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Trip Report · May 2025

Spring 2025 EV &
Autonomous Driving

Five days across five cities with a deliberately capped cohort of fifteen — providing high-density access to robotaxi operators, major battery manufacturers, full-line automakers, and autonomous driving software developers at the frontier of China's new energy transition.

Dates
May 2025
Cities
Shenzhen · Hangzhou · Changzhou · Hefei · Shanghai
Duration
~5 days
Participants
Max 15 (capped)
Status
Completed
Led by
Lei Xing & Freya Zhang
On the Ground

Companies Visited

Autonomous Driving
Pony.ai
Fully autonomous robotaxi ride in Shenzhen; early access to unreleased vehicle variants; near-term commercialization roadmap briefing from leadership.
EV Manufacturer
BYD
Test drives of the Yangwang U8 and the U9 — whose DiSus-X suspension system enables lateral body movement, demonstrating a proprietary chassis engineering capability.
Battery
SEVB / Sunwoda
Shenzhen strategy session on market dynamics, technology differentiation, and competitive positioning against the dominant battery players.
EV Retail
EV Showroom Cluster
Shenzhen multi-brand retail showroom cluster; hands-on comparison of multiple Chinese EV brands in a single concentrated setting.
Auto Manufacturer
Geely HQ
Hangzhou headquarters; strategic briefing on multi-brand EV portfolio management and the group's forward electrification roadmap.
Battery
CALB
Changzhou production tour covering cell manufacturing through pack assembly; technology differentiation narrative relative to CATL; government relationship strategy.
EV Manufacturer
NIO
NEO Park Factory F2 in Hefei; full manufacturing tour from body stamping through final assembly, with detailed discussion of automation integration and sustainability systems.
Autonomous Driving
Momenta
Shanghai briefing on L4 autonomy architecture and the detailed commercialization timeline for mass-production ADAS and full-self-driving deployment.
Additional Shanghai Meetings
Jaguar Land Rover dealer group — shifting luxury consumer demand dynamics in the Chinese market.
NIO Investor Relations team — capital markets perspective and financial roadmap discussion.
Supply chain industry veteran — informal session on cross-sector competitive intelligence and supply chain structural shifts.
Analysis

Key Takeaways

01
China's pace of EV and AV development has not slowed
Rapid iteration cycles, continuous product launches, and deep vertical integration remain defining structural features of China's new energy sector. There is no evidence of the deceleration that some external observers have assumed.
02
Pony.ai's robotaxi operation is closer to commercial scale than consensus models
Participants rode Pony.ai vehicles through live urban Shenzhen traffic with zero safety driver intervention required — a standard of operational maturity that is consistently underestimated in Western competitive analysis.
03
The BYD U9 lateral suspension is not a marketing stunt
The DiSus-X suspension system demonstrated in the U9 — enabling controlled lateral body movement — is a substantive engineering advance in chassis dynamics that signals a technology development gap of genuine competitive significance.
What Participants Said

In their words

"You can't get this from reports. You have to be here."

Investor participant
Original Reporting from This Trip
Full Substack writeup — Spring 2025 EV & Autonomous Driving
Read on Substack →
Trip Details
Spring 2025 EV & Autonomous Driving
Dates May 2025
Cities Shenzhen · Hangzhou · Changzhou · Hefei · Shanghai
Duration ~5 days
Participants Max 15 (capped)
Led by Lei Xing & Freya Zhang
Status Completed
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