Insight: Automotive & Beyond

Erick Yang

Welcome to Insight: Automotive & Beyond—your inside-track briefing on the rapid transformation of China's automotive, EV, smart mobility, and global supply chain ecosystems. Hosted by Erick Yang, an automotive industry veteran with over two decades of boots-on-the-ground experience in global supply chains, alongside co-host Lynn, this podcast delivers candid, high-density conversations that cut through the hype. What We Cover: • The reality inside China’s EV, battery, and smart cockpit race • Autonomous driving, automotive chips, and hard-tech innovations • Global supply chain resilience, sourcing shifts, and cross-border expansion • Business strategy, leadership, and market intelligence Whether you are a global auto executive, supply chain manager, tech investor, or industry practitioner looking to understand "Inside China," tune in for actionable intelligence and unvarnished industry truths. Subscribe on Substack to receive new audio episodes and analytical briefs directly in your inbox. erickyang.substack.com

Episodes

  1. 6d ago

    EV Share Hit 65.7%. The Market Shrank 22%. That Is Not a Triumph.

    In October, 65.7% of every new passenger car sold in China was electric — the highest penetration rate in the history of that market. In the same year, the market lost 5.24 million sales, a 22% contraction that puts it below 2020 levels. Both numbers are true, and the first one is entirely explained by the second. Over the first 25 days of October, electric retail fell 13% while petrol retail fell 26%. When the bottom of a fraction falls twice as fast as the top, the fraction rises — while everything it measures gets worse. Erick — twenty years in automotive at Toyota, Volvo and Jaguar Land Rover — and Lynn work through what that arithmetic means on the ground: the 25,500-car gap in a single month between wholesale and retail; the 2.7 million vehicles now sitting in Chinese dealer yards against an inventory ratio of 1.68 and a warning threshold of 1.5; why 5,000 dealerships left the network in 2025; the three-party payment cycle where the manufacturer reports quarterly, the dealer pays interest monthly, and the buyer keeps the car for eight years; and the one luxury brand that reported wholesale up 9.6% while retail fell 22.7%. Then the structural question. Industry profit in September was RMB 14.2 billion, down 68%, at a 1.4% margin — about RMB 4,640 per car, roughly USD 640. Sales completion rates across the major manufacturers: close to 100%. Nobody’s bonus is written against the industry margin, because no individual controls it. Exports absorbed 56.6% of the domestic shortfall, which the industry association itself calls cold inside, hot outside — but an export is not a domestic sale, and the destination markets are already responding with tariffs. And once a car can drive itself, the vehicle that disappears first is not the first car in the household, it is the second. One question for you: if you run a car business, would you bet the next five years on selling more cars to households — or on becoming the operator that supplies the vehicles when households stop buying them? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit erickyang.substack.com

    EV Share Hit 65.7%. The Market Shrank 22%. That Is Not a Triumph.

  2. Oct 28

    The Best Pole Under 10 Million RMB

    A car hit a street light pole at 139 kph in a 50 zone in China. The pole survived, the car did not, and the internet concluded the car was badly built. It is the wrong conclusion: the pole is rigid and absorbs nothing, while a car front is designed to collapse and absorb energy. Two Chinese codes explain the difference — one lists a breakaway pole as an example, the other only ever specifies wind load. The deeper question is why a car may brake for you but not stop you starting it, and the answer is legislative, not technical. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit erickyang.substack.com

    The Best Pole Under 10 Million RMB

  3. Oct 19

    1.5% Margin: Why China's Carmakers Build the Same Car

    Last week, two things happened on the same day, and I cannot stop thinking about either of them. In Texas, at a SpaceX test facility, a car flew. It lifted off the ground, and at one point it was stuck upside down to the ceiling. And in Beijing, on that same day, four ministries sat down with more than thirty Chinese carmakers to talk about one subject: testing and validation. One of those things is in the air. The other is in a room. The car that flew cannot legally be driven on a road in China. The thirty-odd companies in that room build the cars that are actually on Chinese roads today. So we take them one at a time. First the car in the air. It is not an aircraft. It is two systems producing one effect: the underbody suction that pins the car down, and a cold-gas thruster pack developed with SpaceX that lifts it up. Which part is real engineering, and which part is stagecraft? Erick spent twenty years building cars, and he separates the two for us. He also says where he would actually use this system on a production car, and it is not where you would guess. Then we bring the camera back down to the room. The popular line in China right now is that domestic carmakers have stopped innovating and started copying. Erick’s answer is that the outcome is real, but the diagnosis is lazy. He walks through the machinery behind it: the four gates any proposal has to clear, why the sales forecast makes the financial risk impossible to calculate, how good ideas die inside one department before anyone else ever hears about them, and why a one-dollar idea with ten dollars of visible effect beats a real technology nobody can see. He also quotes Wang Chuanfu, the founder of BYD, who used the word himself: the industry is starting to show signs of homogenisation. And he raises the cost that almost nobody mentions. Move fast enough and validation gets squeezed out. In this week’s meeting the ministries told carmakers not to market features using scenarios that break road traffic law. Ford’s Mustang brake pedal recall, and a Chinese car that lost its rear axle in Malaysia this year, make the same point from two directions. Software can be fixed overnight. A hardware recall is real money. His closing advice is not “innovate more”. It is four words about staying in the game. If you were the one sitting in that seat, with only that much money to spend, where would you put it? Let us know in the comments. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit erickyang.substack.com

    1.5% Margin: Why China's Carmakers Build the Same Car

  4. Oct 12

    Same broken part. A recall in Detroit. A scandal in Shanghai.

    In 2020, Ford recalled 38,005 Mustangs because the brake pedal bracket could fracture under heavy braking. Ford's filing cites a material change — nylon to polypropylene — and, in the company's own words, "insufficient design margins." The failure was at the pedal pivot. Six years later, the same component failed on camera on a Chinese flagship EV, and it became a national story. This episode is about the distinction almost nobody made. Passing certification and shipping consistent parts are two different capabilities — design margin is one, supplier quality management is the other. Collapse them into "it's a design flaw" and the analysis is already wrong. We go through what the standards actually say — UN R13-H and China's GB 21670-2025 both regulate the vehicle, not the pedal's breaking force — why a five-second static load test and repeated emergency braking are not the same exam, and what the Mustang recall reveals about cost engineering, material substitution, and where the margin actually goes. Then the harder question: when a company finds a risk in its own product, what does it owe the people who bought it? Because a voluntary recall and a free upgrade may be the same repair — and are not the same event. A choice to end on: is this a standards gap, or an execution gap? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit erickyang.substack.com

    Same broken part. A recall in Detroit. A scandal in Shanghai.

  5. Oct 8

    EV Insurance Costs 49% More. The Reason Isn't Greed.

    Two numbers, and they don’t agree. Chinese insurers wrote about RMB 190 billion of electric-vehicle premiums in 2025 and lost money on it — roughly RMB 5.6 billion of underwriting loss across the industry. In the same year, the three largest carriers were each profitable on EV insurance, and between them took 76% of the market. In conventional petrol insurance, those same three hold about 69%. A brand-new segment that consolidated faster than a market that has been maturing for thirty years. That is the opposite of how new markets are supposed to behave. In this episode, Lynn and I try to explain it — starting from the one question every EV owner asks, and almost nobody answers properly: why is this policy so expensive? ## What we cover **The number that reframes it.** Chinese actuarial data puts average EV claims cost at 2.2 times a petrol car, and average premium at 1.7 times. A gap of half a multiple. So the counterintuitive finding is this: EV insurance isn’t expensive because insurers are extracting margin. It’s expensive because it isn’t expensive enough yet. The industry is absorbing the difference. **Why the two headline numbers don’t match.** Repair severity runs at three to five times on these vehicles, but average claims cost is only 2.2 times. The difference is severity versus portfolio: severity is what happens when a claim occurs, claims cost is severity multiplied by frequency. EV claim frequency tends to be lower, so the catastrophic invoices get diluted — and the losses live at the end of the distribution, which is exactly where capital gets tested. **Repair has been locked shut.** A rear underbody that used to be seventy-plus stamped parts is now one aluminium casting. Structurally excellent, and unrepairable: castings crack rather than deform, and damage in one corner means replacing the whole section. China’s Insurance Association puts repair costs for cast-structure vehicles at about 3.8 times conventional construction; a 2026 CIRI assessment puts it at 5.17 times, with minor-accident total losses up 32%. **The three locks on high-voltage repair.** Warranty conditions that tie you to the authorised network. Electronic parts pairing that stops a replacement component working until the manufacturer writes a key to it. And certified technicians — fewer than 100,000 in China, against a fleet of 43.58 million EVs. The insurer cannot shop around, because the independent shop cannot get in the door. **The reversal nobody notices.** In the petrol era the insurer was the buyer with leverage, negotiating repair rates and having real power to do it. With EVs, that lever is gone: only the manufacturer and its own network can do the work. The insurer goes from the party that negotiates price to the party that receives the bill. **Why carmakers sell insurance.** Two structural advantages. Data — vehicle and usage telemetry no third-party insurer can match, which cuts both ways: you can price a good driver more aggressively, and a bad one more accurately. And repair control — the carmaker holds all three locks on its own cars. Its limit is the same thing: it is excellent at pricing its own fleet and structurally blind to everyone else’s, which also means the data stays siloed. **UBI: the blocker isn’t privacy.** In the US these programmes have been mainstream for over a decade; in the UK black-box policies became the standard route for young drivers. In China it keeps stalling, and the conventional answer — privacy — doesn’t survive contact with reality. The real blocker is data: sustained, portable driving-behaviour data at scale. The 2014-2016 OBD dongle wave and the phone-app wave both failed, and they were aimed at the petrol fleet, which was then about 80% of the parc. It still wasn’t enough, which tells you the problem was never the device. ## Chapters 00:00 An industry that loses money, where the top three profit 02:53 The problem isn’t price — repair has been locked shut 07:32 2.2 against 1.7 10:40 Why carmakers sell insurance 13:49 UBI: the blocker isn’t privacy 18:29 What would actually change the number *(Timestamps are relative to the episode audio as delivered. Add your intro length if your player shows different positions.)* ## Three things to take away 1. If you’re buying between two EVs, the difference in insurance cost can be larger than the difference in charging cost over three years. It’s knowable before you sign, and almost nobody prices it in. 2. Raising premiums isn’t a solution to this — it’s damage control. The gap has to be absorbed by somebody until repair information is public, independent shops can get access, and a battery pack can be repaired rather than replaced. 3. The interesting question isn’t who is overcharging. It’s who holds the pricing power. In petrol cars it was the insurer. In EVs it moved, and it isn’t coming back on its own. ## One question If you drive an EV, did insurance influence what you bought or what you kept? And do you expect this gap to close through better repair economics, or through regulation? Pick one and tell me why in the comments. --- *Insight: Automotive & Beyond is a weekly conversation about the global automotive supply chain, hosted by Erick (20 years at Toyota, Volvo and Jaguar Land Rover) and Lynn. Subscribe to get the next one, and if this was useful, forward it to whoever owns after-sales.* This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit erickyang.substack.com

    EV Insurance Costs 49% More. The Reason Isn't Greed.

  6. Sep 30

    China’s EV Charging Crunch: It’s Not About Charger Count

    Every year, China’s Golden Week holiday creates viral images of EV queues at highway service areas. But China now has 21.48 million charging facilities—more than the rest of the world combined. So why the lines? In this episode, Lynn and Erick break down the real bottleneck: peak demand, 48 kW average charging power, grid and land constraints, and the tough economics of fast charging. They also look at what China is doing—policy targets, mobile charging, and V2G pilots—and what the US and Europe can learn. Plus: three practical tips for EV drivers facing holiday travel. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit erickyang.substack.com

    China’s EV Charging Crunch: It’s Not About Charger Count

  7. Sep 24

    Nine Ministries Signed. 100,000 Suppliers. Five Years.

    A Dutch insurer stopped covering nine car brands in August. None of them failed a crash test. Univé, one of the largest insurers in the Netherlands, pulled the cover because of parts — its own example being a Chinese EV that arrived at a workshop with a small crack in the front suspension mount, where the manufacturer’s repair manual says replace the entire body shell. The car is written off. You can price a part. You cannot price a repair process that ends in a write-off over a body panel. Ten days later, nine Chinese ministries co-signed the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan for the intelligent connected new energy vehicle industry. In this episode, Lynn and I work through what is in it, and what it means for anyone who sells into, competes with, or invests in this supply chain. What we cover **The document itself.** A five-year plan is not a law. It is closer to an operating system: once it names a target, budgets, land, credit lines and administrative approvals flow toward it. Nine signatures means the policy layers are aligned — and that is a bigger change than any single target. **The metric changed from range to efficiency.** Fuel consumption down to 3.3 litres per 100km; electric consumption down to 11.5 kWh per 100km. Range is bought with battery mass, and battery mass makes every other engineering problem worse. Stop buying range, start earning it. **The pecking order.** Fifteen Chinese companies are in the Berylls top-100 supplier ranking (Japan 23, US 16, Germany 15), and for the first time their combined revenue passed the Americans’. But Bosch alone is €55.8bn — and Bosch does not make batteries. A brake caliper is a part; a brake-by-wire system is a business. **Three bottlenecks money cannot fix.** Automotive-grade SoC localisation in China is 5-8%; microcontrollers around 10%; the highest-end nodes and automotive-grade EDA tooling are effectively 100% imported. The constraint is not algorithms — it is the data feedback loop, and you cannot buy an ecosystem. **The part of the plan nobody quotes.** “Encourage cross-brand overseas spare parts warehouses for key components.” Cross-brand: a government admitting the problem is bigger than any single company. BYD built a parts hub in Italy and passed the Dutch underwriting review. Lynk & Co inherited Volvo’s network. The declined brands never built a regional parts centre at all. **The invoice you cannot collect.** In June 2025, 17 major automakers pledged supplier terms under 60 days. On 7 September 2026, MIIT and the market regulator issued a dedicated notice: acceptance within one working day for production materials, payment encouraged within 30 days and never beyond 60, interest on late payment, and — the clause that matters — during price negotiations, payment on account of at least 90% of the last contract price. The nominal 60 days was never the problem. The clock never started. One question Over the next five years, which breaks first — China’s chip gap, or its overcapacity? Pick one and tell me why in the comments. --- *Insight: Automotive & Beyond is a weekly conversation about the global automotive supply chain, hosted by Erick (20 years at Toyota, Volvo, Jaguar Land Rover and Chinese EV) and Lynn. New episodes every Thursday. Subscribe to get the next one, and if this was useful, forward it to whoever on your team owns after-sales.* This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit erickyang.substack.com

    Nine Ministries Signed. 100,000 Suppliers. Five Years.

  8. Sep 17

    Right Product, Wrong Timing: What BlackBerry Passport and Aiways Teach Us About Being Too Early

    The phone that was ten years too early In 2014, BlackBerry built a phone with a square screen, a physical keyboard, and the exact footprint of a travel passport. Reviewers called it a brick. It died on the shelf. In 2026, Apple and Samsung are selling the same shape as the future of productivity — and everyone is calling it brilliant. Same idea. Same dimensions. Same logic. Ten years apart. This week on Insight: Automotive & Beyond, Lynn and I use that gap to unpack one of the most expensive traps in business — and in careers: being right too early. WHAT WE COVER 1. BlackBerry Passport (2014) — right product, wrong decade A 4.5-inch square display that fit 60 characters per line, built for reading PDFs and financial models rather than short videos. The logic was sound. The supporting hardware simply didn’t exist yet — flexible glass and ultra-thin hinges still had to be invented. It didn’t lose on logic. It lost because the era wasn’t ready. 2. Aiways (爱驰汽车) — right strategy, fatal timing Long before “going global” became every Chinese automaker’s obvious playbook, Aiways bet on Europe first: EU whole-vehicle type approval, launches in Germany, France, and Switzerland. Looking back, the direction was exactly right. They ran out of money before the tide turned — crushed by factory capex, supply chain build-out, international compliance, and the enormous cost of educating early European consumers about Chinese EVs. 3. What it means for you If you’re a strong performer stuck in a declining industry, under flawed leadership, or in a role being automated away — the failure of the vessel does not define the skill of the sailor. But “it’s not you, it’s the world” is cheap comfort. The better move is accurate attribution: sort what you can control from what you can’t. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 — The new foldables, and a strange sense of déjà vu 02:07 — BlackBerry Passport: the right idea, ten years early 03:30 — Why capital-intensive industries punish earliness even harder 04:00 — Aiways: a strategy validated by everyone except the clock 05:50 — The failure of the vessel does not define the skill of the sailor 06:40 — What you can actually control: four things 07:05 — Half a step ahead makes you a visionary; three steps ahead makes you a casualty 08:20 — Surviving until the wind comes is a capability in itself THE TAKEAWAY Being early isn’t a strategy. Being survivable early is. Protect your cash flow. Keep your skills fresh. Stay patient. If your direction is right, the moment when your “passport form factor” finally gets recognized will come. New episodes every Thursday. Connect with me on LinkedIn: Erick Yang. Subscribe to Insight: Automotive & Beyond. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit erickyang.substack.com

    Right Product, Wrong Timing: What BlackBerry Passport and Aiways Teach Us About Being Too Early

  9. Sep 12

    Welcome

    I’m Erick. Starting now, my co-host Lynn and I are launching a brand-new podcast: Insight: automotive & Beyond. Every Thursday, we’ll take you beyond the automotive world—into technology, business, culture, and the ideas shaping tomorrow. We hope you’ll enjoy it. New episodes every Thursday. Subscribe and join us for the ride. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit erickyang.substack.com

    Welcome
  • 9 Episodes

About

Welcome to Insight: Automotive & Beyond—your inside-track briefing on the rapid transformation of China's automotive, EV, smart mobility, and global supply chain ecosystems. Hosted by Erick Yang, an automotive industry veteran with over two decades of boots-on-the-ground experience in global supply chains, alongside co-host Lynn, this podcast delivers candid, high-density conversations that cut through the hype. What We Cover: • The reality inside China’s EV, battery, and smart cockpit race • Autonomous driving, automotive chips, and hard-tech innovations • Global supply chain resilience, sourcing shifts, and cross-border expansion • Business strategy, leadership, and market intelligence Whether you are a global auto executive, supply chain manager, tech investor, or industry practitioner looking to understand "Inside China," tune in for actionable intelligence and unvarnished industry truths. Subscribe on Substack to receive new audio episodes and analytical briefs directly in your inbox. erickyang.substack.com

Information