BYD is now outselling automotive giants like Toyota and Volkswagen in China. But beyond the numbers, a bigger shift is happening—Chinese EV brands are moving away from traditional dealerships and into shopping malls.
In this episode, we explore China’s electric vehicle revolution, breaking down the numbers behind its EV boom and uncovering why mall showrooms are replacing dealerships, and the economics driving this shift.
From sleek in-mall showrooms to live-streamed car sales and in-store cafés, China’s EV industry is transforming not just how cars are made, but how they’re sold. The way we buy cars is changing—China is leading the charge, but will the rest of the world follow?
Tune in to find out more:
Also Available on Spotify and Apple.
[AI-generated transcript][00:00:00] Sabrina: Hi everyone and welcome to the Impulso Podcast by Momentum Works. So on today’s episode, we are going to be talking about something that’s been requested by a couple of you, which is actually electric vehicles and specifically Chinese EVs, right? So we were looking at the annual sales of EVs in China about a couple weeks back.
And it was quite interesting, right? So can you go to the Yeah, Denise will pull up a chart. So this is the annual sales of all cars in China, right? And the top is BYD.
[00:00:31] Jianggan: Okay, 3. 4 million cars.
[00:00:35] Sabrina: 3. 4 million cars, yeah. And second and
[00:00:37] Jianggan: third are still international brands, right? Volkswagen and Toyota.
[00:00:42] Phyllis: Ah, okay. Phyllis just tried to read. I was gonna ask, what is
[00:00:47] Jianggan: Volkswagen is Volkswagen.
[00:00:48] Sabrina: I think we had this is like Volkswagen is a common kind of like family car.
[00:00:52] Jianggan: Do you know what Volkswagen actually means in German? Like people’s wagon. Of course you have Toyota, but what is interesting is the trend. So BYD grew by 43 percent year on year. That’s actually significant growth because the whole market is probably not. Growing that much, yeah. Or even growing at all. I think we can pull out that number to see.
Then Toyota and Volkswagen, which, I mean, they are still significant, but if you look at the, the growth, they are both in decline, 4. 9 percent and 4. 1 percent respectively. Number three would be Geely. Geely, that’s a Chinese brand. And I think they do both traditional cars and EVs.
[00:01:30] Sabrina: They were the ones that kind of invested in Jiyue Auto, right?
[00:01:34] Jianggan: Yes, they’re the ones who actually created the conglomerate, right? They own Volvo Polestar, they have Zica, they have different brands. So, the number five is Honda. Honda had a sales of 880, 000 cars. So that’s about a quarter of, I mean, less than a quarter of BYD sales.
But what is really worrying is that it was declining by 26 percent year on year.
[00:01:56] Sabrina: For Geely,
[00:01:57] Jianggan: yeah. Yeah, I just spoke with some people who were in a very early days of establishing a joint venture of Honda in Guangzhou, because back then when China first opened this auto market all these foreign players needed to establish joint ventures.
So it’s a government way to force them to transfer some technology. And at that time, I think many people were saying that, okay, of course, I think 20 years ago, when you go to China, it’s the emerging market and you don’t trust the rules and and you have to drink a lot. But I think they managed to actually take this up.
But also at the same time you created the whole market in China.
[00:02:33] Sabrina: But it’s a very competitive market in China, right? So just looking at this list alone. There are so many.
[00:02:41] Jianggan: Yeah, we go to number 000 cars. I mean, BMW at one point in time was I mean, like in Singapore, right?
I mean, when you’re middle class, when you try, when you’re a little bit sort of affluent, you won’t have a BMW.
[00:02:54] Sabrina: Yeah, it’s more of a, it’s
[00:02:55] Jianggan: the
[00:02:56] Phyllis: bad drivers on the road, guys.
[00:02:57] Jianggan: It’s the bad driver on the road.
[00:02:59] Phyllis: What’s number 8? Tire.
[00:03:01] Jianggan: Oh, cherry.
[00:03:02] Sabrina: That’s a local Chinese.
[00:03:04] Jianggan: That’s a local Chinese brand been known for producing very cheap cars so I think they were one of the first ones to export to Southeast Asia, and when they first came, I think also, I think you can probably find news back then, lots of people saying that, The quality was really not good.
[00:03:19] Sabrina: I feel like I remember seeing a couple of like, cherry cars. They were kind of the first, were they kind of the first few like, Chinese EVs that started expanding globally?
[00:03:28] Jianggan: EV, they were like petrol cars. Oh, they were just normal cars. Yeah, and most of the complaints is about leaking oil.
Oh, okay. So as we can see that historically when they build petrol cars, and same as when they were building motorbikes in China. I mean, Chongqing is a large manufacturing hub. Many of the motorbike companies tried to expand into Southeast Asia about 15 years ago. This couldn’t beat the Japanese cars because quality was not as good, and also they didn’t have the brand name, the trust, the distributor ecosystem, the service ecosystem.
[00:03:59] Sabrina: I think it’s very different now, right? Cause, so, last year in Singapore as well, BYD was the, ta da, magic. We have this, last year. Magic is a piece of paper. Newspaper. I made the piece of paper appear. That’s the magic trick. BYD was the number one car brand that sold in Singapore last year.
[00:04:14] Jianggan: That was an ad,
[00:04:15] Sabrina: Yeah. This is an ad. But they did actually overtake Toyota last year and they sold about 6, 000 units. Nothing compared to China, but cars in Singapore are just like that.
[00:04:27] Phyllis: It’s so interesting to think that the top brand in selling cars in Singapore only sells 6, 000, but in China they sell like 3 million,
[00:04:35] Sabrina: I think the bottom brand in China. So can sell more than 6,000. Yeah.
[00:04:39] Jianggan: I mean, go and find if a brand sells 6,000, scroll
[00:04:41] Sabrina: all the way down,
[00:04:42] Jianggan: how would that rank?
Oh,
[00:04:45] Jianggan: 6,000? That would be, I have no idea about this brand. Yeah. 89. That’s number 89. Okay. Number 89 in China.
But that’s the scale of the market, right? Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. They have like a hundred, more than a hundred.
[00:04:59] Sabrina: Yeah, they have almost a hundred brands. So that’s how competitive the market is.
[00:05:02] Jianggan: That’s how big the market is, I think.
[00:05:04] Sabrina: Yes.
[00:05:05] Jianggan: Because I remember like more than 10 years ago, I was having a discussion with a friend saying that you really don’t have that many sort of different car models in Singapore, especially at the mass market.
Occasionally, these days, I still see a few. Do you know a brand called skoda? A Czech brand, which was bought by Volkswagen. So, I mean, if you drive inside, the interior design is exactly Volkswagen, but it’s a different brand. And in China, at some point, it was so common. And in Singapore, I don’t know, I see like one or two here and there.
[00:05:36] Sabrina: I see a lot of BYDs in Singapore these days, though, like really. I think the price point is quite reasonable. It’s a good car. I’m assuming it’s a good car.
[00:05:44] Jianggan: They have like a six, seven different models in Singapore now. Yeah. And I mean, I drive, right? So on the road, I noticed it. You see more and more BYD cars like every month. Yeah.
[00:05:56] Phyllis: So speaking about BYD, right? I think we also mentioned this in the Jiyue Auto episode. BYD is actually, they produce the buses now that are in NTU. So NTU like hire BYD buses. Yeah. So they changed it, yeah. Now it’s all electric.
[00:06:12] Sabrina: Usually buses are
[00:06:13] Phyllis: Mercedes,
[00:06:13] Sabrina: right?
We see usually Mercedes or BMW. Or Volvo
[00:06:18] Jianggan: or something because it’s a heavy duty vehicle and you need a pretty good engineer to make sure that they’re actually reliable, yeah.
[00:06:24] Sabrina: So it’s, that’s why I be writing. But I guess when you go to a mall in China, you can kind of see how competitive it is as well, right?
Mm. So Ang you were in China recently we are all in China recently
[00:06:35] Jianggan: But I actually went to a mall in Shanghai and so yeah, you can play the video. Yeah, that’s Chachi. So that’s Ong. That was me, yeah.
[00:06:45] Sabrina: Yeah. Ong is also quite popular.
[00:06:48] Jianggan: Yeah, there’s a KFC which has a very, very, very good egg tart. So basically, this mall I think we can post a few photos there. This is the mall, this is like the first mall I visited in China for the last, I don’t know, three, four years that actually has a crowd. That’s true, yeah.
It’s super crowded. Because when
[00:07:06] Sabrina: I’m looking at the video, it’s very different from when we were actually walking around the malls in Shanghai. Okay, I don’t know if it’s because we were there on a weekday or like, it wasn’t a weekend, but most of the malls, there’s like one, two people. And that’s it.
[00:07:19] Jianggan: I do think that the malls that you went to are not the malls which are actually right next to the communities, right next to the neighborhoods.
These are the malls people need to make effort to go.
[00:07:29] Sabrina: Then it’s a lot emptier.
[00:07:31] Jianggan: Yeah.
[00:07:32] Sabrina: Continue the video?
[00:07:32] Jianggan: Yes. So this is XPEN, and of course one of the three startups. You start to see them in Singapore as well?
[00:07:40] Sabrina: Yeah, I started to see them in Singapore as well.
[00:07:42] Jianggan: So our colleague Enzo in Beijing, he drives XPEN.
I rode in his car a few times. The car was really good. His driving was not. And he always forgets to wash his car. So he said it’s in Beijing, it’s dusty anyway. So what’s the point?
[00:07:56] Phyllis: What about the car was good?
[00:07:57] Jianggan: Huh?
[00:07:58] Phyllis: What about the car
[00:07:59] Jianggan: was, I think it was comfortable and it has like a, no full view, sort of what The sky roof.
Yeah,
[00:08:05] Sabrina: wait, but that’s quite common in like a Tesla has that as well. Right. I mean, do you have that in Toyota?
[00:08:10] Jianggan: I drive a Volvo. My must has like the little sunroof. Yeah. I have like half. Yeah. So that’s the, that’s BYD. So what’s interesting about this is that this is the basement next to, I think, two supermarkets and one large food court. So I’ll show you a few photos of food court. That food court is weird, super weird.
[00:08:31] Sabrina: Oh, it’s the one with all the panda.
Denise will add some photos later.
[00:08:34] Jianggan: So
[00:08:35] Sabrina: all the car showrooms are in the basement, mostly in the basement. In the basement where you have the,
[00:08:39] Jianggan: You have the biggest crowd, actually. So that noise is huge. On one end of the basement is Hema. And the food court.
So basically, I mean, two things which draw people, right? On the other end is Audi. It’s a German supermarket, which is going really popular in China. In between is all the car showrooms.
[00:08:57] Sabrina: It’s very interesting because, how do you say, a couple years back, having cars, having a car showroom in a mall is not the norm, right?
Traditionally, there will be pop ups and all, but having a car, a car brand owning their own retail space in a mall, it’s not something that used to be very common. And then I think the first person that did it was kind of Tesla because they use like a direct distribution. And now, like you said, right, the whole basement besides the supermarket and the food court is just.
So why do you think these brands have started kind of shifting their business model?
[00:09:30] Jianggan: I think for the new car players, right? I mean, especially those who started with these EV who do not have the leJiyuecy of all these dealerships and stuff. And when they look at Tesla doing that and they thought about what’s the quickest way for them to build brand awareness to show their cars to the maximum amount of people because If you look at the traditional relationship that car manufacturers with consumers is that they appoint dealers car manufacturers will invest in marketing and together with dealers They will find ways to bring people into the showroom But showrooms are typically not In the places they usually go to
[00:10:02] Phyllis: no, they’re usually like very very far So in Singapore the showrooms are usually at alexandra road, right? Which is quite inaccessible I mean you have to travel there specifically.
The only car brands that have showrooms that are in malls in Singapore are actually BYD and Tesla, right?
[00:10:19] Sabrina: Yeah. So far, the only two I’ve seen are BYD and Tesla. But it’s interesting, right? Because obviously, unique economics wise, it’s a very different model. And most of the time the sales don’t happen directly at these retail stores?
[00:10:32] Jianggan: I don’t think so because with the mall you can’t really go and do a test drive, right? I mean, you can’t technically, take the car up the mall and go for a ride. So for that you probably still need to go to a physical location. But what you see interesting is that these guys are separating the functions of customer acquisition.
Mm-hmm . To conversion, right? I mean traditionally that happens at one place, you know in China dealers are called 4S stores like sales, service, whatever. There’s 4S there. So basically it’s one stop, right? I mean covers everything but now I think sales and acquisition happens at one place Which is in a shopping mall, which is where we have the highest traffic.
Mm hmm
[00:11:15] Sabrina: I think one interesting thing is obviously for a lot of these more traditional car brands, right? If they were to do like, let’s say, a pop up in the mall or if they were to have a dealership, they would have to see the conversion kind of directly translate to sales. Whereas if you just have a showroom Or you just have a retail space in a mall, obviously it doesn’t always directly translate to sales immediately.
Right. Cause customers will come and go. Customers will come and ask questions. And then of course they will have to arrange a test drive, which happens somewhere else. And for the case of like Tesla and all, you can actually purchase the car online. So how do you think brands are kind of like, cause then obviously the KPIs that you use to track how successful this store is would differ from that of a traditional dealership.
[00:11:58] Jianggan: Yes, a couple of things. I just spoke with a friend who used to work for a large European car brand in China. He was saying that for them, when they look at everybody else who started doing this, every local player in China started doing this like permanent stores in malls, and they tried to do that as well, but they encountered one block.
They can’t allocate the rent as a so if you look at the, I think some of the pop up stores that you see in Singapore and roadshows and stuff, I mean, this is like no temporary marketing cost instead of event. You
[00:12:34] Sabrina: can technically still put it under the marketing dollars, right?
[00:12:37] Jianggan: Yeah so for him, he said, I mean, I couldn’t convince the CFO to allocate this as marketing. Then once you look at it as a retail space, you need to start doing the calculations of does it make sense from, Yeah, how much
[00:12:49] Sabrina: sales am I getting from this, you know?
[00:12:51] Jianggan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because The space in malls would cost more than a showroom.
Right. I think you have done some search.
[00:12:56] Sabrina: Think, yeah, it’s about two, I think two to five. It could be two to five times more. Yeah. Obviously. Depends on the space, I guess.
[00:13:03] Jianggan: Yeah. And all. So then if you account this in a way that you have to generate profit per square foot then it’s, I mean, of course you look at it and say, okay, more is not the best way to do it.
Actually, in a way, this is similar to how we look at locking. Because locking minimizes, I mean,
[00:13:28] Sabrina: Like minimizing, not really minimizing store space, right? But I would say maybe in terms of customer acquisition.
[00:13:35] Jianggan: In terms of, yeah, in terms of customer acquisition, in terms of the function of that space that they have in the malls is different, right?
Because traditionally the cafes will say, okay, I have space in the mall. The mall is where I do the customer acquisition, I serve the customers, I have the collect the cash and stuff. Lucky was saying that, okay, the space in the mall is just a fulfillment center. So in a way you should look at it previously the dealer showrooms, everything.
Now the space in the mall, I mean, they’re not that big, right? They just show like two or three cars, they have someone there explaining to you. And it’s a place for them to tell the customer, Hey, we have this discount and stuff. Right.
[00:14:12] Sabrina: It’s kind of funny, it’s kind of the opposite.
For Luckin, it’s that instead of having such a big, like, nice retail space to attract customers, they just Use their stores as like a fulfillment center. Whereas for cars, it’s more of the other way around, right? They are going into the retail space to have a nice space. You have like a small team of staff there and then place things for customers to come and try.
Even BYD has like a cafe.
[00:14:35] Phyllis: They actually have four cafes, but what I’m thinking is, isn’t it like a significant amount of extra costs? Because like, even with the retail space, they still need to have the traditional showrooms, right? At Alexandra Road, which BYD actually has. They have a showroom as well. Is it just to draw in the crowd and does it really, you know, convert to actual people buying?
[00:14:57] Sabrina: So basically having a cafe also adds a Significant cost. So why do they still choose to do it?
[00:15:03] Jianggan: I think, every cost you do, right? I mean, it’s not really about, the cost per se, because people always say that, okay, oh yeah, I spend so much on this not so much on that. But at the end of the day, you look at, okay, what is the spend?
I mean, what’s the purpose of the spend and how does it justify obviously well, this is me guessing, right? I have not spoken with them about this, but I would think that, I mean, having a cafe there. And if you look at the cafe there, they don’t serve you know, traditional sort of ethnic food, but it’s also more sort of more than business.
I’m pretty sure it’s pasta. Yes. I mean, it’s easy to cook. It doesn’t require lots of expertise. And also at the same time, it gets the crowd to stay in the showroom a bit longer. Because traditionally, if you want to buy a car, we go to the showroom, we talk to the person and after like half a minute, if you’re embarrassed, asking too many questions and the guy is pushing me to buy the car and I want to disenJiyuege from this discussion.
So I do think that the cafe will help people stay longer.
[00:15:55] Phyllis: So do you think the cafe in a way kind of offsets a little bit of the cost?
[00:16:00] Jianggan: No, I don’t think it justifies a little
[00:16:02] Sabrina: bit of why they want to pay more. I don’t think you will earn it back, but I feel like it creates a more comfortable experience for your consumers.
[00:16:08] Phyllis: So it’s all about consumer, it’s all about
[00:16:10] Sabrina: customer
[00:16:10] Phyllis: experience.
[00:16:11] Jianggan: Think about that. The person who might want to buy a car. But doesn’t want to talk to the salesperson. Sit in the cafe, observe, see how other customers enJiyuege with the salesperson. So you can think about that person sitting in cafe the same as somebody like, you know, at home watching live stream from the car showroom.
[00:16:27] Sabrina: I guess that’s why live streaming cars also works, right? Because sometimes people want to see, but they also don’t want to be asking too many questions. They don’t want to have a salesperson kind of like following them around and being like, I’m selling them.
[00:16:40] Jianggan: A friend of ours used to sell online selling in Malaysia physical goods and he has transitioned into selling cars and is doing really well because, I mean, consumers need time to enJiyuege with the salespeople to ask more questions but they feel pressurized when they’re actually physically in the showroom.
So cafe makes it more relaxing environment for people. I mean. That’s also what traditional car dealerships do.
[00:17:07] Sabrina: They create a comfortable, like they have seats, they have coffee. Very nice couch
[00:17:12] Jianggan: and give you a coffee. And Neil says, I was planning to like ask two questions and leave.
Now I have to finish my coffee. And it’s hot. It takes a while to finish
it. That’s true. Then you have to stay there longer.
[00:17:22] Jianggan: Should we go back to the mall?
Yes, you can go back to looking at the,
[00:17:26] Jianggan: So this is BYD different models as you can see I mean this is like pop up stores, right? It’s really really simple.
[00:17:31] Sabrina: How much is a BYD?
[00:17:33] Jianggan: in China depends. The cheapest would be probably around 100k RMB, 15k USD. Oh, that was me. Oh, this is Jiyue. They’re still there.
[00:17:42] Sabrina: Oh, wait, they still have it. But okay, look at the video. They kind of cordoned off the entrance to the Jiyue Auto showroom.
[00:17:52] Jianggan: You can see the dust.
[00:17:52] Sabrina: Okay, so for those of you who are lacking a little concept, so Jiyue Auto, we do have a podcast episode about this. . If you guys want more information, you can check it out in the show notes below. Essentially they were a Chinese EV who recently kind of went bust, right? And then they had live streamers who were live streaming. The sales of the car, yeah, and who are breaking down mid live stream.
So it kind of became quite a big like thing in China.
[00:18:15] Jianggan: So this is their showroom and of course, nobody’s there. And I’m not sure whether they have prepared the rain or whatever. So the cars are still there Jiyuethering dust. Somebody has put a few characters on a car.
I mean, on a dust, you can write on a dust, right? Just saying that. Hey Xia Yiping, who is the CEO, please return me the money. So it’s still there. They didn’t bother to, I mean, nobody bought
[00:18:35] Sabrina: it.
[00:18:37] Jianggan: Yes, but this is their vision, right? So GUE is smart so experience the global leading, gosh, high level smart driving.
The main text, Jiyue is a high end smart car robotic brand based on the advanced Baidu AI technologies, as well as Geely’s ecosystem.
[00:19:01] Sabrina: So those were the two kind of parent investors into Jiyue.
[00:19:05] Jianggan: Yes. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you can see the company had a very big ambition, For whatever reason, it didn’t work out.
Can you continue
the video? Yeah.
[00:19:14] Jianggan: So, yes.
[00:19:15] Sabrina: Yeah, see, so they kind of cordoned off the whole, like, shop area.
[00:19:19] Jianggan: Pricing is still there, and it costs about 200, 000 for the basic model, and about 300, 000, that would be 27, 000, 28, 000 USD, yeah.
[00:19:29] Sabrina: So it’s more expensive than a BYD. Well, like, at least the cheapest model of a BYD.
[00:19:33] Jianggan: It’s aimed to be sort of medium and medium above, yeah.
Yeah. So I was showing people around and you can see actually people walking around the new model
[00:19:45] Sabrina: Miniso
[00:19:49] Jianggan: This is the thing about Miniso and everywhere it’s like you see lots of everywhere in China
[00:19:55] Sabrina: Yes, you see a lot of it in Singapore. The place I was most surprised to find a Miniso was when I was in Germany last year, I saw a Miniso.
I was so excited.
[00:20:05] Jianggan: Is in like, I think more than a hundred places.
[00:20:08] Sabrina: I was so excited. But the prices are, it’s damn cheap also. It’s the same noise. Yeah, it’s exactly the same, like the kind of goods that they sell right, it’s damn similar.
[00:20:15] Jianggan: Denise, can you go back a little bit? So that’s B. U. I. D.
doing a, I think, a sort of branding for one of these cars together with the blacksmith, Wukong. The very popular Chinese computer Jiyueme. You move a little bit the next door is Buick.
[00:20:34] Sabrina: A Chinese?
[00:20:35] Jianggan: No, this is General Motors.
[00:20:36] Sabrina: Yeah, yeah,
[00:20:38] Jianggan: see, that’s the thing I was talking about, right? So if you look at General Motors, and they actually have lots of sub brands, so they established a joint venture in Shanghai that produces, I think this brand, Brick, and another brand called Cadillac, you might have heard of it.
[00:20:52] Phyllis: Cadillac?
[00:20:53] Jianggan: Yes, I think there used to be some taxis in Singapore of that brand, right?
[00:20:56] Sabrina: Yeah.
[00:20:57] Jianggan: Yeah. Sabrina hasn’t heard of it.
[00:20:59] Sabrina: I have, I know. It’s in the Bruno Mars song. Oh, okay. It’s in the cadillac. It’s a very old car, no?
[00:21:05] Jianggan: It’s a very old brand. Old model, like,
[00:21:07] Sabrina: the very classic, like, the squarish car.
So Cadillac is Chinese?
[00:21:12] Jianggan: No, no, it’s GM, General Motors. Yeah, so I think the strategy of many of these car manufacturers is that when they go to a market, they choose which brands to use in that market. And historically, you have a lot of stories of, I mean, you know, wrong choices of brands. A discount store.
[00:21:27] Sabrina: Yeah,
[00:21:29] Jianggan: it’s not related to cars, but you can see the sales of alcohol and daily necessities. Not exactly. This is still branded stuff. And yeah,
[00:21:43] Sabrina: they have a Volkswagen there.
[00:21:45] Jianggan: That’s Audi. Yeah, doing super well in China now. So you see these guys are saying that, okay, this car is only a hundred and 4k.
R and b, so that works out to be 14 KUSD.
[00:22:01] Sabrina: You were there around like the lunar New Year period. Right? Which is why That was before that. Yeah, around. There’s so many red decorations around.
[00:22:08] Jianggan: Oh, this is Volkswagen. Yeah. And is this Toyota? This is Toyota just now.
[00:22:12] Sabrina: So even traditional brands have started kind of opening retail spaces in malls in China.
[00:22:17] Jianggan: It is, yeah. Look at the price
[00:22:20] Sabrina: one.
[00:22:22] Jianggan: 4K. Less than 20K. I mean, coming from a Singapore perspective, we look at the car prices. Our
[00:22:28] Sabrina: COE is way more. Oh yeah, our COE is not even like, you convert that to Singapore dollars, that’s our COE.
[00:22:33] Jianggan: COE stands for Certificate of Entitlement. In Singapore, in order to own a car, you need to have
[00:22:38] Sabrina: It’s not
[00:22:39] Jianggan: It’s not even a piece of paper, you don’t have a piece of paper, it’s an entry in a registry.
[00:22:43] Sabrina: Yeah. Essentially it’s registering to own a car.
Yes. You have to bid for this. Yes. Registering.
[00:22:48] Jianggan: Yes. So which brand is this? Smart. That’s German as well. Yeah.
[00:22:56] Sabrina: A German.
[00:22:57] Jianggan: Yeah.
[00:22:57] Sabrina: Normal, like a traditional car or EV?
[00:23:00] Jianggan: I think they have EV as well. I think it’s pretty hard for you to operate in China without having a EV portfolio. And of course they didn’t manage to rent this out, so they have all these machines.
[00:23:12] Sabrina: I love these machines.
[00:23:14] Jianggan: Yeah. Which brand is this?
[00:23:18] Sabrina: Envo.
[00:23:19] Jianggan: Yeah. Envo is one of the new brands.
[00:23:21] Sabrina: It’s interesting. It’s such a big market and that’s really so many brands popping up. So how do these brands actually differentiate themselves?
[00:23:32] Jianggan: Different ways. I mean, you can see that some of them are using price, some of them are.
[00:23:37] Jianggan: Yeah. MG is now owned by the state owned Shanghai, I think, Motor Group. Yeah. Oh do you see that car? That MPV there? Yeah. There’s a lady inside.
[00:23:49] Sabrina: Oh,
[00:23:49] Jianggan: what is she doing?
[00:23:50] Sabrina: She’s live streaming. You can’t really see Denise when you edit this just like zoom in.
Yeah, she’s live streaming from inside.
[00:23:57] Jianggan: Can we get closer in the video or no?
[00:23:59] Sabrina: We can play the video and see.
[00:24:00] Jianggan: I’m saying is that as the video progresses, do we actually get closer to her?
[00:24:04] Sabrina: We’ll find out. Oh, yeah. She’s live streaming.
[00:24:08] Jianggan: She’s basically explaining.
I think it’s about that. It actually makes sense, right? So look at this guy’s probably not doing
[00:24:15] Sabrina: Actually, yeah, this is something we discussed about live streaming when you’re in a retail store, right? So if you’re in a store and it’s empty, or you can only talk to one person at a time, but if you do a live stream, you’re answering multiple questions.
Actually,
[00:24:28] Sabrina: I think it’s very effective for cars because it’s a Big ticket purchase, people will have a lot of questions.
[00:24:35] Jianggan: They want to like, you know, spend more time looking at it aJiyuein and aJiyuein.
[00:24:39] Phyllis: Was she hired by the brand or is she just like a live streamer?
[00:24:42] Jianggan: I think she’s hired by the brand. But there are instances in places where you can have a third party.
But I don’t think these guys do it.
[00:24:51] Sabrina: That’s a Tesla.
[00:24:52] Jianggan: That’s a Tesla. And Zikr. So this Zikr is top selling. It’s one of the top selling brands. Yeah.
[00:25:00] Sabrina: It really is the whole basement of the mall. And we are back at where we started.
[00:25:06] Jianggan: Is a very weird robot here.
[00:25:08] Sabrina: This robot is not by, it’s by XP.
Is it?
[00:25:11] Jianggan: I don’t know. I think it’s by the mall operator. So I don’t know why it is there.
[00:25:16] Sabrina: Was she explaining? anything or she’s just moving?
[00:25:19] Jianggan: I think when you hit that and you can try to have a conversation with them.
[00:25:23] Sabrina: Oh.
[00:25:25] Jianggan: So you see once you are out of the street you see all the F& B and stuff.
So this mall is actually pretty decent crowd and they have so many different car brands there.
[00:25:35] Sabrina: It’s a huge mall and there’s a whole area in the mall where it’s just, I guess this is good for someone, if you don’t know like you just want to go and have a look. You can look at a bunch of brands, look at the different models and all.
[00:25:46] Jianggan: And, if you want to book for a test drive, you can still, go to the site where they can do a test drive. But even if you think about in the past where you have to do a test drive, I mean, you have to go to different places, right? Yeah. So that. But at least there’s one place you can go and check out different cars, check out everything.
And if you’re still not sure, which is most likely the case and you can sort of go and watch bit of livestream and book test drive and the whole experience becomes more natural that you don’t, I mean, it’s just psychology of the consumers. And, for car manufacturers is a way for them to look at.
I mean the life cycle of customers. I mean, how do you do the awareness conversion kind of stuff.
[00:26:22] Sabrina: So it’s interesting ’cause. Currently the car market, or at least the way you do retail for the car market in China is so different, right? But a lot of these Chinese EV brands are also trying to go global. So obviously, like we mentioned earlier in the video, BYD is the top selling car in Singapore.
I think they’re doing well in a lot of other countries as well, right? Do you see this kind of retail model translating the same outside of China, or do you think it’s something that is quite unique to China?
[00:26:48] Jianggan: I think at the end of the day, it’s not really okay. I mean, become a new document, right?
You have to do the retail insurance. It’s where to look at cost, right? I mean, what is allocated as customer acquisition cost? What is allocated as, I don’t know. Conversion cost and what, and how do you look at the whole process? So in certain places, I mean, it makes more sense to work with dealers to have showrooms in certain places.
You might be worth to work more with e commerce players. So I think it’s a way to look at, okay, this is how the customer life cycle is. And this is how I intend to sort of maximize the ROI on whatever money I have for this market.
[00:27:26] Sabrina: So we’ve been seeing a lot of Chinese EVs in Southeast Asia as well, right?
I think that’s like a whole other topic. So if you guys are interested, we are going to be doing a specific episode on EVs in Southeast Asia. So if you guys have any questions, you can leave them down in the comments and then maybe we’ll address them in the video.
[00:27:40] Jianggan: Maybe.
[00:27:41] Sabrina: So thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of the Impulso Podcast.
If you enjoyed today’s episode, please do give us a thumbs up as well as subscribe to the channel for more updates on new retail, EVs and the digital economy. Thank you and bye bye.
[00:27:54] Jianggan: Thank you.
[00:27:55] Sabrina: From why do EVs have showrooms in malls? I give you the honors.
[00:28:00] Jianggan: What? Have you already done it? No.
[00:28:04] Sabrina: Okay. Start from why do Chinese EVs want to have a retail space in the mall?
