electrified yesterday. Yeah, big sedan. Didn't

show for anyone except kids. So it was a huge car though. Can I just say before we wrap up,

four wheel steering, for a car that was 5. something meters, that was a good turning circle.

Yeah, that's when the wheels turn the other way, right? Yeah, turns the other way at low speed and

at high speeds. So the IM that you've got, that will do it too. There's a couple of cars, usually

high-end cars, they've got it. Amazing turning circle. Yeah, it's a strange feeling, right?

It feels like you're drifting across when it turns the other way. Yeah, that's cool.

Very good. Well, thank you, Roland. Thank you, Ruiz. And thank you to our audience as

well. Great of you to join us. We'll be back hopefully next week. I'll let you guys know.

Before then, but otherwise, what's happening? Trying to add this. Here we go. That's what I

want to see. All right, so thank you, Roland. Thank you, Ruiz. Thank you guys and girls in

the live chat. Have a great week and weekend and we shall see you next time on Ludacris Feedlife.

Until then, take care. Happy charging. See you around.

Australia EV News: Tesla FSD, BYD Atto 1 & 2, Zeekr 7X, Xpeng & Dongfeng

Rolls-Royce Spectre

Mazda 2

Kia Picanto

MG3

Seagull

Byd Seal

Sealion Cline 7

Yuan Pro

Audi Rs6

G-Class Gwagon

Volkswagen Golf

Volkswagen Passat

Zeekr 007 Gt

Zeekr Zika 7X

Dodge Charger

Cadillac Lyric

Zeekr Zika 009

Cadillac Escalade

Chevrolet C10

Alpina B10

Hyundai Genesis

Genesis G80

About this episode

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