00:00Robert Llewellyn is an electric vehicle advocate and the host of Everything Electric Show.
00:07The European, possibly Japanese, definitely American companies have sort of stumbled into
00:12EVs a little bit in a slightly haphazard way. They were ahead of everyone else. I mean,
00:17if you think, where did the first electric cars get built? In America. Where did the
00:19next lot get built? In France with Renault, in Japan with Nissan. The very, very early
00:25electric vehicles came out of that world. But meantime, in China, they were thinking we
00:31don't want to compete with Western companies that have been going for, in some cases, a
00:35hundred years, making very good combustion engines. We're going to go for electric vehicles instead.
00:41And for all the reasons that people want electric vehicles or are interested in electric vehicles,
00:46you know, they are cleaner, they are cheaper to run, they are easier to maintain.
00:49Now, you've driven a huge number of these cars yourself. What do Chinese brands get right
00:57that European rivals still haven't? I mean, I think it's not necessarily the design or the
01:05style or even the interiors, although they're all very, very well made. You know, I haven't driven
01:10a Chinese made car that I've gone, oh, this one's a bit floppy. They're all very well made. I think
01:16it's down to the battery chemistry, the understanding of electronics, the software in particular.
01:22That's the critical thing. Now, tariffs don't seem to have slowed Chinese manufacturers growth
01:28in Europe. Do you think that means that the real priority now has to be Europe's own competitiveness,
01:36not trade protection? I mean, in the long run, it has to be. And I mean, if you think,
01:43European car makers have benefited hugely from the Chinese market. Why are Chinese people so good
01:49at making cars? Because they've had European and American car makers in the country showing them
01:54how to build really efficient production lines. People, you know, the amount of people I've met who
02:00were car designers for Audi, BMW, Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce, Jaguar Land Rover, who worked in China for two,
02:08sometimes three, four years at the immense engineering knowledge that has been built up
02:13in the automotive industry in Europe has been kind of exported to China. So this is what I mean. It's
02:19like the, you can, you could maybe say, oh, I don't like the look of a BYD. If you see
02:24what's underneath
02:24the BYD, it's essentially a lot of European development and thinking, and they've just,
02:30and they've taken it further. I want to talk about cost, Robert, because the theme of World EV Day
02:36this year is affordability. You know, after years of everyone talking about it and nobody quite
02:41delivering, are we finally close to an affordable mass market electric car?
02:47Yes. And I mean, we're going to see them more and more. So in the UK in particular, the cheapest
02:51car,
02:52brand new car you can buy, the cheapest is the Dacia Spring. It's electric. That's the cheapest car.
02:57There's no petrol car for the same amount of money. So they are simpler machines. They last longer.
03:02And I think the critical thing is that I think people are beginning to understand now. It's not just
03:06the purchase price, because there's a lot of ways around getting around that initial massive,
03:11like all cars are expensive, but you can lease them. You can do lease purchases, but the operating costs
03:17are what's really critically important. And they are so much less.
03:21Robert Llewellyn, pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much.
03:26And you'll be able to see a longer version of that interview by scanning the QR code on the screen
03:30right now, which will take you to CGTN Europe's YouTube channel.
