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About this episode
Jim shares his eye-opening experience from the Cherry International User Summit in China, where he witnessed the rapid evolution of the Chinese automotive industry. With over 3,500 attendees and a keynote by former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the event showcased Cherry's impressive lineup of vehicles, including luxurious models at astonishingly low prices. Jim discusses the prevalence of electric mopeds, innovative car technologies, and the cultural differences in food and driving. The episode highlights the potential for Chinese cars to dominate global markets, challenging established brands.
Topics:
chinese automotive industry
electric vehicles
cherry cars
luxury vehicles
cultural differences
electric mopeds
car technology
market expansion
Cars:
Audi S7
Byd Seal
Jaecoo 7
Porsche Panamera
Porsche Taycan
Tesla Model 3
Tesla Model S
Tesla Model Y
Xiaomi SU7
In this episode, Jim tells Alex all about his trip to China with Chery, with everything from pork-filled doughnuts to plates of duck heads, and of course - the latest EVs that were on show.
Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Audi S7
"... And then I saw, I think it's a Luxeed, was it an S7? It's basically their Model 3 stroke Model S."
Car
Tesla Model 3
"...it's a Luxeed, was it an S7? It's basically their Model 3 stroke Model S. Okay."
Car
Tesla Model
"...t car or 20, 25 grand maybe. It was the same as a Tesla Model 3 is locally there. And I just looked at this car..."
Car
Byd Seal
"that we've seen in the UK. So like the BYD seal has already been replaced in other markets. So be..."
Car
Porsche Panamera
"... informed by like the Taycan Cross Turismo or the Panamera. It's unbelievable."
Car
Porsche Taycan
"the designs been informed by like the Taycan Cross Turismo or the Panamera. It's unbelievable."
Select text to request an explanation
I'm Jim and he's Alex.
Welcome to the Charging Status EV Podcast.
What have you been up to, Alex?
Well, I've been driving some interesting cars the past few days, but what about you?
Well, I've been to China.
Oh, yeah.
So yeah, if you saw the podcast a few weeks ago, you would have seen that I had someone
else on the podcast that wasn't Jim.
But yeah, it's because Jim was over in China with Cherry.
That was your first time in China.
So how was it?
Yeah.
So I got invited to go by JQ Amoda, Cherry, or basically the Cherry Group.
And it was to the Cherry International or Cherry Global User Summit.
And basically, they bring together teams from all over the world that sell Cherry cars in their various markets.
And they're selling cars in 120 different markets.
And they are huge.
I mean, they sell 5 million cars.
And there were people from 120 different countries at this event.
Well, probably more than that, but from 120 territories.
Yeah, yeah.
And I mean, the main conference hall I was in, there was like 3,500 people in there or something.
Wow.
The keynote speaker was Banky Moon, the former United Nations Secretary General, which is like fairly impressive.
And they had, you know, various dignitaries and stuff there.
And we were just five of us, I think, from sort of UK media invited to go over.
Oh, OK.
And it was brilliant.
Like it was an absolute eye-opener.
China generally, we flew into Shanghai and we were too late for the bullet train.
So we ended up getting a taxi to Wuhi, which was about five, five hours, six hours.
Oh, yeah.
And around Shanghai, you saw a few European cars, but I mean a few.
I did see a Rolls-Royce and a Lambo.
But aside from that, it's Chinese cars.
And some of the Chinese cars are unbelievably good looking.
And then you're seeing these little things like sort of covered three wheel mopeds, loads and loads of mopeds.
The thing about the mopeds is they're pretty much all electric, which I didn't expect.
And I mean, what that's done for air quality, I'd imagine, is phenomenal, but also for noise pollution.
The dangerous thing, though, is that they don't have any kind of external speakers on and people are coming at you from all angles on them at all times.
If you're on the pavement, fair enough, you're still fair game.
So you have to be on your toes a little bit and you don't make any sharp movements.
I did see one hilarious incident where two people on electric mopeds just had a complete head-on.
Both fell off, didn't even look at each other, got back on their mopeds, didn't say a word and then just carried on.
What happens every day?
That's obviously just what happens on your way to work.
Yeah, that was bonkers, but the cars, oh my lord, just the cherry brands alone.
I mean, in Wuhu, which is, cherry have got a massive factory in Wuhu.
They've got huge amounts of office space and R&D space.
I mean, I would imagine they're the major employer in Wuhu, but it's three and a half million inhabitants.
But the cars on the road, I would say, was like 60% cherry.
Wow.
But they're various different brands.
Oh, they've got a lot of brands, haven't they?
Yeah, they don't have a motor JQ over there, which is weird, because we went to this huge campus, which is the motor JQ campus.
But that's not available in China.
But they've like Luxe, Exe, iCar, JTor as well.
JTor, yeah.
A JetTor it is.
Oh, a JetTor.
Okay.
Yeah.
Oh, God, one beginning with F.
Four-win.
Four-win.
Yeah.
Lepas.
I thought that was Lepas, but for enough.
Yeah, it might be.
Yeah.
A couple of us had this conversation, and we ended up with about four different variants of it.
Yeah.
And others, by the way.
Yeah, there's a lot.
And the value of some of the cars is just incredible.
I don't know if you've seen the YouTube shorts I did.
I've seen a few of them, yeah.
It's like the Exceed ETA, which makes the i8-9 that's on my drive at the moment, looks small.
Right.
And complete luxury inside, you know, really plush leather, sort of armchairs.
Huge dropdown, 8K OLED telly for the passengers in the back.
I think it drives itself, parks itself, everything like that.
Yeah.
And I saw one of the guys over there, like, what would your gas be for the price of this on the Chinese market?
And I said, well, £120,000 equivalent, even knowing the price of cars in China.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he was like, no, it's 22.
And then I saw, I think it's a Luxeed, was it an S7?
It's basically their Model 3 stroke Model S.
Okay.
062 in like 3.3, a ridiculous amount of range, but it was on CLTC rather than WLTP.
Right.
So, you know, pinch yourself.
Yeah.
But that, again, full self-drive.
You can do like the summon, you can send it off to park itself, come out of your work and summon it and it will just appear.
Pop the door open for you.
That could do wireless charging.
Right.
You can literally just drive it over a charging pad.
The ones they had there were only seven kilowatts.
Okay.
But that's fine though.
I think they can do more.
It can also charge at 850 kilowatts.
Jeez.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's the same price as the Model 3.
And inside it was way more luxurious and, you know, it felt nice.
Even like the infotainment system felt like really, really well designed and it was super snappy.
And they obviously had a crazy processor in it.
We're like the Chinese cars we're getting at the moment.
If you look at the cherry stuff over here, the infotainment stuff, all that, it's actually all pretty good.
Yeah.
But it is good.
But it's not like amazing.
Yeah.
Well, you're using this thing thinking, God, this is like the next gen kind of thing.
Yeah.
And it was, yeah, like 22 grand or something for that car or 20, 25 grand maybe.
It was the same as a Tesla Model 3 is locally there.
And I just looked at this car and I was thinking why would anyone ever buy a Tesla over this?
Because the base Tesla Model 3, I mean, I've got one.
I think it's brilliant.
I struggled to find a flaw with that car.
Everything about it, I think it's great.
And I'm looking at this car, just thinking everything about this is better.
And this is the one of the most interesting things.
I don't know if you've seen that video I've put out of, I think it was an Exceed something.
And it's got fully independent wheels.
And it's basically parallel parking sideways.
Yeah.
They said the main reasons they've done that, obviously they're showing it off there doing
stupid things.
And in the comments of the video, a lot of people are like, oh, what's the point in
this?
Just learn how to park blah, blah, blah.
And I mean, they're just showing it off to catch people to stop and take video
as I did and get your attention.
The real reason that they've developed that is sort of twofold.
One is to give you more luggage space and passenger space because you get rid of the
axles.
But secondly, it helps it break a lot quicker.
Because when you're breaking, it will tow the wheels in.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
And they've done something else crazy with it, which means the tires won't
wear as quickly.
And they're like, oh yeah, this can break like 20% faster and safer than like
the best Mercedes braking technology.
And everything seems to be done like with a specific purpose behind it.
I think anyone that is in any doubt about the future of Chinese cars.
I mean, I keep hearing this like they're going to take over the world and this
and that and the other.
And I've looked at a lot of the cars that have come here and thought, yeah,
that's decent.
And they seem to have pushed mostly on value.
Like BYD haven't blown me away.
I just sort of think, well, they're okay.
They're pretty good.
Yeah.
And I don't think they're that cheap and I don't think they're that much
better generally, like if you're talking in broad generalisms.
But some of the stuff I've seen over there was insane.
It was like even if you factor in homologation costs and import costs
and everything else that needs to happen here, I think we're going to be
looking at cars that are 30% better and 30% cheaper.
Yeah.
It's only going to happen, isn't it?
It just moves on.
And yeah, some of the cars we're seeing right now are technically older
that we've seen in the UK.
So like the BYD seal has already been replaced in other markets.
So being a mode of five, I think there's already a new one out.
There is.
Yeah.
I saw the new mode of seven while I was over there.
Oh, OK.
That's quite nice.
Yeah.
The TIG-09 was floating around.
Yeah.
But yeah, we are quite often getting older stuff.
And I think probably part of that is because of the homologation.
Yeah.
And I know that's holding up the rate that they can actually bring things in
because like NCAP is saying, well, we've put however many new Chinese cars
through already, you're going to have to wait your turn now.
Yeah.
And obviously, some of these cars, like the one was the iCar, the V23,
which I absolutely adored, sort of a cross between a sort of a gymny-wide boy,
which you used to have back in the day, a gymny-wide body,
and a Bronco, I guess, which are two cars I've got time for.
And that over there is like 9,800 quid.
But I think that would need a lot of work to get five-star Euro NCAP.
Yeah.
And immediately, you're probably putting five, six grand on to the cost.
Then you're putting import duty on.
Then you'll think, well, we've got a set of dealerships in that territory.
And right-hand drive.
Yeah.
Right-hand drive.
Then you've got VAT to add on.
Right-hand drive is not so much of an issue
because they're in other right-hand drive markets.
Australia, I suppose, is quite big for Chinese cars now.
Australia, South Africa.
Yeah.
I'm not sure if they're in India.
Oh yeah, South Africa is huge for Chinese cars
because whenever I've Googled a brand that we've only just had here,
I was like, oh, there's a review here from like last year.
Yeah.
In our hotel, we had about 40 people from South Africa.
Yeah.
And it's, yeah, it's a massive, massive market for them.
Middle East is a massive market for them as well.
So you've got all these things to factor in.
But it might be that that 10,000-pound car,
if we finally get it in the UK, it might be like 35.
Yeah.
With the same margin on it.
Yeah, quite a bit.
Yeah.
Makes sense.
And that's something people struggle with a bit.
I think they watch videos of these cars in China
and think that's the car you're going to get here in.
It's not.
It's going to be vastly different.
Yeah.
Funny enough, on the motorway yesterday,
I saw a Luxe, I think it's the R7 on the back of a trailer
being transported.
Wow.
In the UK.
It had the Chinese badging on the back as well.
So it's not.
It is a Chinese one.
Yeah.
So I don't know what the deal is with that.
I mean, maybe it's, they've bought it in to do an event
or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's interesting.
You mentioned a motor and JQ don't exist in China.
It's weird.
There was two brands were made to be their export brands.
And then the, the emota five is a cherry branded car.
Cherry, cherry emota it's called the JQ seven,
which we've got is a cherry something other.
I think the JQ five is, is, I think it is the first car
that was developed for the JQ brand.
Like it's not just a rebadged thing.
And then the emota nine is an X seed,
which is why it's so plus because it's their luxury,
luxury brand.
Yeah.
It's a lovely car that is, but yeah, no, it's yeah.
Yeah.
It makes sense.
Um, sort of, I guess they decided ages ago that they need
two new brands to export stuff.
It's weird as well for like the emota nine for me
because a motor is supposed to be their young,
like funky tech sort of brand.
Yeah.
And like the emota four,
I went to the launcher that while I was over there.
Oh yeah.
Mad looking thing.
Yeah.
And that's a mad looking thing that's very sort of young
and all the marketing around it's very young.
In the launch was very young.
Yep.
Um, they've also got the plus version,
which looks great.
Like a real hot hatch kind of thing,
but the numbers didn't stack up against it.
It was basically the same performance and it's,
they've just made it look really sporty
and put a massive wing on it.
It's like the aura zero three GT then.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, it's weird that they,
that young sort of funky brand is the one that got
the emota nine.
Yeah.
That is odd.
Cause that's like,
feels like a very German premium vehicle to me.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Strange on it.
But the, you know, the JQ seven's obviously been huge.
In China,
Cherry has a joint venture with JLR.
So they make Land Rover's
and everything for the Chinese market over there.
Yep.
And they were keen to point out
I had a couple of interviews with some of the C sweet guys
and they were keen to point out that
they weren't trying to copy
the Land Rover products in any way because JLR
are an incredibly important partner for them.
Yeah.
But instead they want to give people what they want.
Yeah.
I don't think the,
I think people got a big issue with the five and the seven
that they look like Land Rover.
I mean, they take a little bit of inspiration,
but I don't,
I don't know how different,
that you can make them look,
but I think they look,
I was looking at this the other day,
I was trying to decide,
I guess you've wondered this before,
is how do normal people buy cars?
I think a lot of it is based on
one, how the car looks.
And those JQ sevens,
they look really nice.
And I think that's going to be a big thing for them.
They've seen them on,
on the road.
Maybe someone else had got one.
They thought, oh, so nice looking car.
And they're going to have a look,
I think as far as new cars go,
they look really good
in terms of their exterior design.
So I think that's a big thing for people.
I sort of made the point in conversation,
someone will be over there as well,
is how many cars are truly original looking now?
Yeah.
But with the Chinese stuff as well,
I mean,
if people think JLR are getting
ripped off in any way,
they should look at how many cars
over there have been inspired by Porsche.
Because I mean,
there are some where we've literally just taken
either the front end or the back end
and just blurred a couple of bits.
Yeah.
There are so many cars that have been,
the designs been informed by like the
Taycan Cross Turismo or the Panamera.
It's unbelievable.
Well, what's Xiaomi doing?
They,
I think it's the SU7.
That's Xiaomi.
Yeah.
Incredible.
They're,
they're almost as ubiquitous on the roads
in Wuhu as a Tesla Model Y
is in this country.
I mean,
every time you go out,
you see one,
every time you go out,
you see an iCar V23 as well to be fair.
Yeah.
Well, with the Xiaomi,
they've sort of,
I guess,
I guess Xiaomi phones are quite,
probably really popular in China.
So,
from what I understand,
there's a really nice integration
between your phone and the car.
And they're quite cheap
and they look really cool.
And I remember when they came out,
I think there was cues to the stores
to even see one in person.
So it's obviously captured the hearts and minds
of people in China.
Sort of Xiaomi,
like mobile and
they're basically that equivalent of an Apple store.
It's all one of those in the mall as well.
Yeah.
And it was,
it was very Apple store.
Yeah.
But,
you know,
crammed with products.
And again,
some of that stuff looked very forward thinking.
It was like,
we'll copy the new,
like,
the new iPhone
program,
the equivalent,
but this has got a screen on the back.
Oh, yeah.
Of this panel.
Oh, okay.
Yep.
So, yeah,
it's kind of like imitation
and one-upmanship all at the same time.
But yeah,
just massively impressive on the car front.
I'm surprised by how few BYD's I saw.
Yeah.
But I think the thing
that's,
this really opened my eyes up to is how important
so many other car
markets are.
Like,
at no point I think,
they just don't seem to care about the US
even though it's huge
because obviously politically,
it's going to be very, very difficult for them.
Yeah.
But also,
why do we need the US?
We've got all of this.
We've got all of this.
We've got all of this.
Yep.
Like the Far Eastern markets
outside of China
and probably,
I mean,
there's no talk of Japan or anything or Korea
because I guess they're just tied up with Honda and Toyota
and Pierre Hyundai.
You say that.
I think there's a new,
I think the Toyota Motor Show,
the Tokyo Motor Show is on at the moment while I record.
And I think,
I did see there's a BYD K car.
Oh, okay.
So that's being launched in Japan.
So I think BYD are starting to sort of
poke their way into the Japanese market.
Yes, they might.
They might all start to go over there,
but there's no real chat about that.
No.
From Cherry.
But then you look at,
like,
Malaysia's a massive market for them
and Thailand and
Taiwan.
Yeah.
And on it goes and on it goes
and then obviously you get into,
like Middle East and Africa.
I think South America is quite big as well.
I've seen.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There are a lot of people there from Brazil.
Yeah.
And you think,
well, yeah, it's huge.
Yeah.
It's absolutely huge.
And I think in this country,
we're sometimes a bit blinkered and we think
every car manufacturer
is making cars for Europe
or US.
And that's it.
Yeah.
Actually,
they could probably
exist very, very healthily
without any of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is,
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Interesting anyway,
just to see,
like the bigger picture
and to see something that's not
trad
European or US
sort of car maker.
Yeah.
And it was nothing but
impressive.
A few people have asked me
if I was paid to go.
No, I wasn't paid to go.
They paid for my flight in my hotel
and my food and all that sort of stuff.
Yeah.
But I didn't,
that was just all dealt with.
I didn't like,
have to submit expense claims
or anything like that.
Yeah.
And I think that just comes on the back of you
going and being blown away by something.
People are just
a little bit sort of skeptical.
But,
you know,
me,
say have I seen it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And yeah,
they're very,
very impressive stuff
and an absolute eye opener.
Food, by the way.
No Greggs.
No Greggs.
Ah.
Tough one at times.
Yeah.
I'm not surprised.
Yeah.
McDonald's was,
I had a big Mac meal in McDonald's
and it was nicer than ours.
I'm not,
again, I'm not surprised.
And I want to get here,
a drop kick through a window.
Yeah.
And it was like three quid,
which I think,
was it five of us had a meal in McDonald's
and it was 18 quid.
That's one meal that is.
A couple of people got large as well.
Jeez.
Yeah.
But yeah,
I mean,
some of the things I've seen
and heard,
I mean,
one of the guys from like the UK
team,
there were a few people over there
going and doing other things around
the summit.
And they went to the factory one day
and went into the canteen,
the factory canteen.
And they said to a few Chinese guys
sitting there and they just had a plate
full of ducks heads that were
cut in half.
And they're just picking them up
and sucking the brains out.
I went to a hot pot place,
which like you've got a big pot
in the middle of the table
and you go and select all your meats
and you cook them to your liking.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's quite a cool thing to do.
Yeah.
And there's like
some things in testings is one
of the options that you can take
and drop in.
There were pigs brain,
chicken feet obviously,
sort of everywhere.
In the taxi ride on the way to
Wu Hu,
I was just sitting there poking around
on the sort of Chinese
equivalent of Google Maps
seeing what we were going past.
Dogmeat restaurant was one of them.
Oh yeah, I saw your picture on Instagram, yeah.
And I had a little sort of dig into
that and it looks like they have
live dogs in cages.
And then you sort of say
how much is that
doggy in the window.
Yeah.
And they take it out of the back.
It's just bar barric stuff like that.
Yeah.
One of the options on the
breakfast buffet at the hotel
was duck's blood tofu.
And I did see something that
appeared to be like a jam donut
at the breakfast buffet.
And I thought, oh, there you go,
I'm going to get right into that.
And I just went to pick it up and it said
contains pork.
I thought, hmm,
I'm not sure about a sugar
donut with pork in it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I must admit, I'm like
not the most adventurous when it
comes to food.
But I'm also not
the most adventurous when it comes to food.
And yeah,
it was
interesting at times.
One of the best meals I had
when we were on the way,
Ian,
we were in one cab
and we stopped at a service station
which was interesting.
There were about 100 toilets in the
men's
and about three sinks in one hand dryer.
Oh, cool.
But we stopped at a service station and had
noodles.
And it was absolutely incredible.
But there was a man sitting behind
Ian eating his noodles.
And it's all quite noisy
when the Chinese are eating noodles.
And he was unwrapping raw
garlic and just chucking
cloves of raw garlic in his mouth
as he was eating his noodle crunching
on the whole cloves of garlic.
That takes both, yeah.
So like culturally,
obviously I'm talking about all this food
and stuff and like putting it down,
but it's just a completely
different culture.
I don't mean to put it down.
It's very different, isn't it?
You might as well say to me
go and eat a dog poo,
you know, is it
a pigs intestine
or a brain or something.
Yeah, it's very, very different to what we used to.
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, it was a mind-blowing experience.
It was very cool.
One of the options on the flight
a business class flight with China Eastern
first time I've ever flown business.
That was great. You can turn your seat
into a full bed.
So I actually slept on a flight twice
if you can imagine that.
But one of the options on the menu there
was
a pork cartilage with
caterpillar fungus.
I actually gave that one a miss.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
Did you drive in China at all?
Because I saw some other people that drove around in cars.
Yeah, so I didn't
because I came back a little bit
early because
family
requirements
and
also, it was a 10-day
trip, the total trip
and I am a one-man
band as such and I do
what I do for a living
and I just couldn't afford to be
out of my business
for that long really.
I probably would have just done it
anyway if it
weren't for family
needs.
But yeah, they
did like a thousand miles across China
at the end, ended up in Hong Kong
and flew back from Hong Kong.
And it looked like
that part of it
would have been the
highlight of the trip.
Because a lot of the time I was there
was basically at a conference
and as interesting as it was
and as good as it was
that stuff they did
those last few days looked absolutely breathtaking.
But yeah, I didn't actually drive
over there. Apart from
a couple of controlled, did handling
tests in the area of 7
which I can't talk about.
And like break test thing
and a few other bits.
But they were all, it was like
in a car park of a
theme park that wasn't open.
Okay.
But it's mad like the scale of it
even that, we turned up to that
and it was like you were at an Olympic village.
Yeah.
It was incredible.
Absolutely incredible.
Fair enough.
Sounds like an amazing time.
Yeah, it was good.
Yeah, I saw some
the other week I went to
Caffeine Machine. They had this
Cherry Slash
Carwow event thing.
The main reason I went is because I wanted to see
what like the general public
thought of the Cherry vehicles
and also it was
it's only down the road for me so it's not too far to go
but they had the Tigo 9 there
and it was lovely.
And actually I haven't
I realised I hadn't driven
a Cherry Emoda JQ vehicle
yet that had the hybrid system.
Oh really?
Yeah, I didn't quite realise. I drove the electric JQ
I drove the petrol Cherry
Tigo 7. So I had to go
because they were doing public test drives.
So I had to go in the Tigo 8
hybrid. It was very nice actually.
The hybrid system is amazing.
It's so smooth.
You've got like
the driving characteristics of a full
EV. Yeah.
Which I don't think you get
in a lot of plug-in hybrids.
No, I don't. No, not really.
No.
It's one of those where if you couldn't hear
the engine you'd just assume you're in
an EV almost. Yeah.
And they've done very
very well with that. Yeah.
I think they've got new battery technology
coming to that very soon.
That makes sense. They've been talking
about solid state battery technology over
there as well. And they actually showed
a compression test on a battery
and they compressed
it to 50%.
And it's mad. Like literally this pincer thing
comes in and goes
and just crushes it
and then they submerged
it in water
and it still was completely fine.
Hadn't had any degradation whatsoever.
Just one where they put four nails
rather than the one nail that BYD did.
Was that something else? That's something else.
Okay. But they were doing all sorts
of silly things to batteries
and it was all completely fine. Yeah.
And yeah, talking about solid state
which they say is coming next year. Okay.
But they like
800 kilowatt charges.
I don't know, it's just
crazy, crazy stuff.
Yeah.
And so much of what I saw over there
was sort of felt like science fiction.
I'm not surprised.
It's actually here now.
Yeah. We got picked up
outside the office by a car
and doors popped open, got in
and then you're sitting there
and there was no one in the driver's seat
steering wheels spinning around and everything.
Reversed us back over
the wireless charger
and then popped the doors open
and I said
I was sitting in the passenger seat and just said
I was sitting in the window and it just opened my window.
Yeah.
It's very clever, isn't it? Yeah.
It knows if, one of the things it can do
is it knows if you've got a dog in the car
and it will set the
it's got a different kind of climate control
so it doesn't have like these huge peaks and troughs.
It will just keep the car steady
because pets prefer that.
Oh yeah. The JQ E5
Yeah. Yeah.
And it will know like if you've left
the dog in the car
it's got things now to
kind of sense it
so it can turn everything on around that
without you actually doing it.
That's pretty cool though.
So yeah, I could talk about it forever really.
Yeah.
But I'm aware that I'm pouring, so
I won't.
That sounded like a great time.
It's great
exploring all the different brands
and the culture as well.
Yeah, very cool. Yeah, definitely.
Back to reality now.
But until Monday.
Until Monday, yeah. Very true.
When I go from seven hours
in one direction
time-wise. Yeah.
Seven hours that direction.
In the other time-wise.
Yeah.
We should call this the Cherry episode,
but one last thing I found out last night is
so you mentioned in the previous episode
that you've realised that Cherry
is having locally made
Tigo cars
as Ebro's in Spain.
But there's this YouTuber guy
that is Australian, he lives in Russia
and he was a Cherry
dealership and they had these
Tenet branded cars
which are quite interesting
and they're cars that are made
in Russia
but they're essentially rebranded Cherries
which I thought was quite interesting. He said
they're quite a bit cheaper but
it's probably to do with the crash ratings
and stuff but it's quite interesting
that Cherry are deciding to launch
these brands which are sort of
locally sourced kind of things.
Yeah. Yeah, that
factory in Spain, I think it's Barcelona
they've spent like Nissan Vans there.
Yeah.
Funnily enough with
a couple of the interviews I had
with some of the C-suite guys, one of the things
I was pushing for is will they
manufacture in the UK
at some point because
they're manufacturing in a lot of countries already
and they've got R&D
bases in a lot of countries and they've
in fact they've got some R&D going on
here and have for a while.
Okay.
And he was like
we'd like to manufacture where
the demand is and obviously
JQ's been a massive success.
Yeah. But they wouldn't obviously
be drawn on anything but there was
very much like
we'd go where we wanted. Yeah.
And I'm sure a lot of it
will come down to
government investment and
opportunities but obviously we've got
this used car factories
and in other markets
has taken on this used car factories.
Yeah.
And JQ's selling in big
numbers obviously
they're not the kind of numbers
at the moment where they're going to
think we need a manufacturing base there.
We've got around 5 million cars
with the best one in the world
doing say they did
100,000 in a year here
that's probably still not
enough.
But
as they bring more brands over
and stuff but there's definitely very
open to the idea
of manufacturing in the UK
which I think would be
fantastic. Yeah.
It should maybe bring
prices down. I'm not sure though
we'll have to transport it but
it will probably make
people more open
to taking the cars. You think
that's true. I mean when I was a kid
people used to sort of poo poo Japanese
cars if you can imagine that
they used to call them Jap crap.
Right. And
eventually
Japanese car manufacturers started manufacturing
in the UK. Yep.
And there's a lot more acceptance of
them once they did. Yeah.
The ones that did
and then obviously
they built their reputation over a number of years
and I also asked about
have they learnt something from the Koreans
and he said yeah we've learnt
that in the UK
obviously they've
their whole proposition and their market shares
grown massively in like 20 years
they said what they did is when they first came
to market they came to market with
cheap cars that were cheap
and we didn't want to do that
we wanted to come to market with
good cars that were well priced
and he said
by waiting and
biding their time, wait until the time was right
to launch in the UK
they've probably cut like
10 years of possibly like
reputation or damage out.
Oh got ya. That makes sense.
Because like the first
kids that came here were like open the door
of a tin can and oh yeah
you know and they were
really cheap but
they probably had to
work to sort of change that
perception of their brand
yeah another amazing thing
with our brands we're not having to do that
so yeah it was really good
really interesting. Yeah nice
That's probably it.
Cool. Yeah.
Thanks again for watching
slash listening to this podcast
subscribe to the channel on YouTube if you are watching
our hunts and faces and give us a
follow in your favourite podcast app
as well I'd be really greatly appreciated
you can find all my car reviews
on the interface cars at YouTube channel
and where can they find you Jim
I go to my YouTube definitely not
Guru and check me out there
yeah you've also got JetSep Jimbo
which has some occasional videos on there
about your mad travels around
different places and different things and hotels
and all that sort of stuff
come back for the next episode
and we'll see you again next time
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