The Vergecast - How BYD beat Tesla

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

There’s a new biggest name in EVs, and if you live in the US, you pretty much can’t buy one. But before we get to that, we have some stuff to catch up on: The Verge's Hayden Field joins us for a round of “Big Deal Medium Deal Small Deal” with some AI news, from the launch of ChatGPT Health to the recent viral moment for Claude Code. After that, The Verge’s Andy Hawkins joins the show to explain how BYD recently eclipsed Tesla as the world’s largest seller of electric vehicles, what makes its cars so desirable, and when you, too, might be able to buy a Dolphin Surf. Finally, David tackles a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email [e-mail]!) about giving your kids iPads instead of iPhones, and whether all screen time is created equal. Further reading: Car influencers love Chinese EVs — and China loves them back Tesla’s fourth quarter sales fell a lot more than expected From Inside EVs: A Guide To BYD, The Chinese Automaker That Just Surpassed Tesla Anthropic wants you to use Claude to ‘Cowork’ in latest AI agent push Anthropic shakes up C-suite to expand its internal incubator OpenAI launches ChatGPT Health, encouraging users to connect their medical records Google brings buy buttons to Gemini and AI search Grok is undressing children — can the law stop it? Google is taking over your Gmail inbox with AI Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Birdcast, the flagship podcast of the BYD Dolphin Surf. If that is three words that you've never heard in that order before, don't worry. It's all going to make sense later in this episode. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I have huge news for you, which is that I finally, after, I don't know how many hours of trying, got this silly little IKEA button hooked up to my smart home. So now, if you're watching this on YouTube, it's not going to look very exciting either way, but let's be honest. Now I have a thing where I can just, I can turn two lights off all at once with one press of a button and then another press of a button turns them back on. This is all I want out of my smart home. And somehow this took a whole lot of work and I had to update my echo dot max and my Ero network.

And then I had to do a bunch of weird insane stuff. I don't think it was worth it at all, but it felt good. And I'm glad I accomplished something. This is the smart home road I am somehow going down. And I think it will be the end of me. Anyway, no smart home stuff on today's show. Today we're going to do two things on the show. First, we're going to talk to Hayden Field about some of the AI stuff that's been going on the last couple of weeks.

While we were out over the holidays and then while we were at CES, there's been this interesting drumbeat of AI products. I think this is the year we're going to talk about how we actually use AI and what it means in our lives. Hayden's been covering a lot of it. A lot of it has been coming out. So we're going to just try to catch up on all of it, kind of all at once. Then we're going to talk to Andy Hawkins about this company, BYD, which has come from not necessarily nowhere, but relatively small beginnings,

to become one of the most important car companies in the world. And as very recently, the biggest, most successful EV maker on the planet. I don't know a lot about BYD, and on this episode, we're going to change that. Plus, we have a really fun hotline question about all the different size screens in your life, lots of fun stuff to get to.

But first, I have a terrible news, which is that I have two more of these buttons, and now I have to figure out what to do. do with them. Wish me luck. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need.

Proms something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th.

Tap in with us. Do you ever wonder what's in your lotion? If you look at the back of the bottle, it could contain more than a dozen ingredients. And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients have been restricted by the FDA since 1938.

This week on Explained It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. Hayden Field is here. Hi, Hayden. Hey, great to be here.

So you and I have this problem, which is that, like, you have other things to do, but also there is Vergecast AI material to do, like, every 45 minutes in the world. So it was the holidays. There was a lot going on. Lots of, like, sort of bits and pieces

of what I think are, like, interesting news moments and bigger stories. So I want to play a game with you that we've played before on this show. This game is called Big Deal, Medium Deal, Small Deal. I suspect you can figure out the parameters of this game by the title of the game.

And basically what's going to happen is I just want to run through a bunch of sort of news stories and moments that have happened and things that have launched over the course of the last several weeks. And I want you to tell me for each one whether it's a big deal, a medium deal, or a small deal.

Sound good? Love it. All right. So the first one I want to do here is a bit of news that happened this week that I think is connected to sort of like the thing that has been all over my social feeds for the last several weeks, which is Claude Code. Anthropic launched something called Co-work, which is kind of a normy version of Claude Code, I would say. That's the best way to describe it. Yeah. Okay. So let's start with co-work. Big deal, medium deal, small deal. I would say like between small and medium. Like it's, I think a lot of people are excited about it. It's been really. helpful. I've seen some really cool applications. But at the end of the day, it's just, you know, a wrapper. So it's good for UI. It's good for more people to be using the benefits of cloud code, but it's not anything like super crazy. I do think it'll bring it to more people. So between small and medium. Okay. What about these sort of big picture cloud code moment that's happening? Big deal, medium deal, small deal. I think that's a big deal. I mean, I have not seen so much hype around just one company since, you know,

Open AI's last hype-filled cycle two years ago. You know, I think it's just, it's partially hype, but also Anthropic has been at the top of a lot of benchmarks for a long time. And even where other companies are surpassing it, anecdotally, a lot of people are sticking with Anthropic because of either the reputation of the company, the fact that they feel it's more safe or more like the adult in the room, or the fact that they just love Claude code. So I think that, you know, we're seeing a little bit of loyalty emerge here in a way that we haven't seen really before. You know, a lot of times people just switch between models based on what's

best at the time, which people are all still doing, obviously. But I've seen more anecdotal evidence than ever before that some people are just sticking with Claude because they like it. They feel a little loyalty to it. They like Claude specifically. They like the tone of Claude. There's a lot of things that are kind of just making people gravitate towards Claude in a way that I haven't really seen in the last couple of years in this way, you know? Yeah, I think you and I have kind of shared the theory over the last couple of years that Anthropics seem to have a much better and more capable organization for making actual consumer products than Open AI.

And I think, to me, at least, that's really starting to bear out, right? Like, Open AI is building a lot of stuff. Most of it is not working. We're going to get to some of it in this segment. but like it's out there doing the App Store thing and it's out there doing custom GPTs and they just launched ChatGPT Health which we're going to talk about.

Like Open AI is building a lot of stuff but the stuff by and large, other than ChatGPT itself, doesn't really seem to be hitting. But it feels like Anthropic with Claude, with Claude code. And like the reason I bring up co-work is it feels like Anthropic has found

something that works that people like and are gravitating to and actually feel good about in really important ways. and that feels important to me. Like I just really feel like the product that Claude is becoming kind of as a whole and within Claude Code in particular, it feels like it has turned some kind of corner that I can't fully name yet, but feels important. Yeah, I think that they're building a little bit slower and more intentionally,

which has been really helpful because opening eyes reputation for better or worse right now is that they're kind of just like throwing a ton of pancakes at the wall and seeing what sticks. Now, I will say Anthropic is in danger of going there because, you know, opening I has been announcing thing after thing. And then usually within a day or two, Anthropic will sometimes announce a similar thing. So with Opening Eyes health announcement they did, Anthropic came out with one a day or two later. So, you know, I think Anthropic has to be careful not to just try to catch up with the competition in every single category and just stick to what they're good at. There's a lot of like FOMO in this cycle right now, there's a lot of companies worried that they're going to miss out if they don't go into every single area. And I think it's important to stick with the should we use AI to do this at all and should we use our resources to do this? So hopefully Anthropic is a little more intentional about that. But for now, they're being more intentional than most other companies. Totally. Okay, this is a totally random aside. Did you just say throwing pancakes against the wall? Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, or maybe the ceiling. Is this a thing people say? I have only ever heard spaghetti thrown against the wall.

wall. But pancakes against the wall is, is fantastic. Wait, what if, what if I've been misusing this for 10 years? I say this all the time. Okay, yeah, I always say throwing pancakes in the wall, see what sticks. What if it's spaghetti? Maybe what if I'm, you can tell I don't cook. I'm now very into the idea of this being like a regional dialect of what you're throwing against the wall to see what sticks. I need everyone to, please send us an email and tell us what you throw against the wall to see what sticks. Is it spaghetti? Is it pancakes? Is it something else? Is this like a Coke pop soda thing that it depends on where you grew up.

I'm now obsessed with this and need to know. I can't wait to find out. It's very good. Okay, one more on Anthropic, actually, before we switch gears here. Mike Krieger, who I think gets a lot of credit for being the engine behind this product culture we're talking about.

He's the chief product officer. He was at Instagram. He is like a sort of product legend in the tech industry. Got a new job with a lab's team. You wrote a story about this. Big deal, medium deal, small deal. I think it's a medium deal because it's kind of a sign of how much competition is increasing even more than before in AI. I mean, Anthropic is clearly trying to invest a lot in their experimental, like, bleeding edge stuff.

And that's why they're bringing Mike to the labs team since mid-20204. It's been about two people. And now they're trying to double it in the next six months. And they're bringing, yeah, Mike over his role. is going to revert to just being a member of technical staff. He's no longer going to be in the C-suite. They're replacing him with the head of product, but not replacing the CPO title. And, yeah, I just think it's going to be really interesting to see what they do. They said that the type of thing they want to build is clod code, skills, other types of features that they've been just kind of

experimenting on, and engineers have been experimenting with in their free time, just on the side. I guess they want that to be kind of a full-time role now, just experimenting, seeing what they can play with, bringing new stuff out of Claude. MCP was actually another example they gave of the type of thing that could come out of this lab. It's a really interesting thing to put next to what you were just saying about Anthropics' reputation as being the company that is more thoughtful and more deliberate and more sort of in control of its own product system, right? like this kind of thing at OpenAI where they're just like, we're taking our best product maker and putting them into a place where they're just going to make a bunch of stuff and see what happens would make a lot more sense at OpenAI with ChatGPT.

Here I think it's a really interesting reputational move because even Dario and Daniela Amade have been saying, like we want to be responsible, but also we have to move really, really, really, really fast because all of the stuff is happening. And like it is true that MCP and ClaudeCode and this kind of stuff is coming out of Anthropics, sort of organically, and they seem to be trying to put some structure around how do we build all this stuff that is working really fast. They even said co-work is, I think,

completely built with Claude Code. Like, it's clear that Anthropic has this sense of, like, we've built something cool and we need to accelerate it like crazy. How to do that without ruining this sort of reputational advantage you've built over Open AI strikes me as a big challenge. I agree. And I think that that's why I'm kind of getting, I think that they're in danger of kind of the desperation that comes from just having FOMO in the space and going too quickly. You can see that even with the funding announcements they made in the past year, you know, Dario is saying, hey, look, we're going to have to now accept this type of funding. We're going to have to accept this type of funding. I know it's controversial, but we have to

stay competitive. So, you know, I mean, I think right now they have the reputation of being the adults in the room. I don't think that's always warranted. I don't think any company is doing way better than another, honestly, here, but they do have that reputation. And they're doing, you know, clearly people think they're doing everything more intentionally, a little more safely. They are investing more compute in safety, it seems like, than their competitors. But, yeah, I mean, I think they do have a danger of losing that reputation if they throw too many pancakes at the wall. So we'll see what happens with labs. But I do think, you know, it's smart to be like, you know, kind of taking these types of projects out of just engineers free time and making them their full-time job.

So, you know, it's a balance. Totally. So, okay, again, fun reputational segue. Open AI launched ChatGPT Health, a headline that made me cringe with my whole body from head to toe. Big deal, medium deal, small deal. Big deal, I think. And the other companies that have followed. You know, Anthropic did something of the sore.

X started encouraging people to upload their health records into GROC. I heard there's just a lot going on there. But yeah, I think it's a big deal because, I mean, data privacy of it all, you know? They say that it's a lot safer, that it's a walled garden, that it's separate from the rest of Chad GBT, that there are specific safeguards in place. They wouldn't really get into what they are, but they said there are more than typical chatGBT. But once again, I mean. Can I just say that thing that you just said does not give me comfort? They said there are more, but they won't tell us what they are, but they say they're better than Chad GBTBT is not enough to get me comfortable with the idea of. encouraging my, of uploading my medical records to chat, GPC. Yeah. And the fact, like, I mean, the memory is separate. You know, there's a lot going on there. I personally wouldn't upload mine,

is all I'd say. I mean, I do see, I see in theory why people would want to. Obviously, the medical system is a mess. Like, you know, there's so many doctors that don't take the full picture into account. I just got blood tests last week. And I was like, huh, I would love if someone could tell me, like, how my iron has done over time, because I'm like notoriously up and down on my iron levels, who knows. But I'm not going to be uploading it into chat, GBT, I have to say. I mean, yeah, I was not sold on the privacy measures from the briefing high guy. And there's just, I feel like this is a huge can of worms. I mean, you know, medical records are one of the most sensitive types of data you can give anyone. And you have to handle them with care and they say

that, you know, they're doing that. But I just, I'm not sold yet. Yeah. I'm curious how you think about all of this philosophically because it feels like a particularly high-stakes microcosm of a lot of questions around AI right now because I remember there's this really beautiful rest of world story several months ago about

a woman who was trying to grapple with her mom's kind of ongoing obsession with talking to chat GBT about her health. And this came with like very real upsides like having she felt like instead of having to make like a multiple day trip to go see a doctor who didn't know her and didn't really have time.

And she felt like just sort of a cog in a wheel that this person was going through being like, ah, you're fine and kicking them out. She's like, oh, I have something that will listen to me all the time and talks to me and goes back and forth with me and is actually engaged with my health. And it's like, I sort of appreciate that. But then it's like you have this thing that is is not accurate, is not medically trained, is not a person that is like, I don't know. To me, it is like it's so perfectly elucidates all of the upsides and.

downsides of having these chatbots as like characters in our lives when you point it at health care. I totally agree because we've seen the like overvalidation and sick of fancy that these chatbots can have. So I mean, imagine that effect on someone with health anxiety or just someone without health anxiety that can easily go there. Like, you know, you start saying, oh, well, are you sure there's no problems with my chart or my tests? You know, there's got to be how, you know, I'm feeling fatigued. Like, look again, there must be something there. It's probably going to say, oh, you're right. You know what?

There is something here. I'm worried about X, Y, and C. I mean, I just think about, I have a lot of friends with health anxiety that, like, spent so much time on WebMD. And I'm just thinking about how much worse it would have been for them if they had had a tool like this. And I asked opening eye about this because this is a big problem. I mean, you know, worsening health anxiety, getting people in a spiral.

And they said, look, you know, we're trying to present the information in a caring tone without you know, having a lot of fear-based vibes in the response. But, I mean, I wasn't really sold on that either. The other thing that I thought was really interesting here is that obviously mental health is a part of health. And Open AI has been like lambasted for how it's treated people's mental health spirals who are speaking with Chatsy-D. People have committed suicide. And, you know, it's deepened a lot of spirals. And I asked them about this too. And they said, well, of course, mental health is part of health. We expect this to be part of the picture here. They want people to talk to, you know, chat with D-health about their mental health. And they said, you know, they had done more to try to help with that, you know, implemented more types of safeguards.

But, I mean, it's so soon after all of these problems that we've been discussing for the past year, I just can't see how they would have, you know, fixed a lot of those issues in so short a time. Yeah. And there's something to the idea of giving it a name that just makes me feel icky, right? because it's one thing to treat this stuff as kind of a non-intended behavior of these systems, right? And that's how a lot of these companies have talked about it. Like, no, you shouldn't use it for these things, even though we recognize that people do. Right.

Like, these things are not therapists. You shouldn't treat it as such. Gives you some leeway to be like, well, we can't help that some people are going to do it anyway. We tell you not to. But if you're going to have a thing called chat GPT health that is specifically billed toward this use case, it just is going to feel different to people. You've made this feel like an official valid use of this tool in a way that I just have a hard time seeing that we're prepared for. Like, I don't know that there's any evidence that we as the users or these platforms know how this is supposed to work yet.

And it's crazy because one of like the big headline things they announced here was that it's not intended for diagnosis or treatment. It's called Chat, GPT Health. Like you can't do that. Right. I think it's like one of those like kind of disclaimers that you just put on something just so you don't get sued. It's like, okay, it's none. They're where they're like on CNBC, they're like, this is not investment advice. And they're like, buy invidia. It's like, well, what is this if it's not investment advice? Yeah, I'm like, who's not going to use this for diagnosis? Like, obviously, yeah, they would probably go to a doctor and be like, okay, are you, you know, is this, is this legit?

It also reminds me of like, it's the reason I don't have my memory turned on in chat, GBT. and I often use it like logged out and I don't give it a name. Because I think we have a tendency to rely on these things and trust them the more we talk to them. It's just human nature. It's like the reason we name our stuffed animals, the reason we name our cars. We love to anthropomorphize things. And so if you name your chat chbt, again, like if I have friends that love to do this. Like if you want to do it and you feel like you can handle it, great.

I can't. Like I have to like have a barrier because, you know, I like using these tools. I do use them. But I think there's a danger to like the type of trust that you inevitably build with something when you kind of give it an identity in your brain, you know? Yeah, totally. Okay, so a couple more of these. And then I'm going to just leave and feel bad about myself for a while. The next thing is I called this in my notes the buy button onslaught.

We got these sort of dueling announcements. Like you said, everybody just kind of does the same thing within three. days of each other. Like, everybody is just having the same idea all at the same time. And the big ones here were that Microsoft is going to put buy buttons for things directly into co-pilot, and Google is going to put buy buttons in Gemini and in AI search results. I have a pretty strong feeling about this one. But I'm curious for you, big deal, medium deal, small deal. I think, you know, it's going to be a big deal for e-commerce. I think that affiliate links is a huge way that anyone makes money. It's how influencers make money. It's how a lot of media outlets make money. You know,

and all these AI companies need money desperately. It's all they can talk about. They need compute. They need money. So, and they also want to deliver on investor promises. So, I mean, this is one way to do that. They get, you know, a slice of the pie when they recommend something. You can buy something right then and there. Why wouldn't you? It's why Amazon is so popular. So yeah, I mean, probably a big deal, honestly. It's kind of going to change the landscape. And once again, take earnings from other people and companies that have been using that as a big moneymaker and kind of redirect them towards AI companies. Okay, so I think you landed in the right place there, which is good, because I actually think this is a big deal, at least in theory, right? Like, is it possible

this won't work at all and it'll go away? Maybe. But I do think we've been waiting for ads to show up in these things. We've been waiting for more ways for them to monetize rather than just trying to get everybody ready to pay 20 bucks a month. And the idea that this might do it feels right to me. For all the reasons you just said, right? Like, these things are good at shopping. It's the thing I use Gemini and ChatGPT Atlas for weirdly that just like became a thing that I just go to shop for. Like I needed light bulbs for a chandelier we just bought. And rather than like, Google every imaginable kind of light bulb, I uploaded a picture of the light bulb it used in the instructions diagram and was like, what is this and where do I buy it? And it did it. In one,

One shot, it found me the light bulb I needed. Like, that's a great use of AI. And if they can figure out how to take money out of that transaction, they're going to make a lot of money. This is going to be hugely complicated for retailers, for anyone who sells anything. Maybe huge mess. But, like, if I'm an AI company, this is the cleanest, simplest way to make money. And if they can make it work, it actually feels like a big deal. I agree with you.

It's like, it's really changing the landscape. My other thought on the buy button thing actually is that I think this is going to be a really interesting UI reckoning because the idea of just shoving a bunch of buy buttons into the chat experience isn't going to work. Right. Like we're at this place now where we're already at the edges of text UI where maybe it can just be a bunch of paragraphs and bullet points. If you're going to do buy buttons, you need a thing that is graphical. Right. You need a thing that looks a lot more like shopping than chat. And this, I think, is going to push all of these companies to figure out, like, okay, how do we actually show this stuff to you in more sort of properly tuned ways than just treating everything like a messaging system?

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's going to be like, you know, how there's like the big push towards multimodal, voice, et cetera. Now I think we're going to see a little bit more of a push towards just display and graphics because, you know, I asked it to show me photos of a. a range of things the other day and it was like, oh, I can't display those. So yeah, and I was just like dresses or something, something normal. So yeah, I think that we're definitely going to see some

expansion there. Okay, two more. And to avoid ending on the bleakest one on the list here, let's just talk about the GROC scandal a little bit here. This is a bigger one than we can do in full here. But the GROC

deep fake imagery problem, I want to talk about it in this particular sense because I think it matters in this particular sense. Like, is this thing in a big picture way, a big deal, a medium deal, or a small deal? Great question. Yeah, definitely a huge deal, I would say, bigger than big. Because, you know, a lot of people like to say,

oh, well, Photoshop, you know, other tools. Anyone can do this. Why that's such a big deal that GROC is doing this? Well, it's because it's doing it publicly. It's doing it. and we're in a direct thread with the person being deep faked, and anyone can see it, and you can do it for not only just public figures and celebrities, but anyone that you disagree with. So I think that it's a huge deal. I also think the fact that it was happening to children, minors, I mean,

basically across the board, it's a huge bad thing, but the fact that the company didn't do much about it at all until a ton of countries started talking about or banning X also told me a lot. I think a ton of countries started investigating. Nothing really happened. A ton of countries said, oh, we're probably going to ban it. Nothing really happened. A couple of countries did say they're going to ban it. Okay, now it looks like X AI is starting to make some changes. So I think it was also kind of an interesting example of how much power people. have. You know, a lot of times we feel like we don't have any say and what these platforms do, but we do as a collective. So I think that was kind of a good example of that. And that's also

part of why it's a big deal. Not only the fact it was happening and how bad it was, but also the response and what actually ended up making a shift. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way of looking at it. And I think that sort of pace of response that you talk about has been really interesting to watch because I agree with you that my immediate reaction was like, obviously this is, reprehensible and awful, right? Like, this shouldn't be happening. This shouldn't be allowed to happen. Liz Lepater wrote a great piece for us about the ways in which

like Tim Cook and sooner prochire are culpable in this. And I agree with all of it. It did seem for a while like nothing, nothing would change and nothing would come with it, right? And there's a lot of that right now, particularly when Elon Musk is involved. But there is a sense that, like, this platform is already so sort of off the rails and bizarre, and it's run by this person who has sort of proven himself untouchable

over and over and over again, that maybe nothing will happen. But it does feel like some combination of the mounting political pressure and the just obvious horrors of it, particularly as it relates to children, it does seem like there are real consequences and that things are going to have to change as a result of those real consequences. Like, the nihilist in me says it'll be a lot of yelling that ultimately doesn't really go anywhere. But like you said, there are starting to be, like in the UK, this stuff has already started to change because the UK has made and followed through on threats about the platform as a result. Definitely. And I mean, the Take It Down Act that finishes going into effect in May, I think we'll also have some authority here. Because right now it's already not allowed, but platforms don't have to really fully figure out how to take these things down until May.

So I think we'll see more changes in the next six months. But yeah, I mean, I think the global response to this has been really interesting and moved the needle a little bit. I think the fact that, yeah, like popular celebrities back when they were minors are seeing this happen. And, you know, like there's just honestly a bipartisan issue is like child safety. So I think that's kind of why this has happened so quickly because on both sides of the aisle, everyone agrees we shouldn't have deep face. of children, especially, you know, undressed ones. I think everyone can agree on that, honestly. Yeah, if anything, you can get too much policy done by saying we have to protect the children. Right. It is one of the few things that everybody agrees on, which is good. All right, last one, Gmail AI inbox.

This is a thing we haven't really talked about on this show, but it is like a surface billions of people use all the time. and Google is like rewriting a lot of people's email inboxes with AI. Big deal, medium deal, small deal. Okay, I don't know how this is like in the full big picture context, but to me it's a big deal. I think email is the worst. Honestly, if I'm like being honest about like the big picture, probably a medium deal. But I think email is like the, it's the bane of my existence.

It's the worst thing in the world. I truly believe that one of the best uses of AI could be actually fixing email and just keeping track of the actual threads you're responding to. It's probably because we're journalists. You know, it's like I get like 300 emails a day. I give everyone my number because I'm like, please text me because I may have missed it in the flood. I think, you know, I would love to have a list. Yeah, what they're suggesting, I think is going to be great. I know other people use certain like AI powered email clients that, you know, help them a lot. But I think Google's large influence and just the fact that it's like such a ubiquitous tool, Gmail, them doing something to kind of

help move the needle here is going to be at least a medium deal for most people, but a big deal for me. Yeah, I sort of laid in the same place. I think medium deal is probably the right answer at the end of this because we read a couple of stories. Jay Peters covered this and tried it out for us. And the comments on his stories were very funny from a bunch of people who were like, what are you, 72 years old?

You still use email? And then a bunch of other people who were like, I have 150,000 unread emails and what I need is Google to be like, here are the two that matter. And I don't know what you're like as an emailer, but I used to be a really religious inbox zero person. I would go through every email. If I had five things in my inbox, it would stress me out. And I was like very intense about making sure I was caught up on email. And somewhere like two or three years ago, that just collapsed on me. And now I have, I can just look at this right now. I have 361 emails in my inbox, which does still make me feel sort of itchy to say. Two-thirds of these I probably don't need to see and we'll

never see again, but a third of them I should probably reply to. And so the idea of having something that is like a supercharged version of like the Gmail nudges where it'll just pull a thing up being like, you should reply to this. You got it five days ago. Do you care? That could be very valuable. That said, I think email just as a thing everybody does all day is a kind of rapidly dying idea. In part, it's Gmail's fault. Like, its filters are bad. We all get much spam. I think email is just like it's a surface everyone interacts with, but is less and less important to how people sort of do their lives and communications that I feel like the idea of this even a few years ago would have been monumentally huge. And now it feels like

it's smaller only because email is smaller. Agreed. Yeah. Also the search sucks too, I have to say. But yeah, I mean, I think you don't even want to see my inbox. I'm I can't even tell you the number. You will do it. Prove it. Get it right now. Go to your inbox. How many do you have? Okay. My personal one, 313, but that's like, I know what they all are. It's like I'm just leaving someone red because, you know, my work, my work one, I only open the emails that I actually need to see. So I should, I need to mark all the rest as red, but it's like there's so many that I really just open the ones I need to see. I don't look at the rest. I think you're going to faint. Say the number.

12,000. No. 12,000. Listen, I used to be like you, though. I'm not kidding. I used to be a psycho about being inbox zero. I could not leave the day with even one email in my inbox. But my most viral tweet on my life was me saying basically you can choose between as a journalist,

having a life, staying on top of email and writing like good stories. And I truly believe I've chosen having a life and writing good stories. but I can't stay on top of my email. I do click the ones I need to click, but I'm like, I can't just like mark all the rest of red. It's just too crazy. So yeah, I'm at 12,000 for the foreseeable future. At least our emails delete every 90 days.

Once you get this feature and use it, I need you to come back on and talk about it. Because everybody gave Jay a bunch of crap. Jay is a person who is like an inbox zero person. He's very organized and very on top of things. And everybody's like, this is not for you. You don't need this feature. People with 12,000 emails in their inbox need this feature.

So once you get to try it, sincerely, I think you and I should both test. this, see if it matters, and then we're going to come back on and litigate the future of email. It's going to be great. I can't wait. It's going to be changed my life. Yeah. Until then, we will leave it at Medium Deal, and we will see how it goes.

All right. Hayden, thank you for doing this. Again, there's a lot of AI stuff coming, so you will be back a lot. Can't wait. For the rest of our lives. But thank you for catching up with me. This is great. It's a pleasure.

See you soon. All right. We've got to take a break. And we'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hogs. it can be really scary too. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure will even work. But here's a better thought. What if it did all work? What if your instincts

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slash sell. What-not.com slash sell. All right, we're back. Andy Hawkins is here. Hi, Andy. Hello. Tell me about your C.E. experience.

Just before we get into this, it was like, CES is such a car show that kind of wasn't a car show this year. Yeah, it, it kind of lost a bit of its car show qualities this year. And I think that that was

surprising a little bit, you know, because in years past, it has, the auto announcement have really just dominated the show. And this year,

it was a little bit absent. We got more news from Sony and Honda's Afila. But yeah, for the most part, most of the major car companies stayed away. And I think that that was kind of like reflective of a couple things. The car industry, especially in the U.S., but also in Europe, is kind of going through some doldrums right now with tariffs and rising costs and disappearing incentives. And I think just like a lot of the gravity is now being sort of shifted to China, which I think is what we're here to talk about.

And China is not much of a presence in the U.S. So it didn't really make sense for China to come to CS. Although there was one company and it was GLE. Gile did come to CES. The movie with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. No, although I'm glad that you brought that up because I have lots to say about the movie GLEA. Goal. GLE, GLE, G-E-E-L-Y, the parent company of Volvo and Polestar, which are two brands that sell in the U.S.

that company says that they plan on selling a lot more cars, including their Zika electric vehicles in the U.S. in a couple of years. So that was a really interesting announcement from them. Yeah. Okay. So your point about China is, in fact, what I want to talk about. So you and I have talked a bunch about the kind of global dynamics of the car industry and how they've been changing and the ups and downs of EVs. But at the very beginning of this year, a really fascinating thing happened, which is that Tesla officially, lost its title as the world's best-selling EV maker to a company called BYD out of China.

And this, I confess as a company I have been hearing about for a long time. In the United States, we just don't hear that much about Chinese car manufacturers, but BYD seems to have hit this kind of escape velocity and become a really interesting global brand. I know nothing about this company. So I have to assume I'm not the only one. So I have brought you here to explain both. what BYD is, why it's so successful and what it matters. Does that sound good?

That sounds great. Okay. So let's just start this at the very beginning. What is BYD and where did it come from? So BYD stands for Build Your Dreams. Incredible. I love it already. I mean, like we're off to the races already.

It was founded in the 90s as a battery supplier for mobile phone companies, mostly like Motorola and Nokia. and then they decided around the early 2000s that they were going to pivot to become a car company. At that time, China's car industry was sort of like in its infancy. They had not yet emerged as the dominant car market in the world at that point. So it was like interesting timing that BYD sort of founded its car division in 2003. It's also a very funny pivot. It's like that reminds me of Dyson being like, well, we make fans.

We can make cars. I don't think it's quite that much. I think like the battery is sort of the thing that kind of like is at the center of this decision. And that will become like a lot more important later on. True. In that sense, it was very prescient of them to make that decision 20 plus years ago. But when they started, they were going to, you know, it was going to be like an internal combustion engine company. Right.

They had not yet, you know, sort of centered on EVs at that point. Because as we saw globally, EVs were not really a thing in the early 2000. thousands like Tesla had not even launched at that point. So they made their first combustion engine vehicle, I think was in 2005. And then they started exploring hybrids around that, around 2008. But there was a couple of pivot points for B.YD that kind of like set the stage for where they were going to end up. The first was in 2008, which is when Warren Buffett decided to take a 10% ownership stake, injecting about $230 million in the company. which really gave them kind of like a lot of runway to start making cars in earnest.

Because the cars that they were making up until that point were not well received. They were kind of considered to be clunkers. And I know that they brought them to a few auto shows in the early 2000s. And I was like reading back through some like car and driver articles around that time. And like they were being pretty merciless in their assessment of these early BYD vehicles. So we got the Warren Buffett investment in 2008. So that really sort of like set them on the path. They started making hybrids.

And then their first electric vehicle came in 2010. It was the E6. And then another sort of pivot point was in 2016. They hired this guy named Wolfgang Egger, who is a head of design at Audi, I believe, and Alpha Romeo and a bunch of European brands. So they poached this guy from Europe and said, We need a complete redesign, a complete rethink of how we're approaching. Our cars are getting, you know, slammed in the press.

We need to, like, start taking this seriously. So they brought Edgar on board. And he sort of, like, oversaw, like, a complete redesign of BID's vehicles. They started gaining some traction, getting some attention. People started to receive them a lot better. The journalists were receiving them a lot, a lot better. And then in 2019, you know, China's auto market was really sort of, like, growing by leaps and bounds and BWIDU was sort of riding that wave. And they decided to sort of

start to look beyond China. Like, what if we started exporting our vehicles elsewhere in the world? And that really began in earnest in 2020, around the same time that Tesla dropped into China, built its factory in that country. And then it was sort of like the EV war was off to the races at that point. Like, you know, Tesla started making cars in China. BYD started making its cars in earnest, it's EVs and hybrids as well. And then we had a real competition on our hands. And I think that that sort of was the origins there. The timing of all of that is really interesting.

Because on the one hand, BYD timed a couple of things really well. Right. It seems like making that decision to say, okay, we want to do great design. We want to be much more thoughtful about making cars that are, you know, good. Timed that sort of perfectly. Like right as the whole car market was about to go through a really fascinating transition both because of EVs and then because of the pandemic and then there's a lot of geopolitical reasons. Like that was the moment you wanted to make that decision if you were going to make that

decision. The company, I guess, had also been around for what, 22 years at the time. So it's like it both managed to sort of, it seems like, cockroach its way through a couple of decades of strange times. But then also like be there and be ready at the moment there was some space for something big and new to happen. Yeah, I think that that's right. And And I think a lot of that had to do with the industrial policy in China at the time as well, which is when China sort of, you know, sort of started deciding that, hey, you know, we think that electric vehicles are going to be the future. You know, China was having enormous pollution problems, obviously, over the course of the last

several decades. And they started pivoting hard to new energy vehicles, as they called them. And so that, I think BYD really was able to take a lot of advantages from this sort of industrial policy that was put in place where there's like a lot of heavy subsidies coming down from the Chinese government and also sort of a direction from the, from the, the Communist Party, that they wanted to really control the supply chain, which meant not only are we going to be pivoting to, you know, these new energy vehicles, but we need to sort of, from well to wheel, essentially.

We need to be able to control everything that goes on where, where it comes to mining the minerals, processing the minerals, making the batteries that would go into the vehicles. They wanted to just sort of have a heavy hand on all of this. And BYD was sort of amongst other Chinese companies as well, was sort of well positioned to benefit from that policy. Got it. Okay. And I think the being versus Tesla of it all seems like an important piece of that, too. I was reading this story the other day. The New York Times had a big story about this gigantic trade surplus that China has. And it was making the point that one of the things that China has made. made a point of is what you just said, taking all sort of imports out of the question,

right? Like getting lots of imports is not important. We want to replace all of that stuff with domestic capability. And I think as this was happening, if I have the history timeline here, right, this was when it was like Tesla is going to take over the world. It's the most important company. It's going to go into China and just take it over. And this is going to be huge. And it makes a lot of sense that if you are the Chinese government, you want to have a homegrown domestic, honest to God competitor to Tesla kind of as quickly as you can. And it seems like BYD was one of the companies for a variety of reasons that was really well set up to do that. Yeah, I think so, because I think the way that they went about the sort of like attacking this

problem was a lot more strategic than Tesla, right? Tesla came into the market. And I think that they assumed, and they were correct for a while, that there would be a lot of demand for their, you know, sort of technologically advanced, well, made, well-received electric vehicles. It's hard to remember back to the phase when everybody thought Tesla's were the coolest. I know. Like, seriously, it's very funny now because a Tesla, even just as an object you see on the road is such a fraught thing that comes with so many other connotations.

But there was a long run where Teslas were just objectively cool and everyone liked them. And it is useful for this conversation to remember that this was that time. It was not that long ago, too. Yeah. It was very recent that there was this. Seriously. And we're sort of living in a new world now. But yeah, I think that that's absolutely correct.

And, you know, I think BYD and how they sort of, their strategy was a lot more interesting because because they had this, you know, this legacy already of sort of starting out as a battery manufacturer. So they were able to sort of control the battery supply chain. And then also make batteries that had emerged as being a lot better than most of the batteries that were. were out there. They were cheaper to make. They, you know, they started out with these lithium phosphate batteries that were a lot cheaper to make. Didn't have as much range as the nickel, cobalt magnesium batteries, but they were a lot cheaper. And that allowed them to bring the price down, which we could talk about, which was that BYD was just really sort of just excelled at these low-priced models that in a way that the European manufacturers that were operating in China,

most notably Volkswagen, but also Tesla, had not really focused on at the time because it was really expensive to make electric vehicles, still is. The battery is the most expensive thing that goes into the vehicle, can add costs around $7,000, $8,000 for companies like Tesla, $13,000 even for companies like Ford and GM. BID was able to bring that down to about $6,000 per vehicle, which then when you have a battery that's that cheap to make,

you can start selling vehicles, and they did, that were, you know, around like, you know, U.S. currency, $10,000, $12,000. And I think that that really positioned them to grow exponentially, not only in China, but then now we're starting to see how their export business has been building. And there's these, I mean, if I could just, with a quick aside, for a personal story, I was in Brazil a couple of years ago visiting a close friend of mine. And we took a lot of taxis everywhere we went, Ubers. And I was shocked. The vast majority of the vehicles that we took when we were driving around in Rio were BYD vehicles. And it was kind of like my introduction, right?

I have seen BYD vehicles. I've never driven one myself. We can get to that as well. They're just not really available in the U.S. And I'd never been to China. If the Verge would like to pay to fly me to China, I'd be happy to go. We could go together.

It could be a little field trip. But I had not been behind the wheel of a B-O-A-D vehicle. And I've suddenly found myself in a lot of BYD vehicles over the course of like six days that I was there. And they were extremely comfortable. They handled very smoothly. I talked to a few of the drivers and they talked about how cheap they were to acquire and how inexpensive they were to recharge. And it just was like a great vehicle for them. Here in the United States, you see a lot of Teslas as part that are that are taxis. I just, I think if BYD was able to sell their vehicles here in the U.S., you would suddenly start to see them everywhere just because of.

How well they're made. Okay, first of all, top gear style Andy and David go to China and drive Chinese cars all over the place is 100% a thing we need to manifest into existence. Let's do it. Neelai, if you're listening, and I know that you are, please consider this a story pitch. The price quality thing is one of the things I want to talk about because you've mentioned to me before on the show that that price thing is a really important piece of what has made Chinese cars successful,

that they're able to make particularly these kind of entry-level vehicles just as good and much cheaper and that that ends up being a very powerful tiebreaker, right? But it also seems like even recently something has changed where that's not the only way these cars are winning anymore. And I think, like, you and Nili are perpetually sharing these YouTube and Instagram links of, like, influencers being blown away by Chinese cars that you can't buy in the United States. Is BID one of those companies?

Like, is it starting to do interesting new things in its cars that, like, are sort of objectively cool other than just we're able to do the basic thing cheaper and more efficiently than anybody else? Yeah, I think so. they're definitely part of that conversation. And I think that that is the product of the very intense competition that was going on in China, right? You had companies like B-Y-D, but also like Li Auto and Neo and G-Lee and a lot of other ones that are, I mean, like, I think I read somewhere that there's like over 150 different nameplates in China, auto nameplates, which is just like, insane. It's like, I don't under, and like the market can't really sustain all of those different brands. And you've seen a lot of them, you know, sort of fall by the wayside.

And there's like an intense price war that's going on right now. And BYD is, you know, is suffering, you know, while they have taken the crown away from Tesla, they're also kind of suffering domestically because of this intense price war that's been going on. Well, that's something even the Chinese government has talked about, right? That we have to, we have to get away from this incredible race to the bottom that has happened. Yeah. because we have had this explosion in capacity and manufacturing ability and all of these new companies that it has become, they're running towards like being the same business as like Alibaba phone charters. You can get anything you want for $4.

It's like that's not where you want to go with your car industry. Yeah. It's very, the government is is doing what it can to try to cool things off a little bit. But yeah. But then I look and BYD sells a car that is like over $100,000. So it's not, it's, there's clearly other games to play here. There's a whole range. You've got sort of like on the high end, you've got your Yang Wang U7s and U8s,

which are sort of like their flagship luxury sedans that have like insane performance capabilities, like supercar level like 1,300 horsepower, quad motor setups, advanced level 2 plus plus point to point driving assistance like Tesla full self driving stuff, long range capabilities. Like the batteries can just go further than like, you know, a lot of like other competitors in the luxury market. And it just offers like, you know, the, the interiors are extremely luxurious. People want to use the baked-in native software in these vehicles because of how good they are,

right? No one's trying to fork anything to a phone projection. CarPlay, Android Auto is not part of the conversation there because everything is just like, it's connected to your personal phone, your devices, while also offering like a lot more. on top of that. So, and I think, like, again, that was part of sort of like this competitive landscape that existed in China that sort of like you had to advance, you had to hire all of these software engineers and like BYD and others have poached a lot of people from around the world when it

comes to vehicle design, when it comes to software, when it comes to all of these things that sort of are making the cars as desirable as they are. So you've got your yang wings at the top competing with like your Mercedes and your Audi's. And then you've got sort of like your your mid-tier, like the kin plus, the kin-L, which are sort of like more compact sedans and SUVs. You've got like the BYD Song series, which is like compact crossover SUVs that are sort of like in the mass market area. And then you've got on the very low end, you've got your Seagulls, which is sort of the one I think that has gotten the most attention internationally, which is like this ultra affordable city car that sells for under $10,000.

in China. Oh, wow. And now that has, that car has made it to Europe where it's being sold is the dolphin surf. I love the names of these vehicles. They're so great. Like, who would both Segal and dolphin surf? Who would want to drive a dolphin surf? Like, you know, oh, I just seem to run to run to the store. I'll take the dolphin surf. Like, come on. I'm in. That sounds great to me. And then, and you've also got like the AdO3, which is also a very successful export for B.Y.D. That's now sort of like, you know, storming across Europe and Australia as well as other markets as well. So it's, it's you, I think like, rather than just sort of like camp out in one of these segments, B.D has sort of spread itself across the entire market. I think in a really smart

way that, you know, GM previously has sort of been sort of like the model of how you can compete across all of these different markets from from chevy to Cadillac right uh and i think biD has sort of copied that but if it's executed it in a lot more uh strategic and successful way i was just going to ask is there a manufacturer that our audience might be more familiar with that you feel like is the closest analog to what biD is doing is it is it kind of old school GM yeah i really do think that it is it's very much like kind of a GM story in how they have been able to diversely. across a majority of segments, but also, you know, sort of like dominate their domestic market and then become like a serious player in these sort of global exported markets as well.

So I think that that's, you know, sort of in some ways is copying kind of like the GM model from many years ago. I saw a statistics somewhere about how like the last time that a company has been able to achieve the growth success and the export success was GM and that was like in the 1950s. Oh, wow.

So it hasn't happened since then. And while I think BYD still has a little bit of catching up to do in order to become like a top global leader like Toyota or Volkswagen

has become, they're nipping at their heels. Like it's not going to be too much longer before I think we see a Chinese auto company. like B.YD at the top of the list.

So is BYD kind of the singular breakout star of this huge China automotive push over the last, I mean, really a couple of decades, but even in the last few years as this has really grown, is BYD the sort of true tip of the spear there? Sort of like in the ways that Tesla has emerged over the last few years, if we just ignore the last couple of most recent years,

as sort of like the symbol of U.S. innovation, I think BYD has sort of seen in the same way. It's seen as an innovative leader, but also sort of as a symbol of like China's technological self-reliance and how they've like vertically integrated to sort of like own the entire supply chain is like a real point of pride, I think, for people in China. It has like the premium tech allure that Tesla has been able to achieve as well. And also sort of like that mass market. dominance as well, which Tesla has not been able to do. I mean, they have insofar as like the Model Y is obviously one of the best selling vehicles of all time, but they have not been able to capture that extremely low end of around, you know,

the Toyota Corolla's and the Volkswagen Golfs and things like that. So I think they've really shown sort of like it is kind of like the standard bearer in many ways. Yeah, it's funny. Looking at pictures of the Seagull, it is kind of the car. everyone has assumed would come for years now. It's cheap, it's small, it's a hatchback. It's not super exciting or interesting, but it's got a little bit of sort of sci-fi future-e design to it.

It looks like the sort of workhorse cheap EV that everyone has assumed was going to happen since like the first leaf. And it just hasn't appeared in the US yet. And it feels like BYD is the one who just shows. shipped the thing. Yeah, it's super sharp looking. I mean, it just goes to show that you can have a car that is cheap, gets the job done,

and doesn't look like shit, right? Like, I think like, you know, the Seagull, it's just like... High bar. It has like these small little LED lights on it that kind of make it look kind of mad if you're looking at it straight on. Like, it kind of looks like an angry car. But it's, you know, it has like

these like nice creases along the sides and along the hood and it's blacked out in some parts that are, it's kind of appealing. It's just, it's fun. It's got some fun lines to it. It just kind of like, it cuts an interesting profile in it. I really like it. I would love to drive it sometime. For sure. So to that point, actually, what is between here and B.YD coming to the United States? I guess A, is that a thing we want in sort of the biggest possible way of asking that question? And B, it's increasingly everywhere else, right? It's clear this is not a, we can't make and ship enough cars.

problem anymore. What are the odds we start to see BIDs on the streets in the U.S. anytime soon? I think, I kind of think it's inevitable. I do think that if you look at sort of like the history of the auto industry, like we kind of went through this in like the 70s and 80s, right, where the gas crisis led to, you know, sort of a decline in enthusiasm for domestically made vehicles. And that's when your Toyotas and your Hondas first started to appear on. on U.S. shores, and that really freaked a lot of people out in America. If you go back and look at some of the movies that were made during that time, there's all these different, like, weird Michael Keaton movies about, like, Japanese car companies

coming in taking over, like, U.S. plants and how much, like, anxiety that was causing, like, American workers especially. I think we're going to see sort of, like, another round of that. That said, there are incredibly steep obstacles still. lying in BID's path, right? It is essentially financially impossible for them to sell a car here and make money, which is not to say that they still might not do it. It's just tariffs are so extremely high.

Like they're at about 100%, I think, right now. So you're talking doubling the cost of what the car. And that's been the case for, these are not like new Donald Trump 2025 tariffs, right? This is like a longstanding U.S. policy. Trump put tariffs in place during his first term. Biden cranked those tariffs up even higher during his term, and then Trump cranked them up even higher. Currently, so they've just been going up. On top of that, you know, vehicles obviously need to comply with, you know, our own safety standards, NTSA, EPA, all of that kind of stuff.

So even if like BYD vehicles and especially like their electric vehicles produce zero tailpipes, they would still need to, you know, require EPA certification for like their battery standards. all those types of things. On top of that, you have the taff, the tariffs, the taxes. And then, in addition to all of that, you've got bans on Chinese software in the United States. So this was something that Trump started and Biden finalized during his term in office. And it essentially makes it impossible or illegal to sell a vehicle with software that originates from China in the United States. So they would need to lift, they would need to find some work around there. That said, there was some interesting news that happened on this front in recent days. Donald Trump was in Detroit recently giving a speech.

He got heckled by a worker at Ford and he flipped off that worker and told them to fuck off. But in addition to that, he said he was asked about Chinese brands like B.D and Xiaomi and whether or not he would he would want to see them being sold in the United States. And he said, sure, let China come in, which was kind of surprising. And I think his conditions are that they would need to build factories here in the United States and they would need to hire U.S. workers. But if they want to make their cars here, European car companies do that, South Korean car companies do that, Japanese car companies do that. Why not let China do that as well? I think that that was kind of surprising because obviously he's kind of like all over the place on China in many ways. But they are sort of in the midst of these trade negotiations.

So I do think that maybe he's starting to soften on some of those things. things. And we also saw him recently say that he loves the K cars, the tiny little Japanese trucks. So maybe he likes the Siegel as well. Let's get Donald Trump behind the wheel of his seagull and see how he feels. That line about the small cars, by the way, is something that a surprising number of people in and around this space have mentioned to me recently as like, we may look back on that thing he's sort of flippantly said about loving small cars as a sort of fascinating inflection point in the American auto industry. And there's no evidence of that yet, but it is, it's just one of those things that has come up in more conversations with me recently than I expected.

I don't know if you've encountered that too, but there is like, that that put some energy into the small car thing that I think was gone. Yeah. In a really fascinating way. It's definitely very, like, much in the enthusiast space here in the U.S. It has not really broken out much beyond that. And, you know, a lot of people will say, oh, you know, small cars do not sell in the United States. seen dozens of companies try to sort of, you know, market tiny little cars, city cars. You have, you know, like things like seat and like, you know, the mini and all of these other kind of brands that have tried to market small cars in the United States. And they have failed because we are just too addicted to giant trucks and SUVs.

Right. Instead, we get trucks that you could fit one of those cars in the truck bed of. Exactly. I think the Hummer EV when it came out, like the thing that like struck me the most about it was that the battery weighed the same as a Honda Civic. Like it's just just the battery. But that said, there's a lot of things that could, you know, sort of happen externally that could lead to a renaissance in small cars. You could have gas prices go up. Obviously, we're in the midst of a bit of an auto loan crisis. Like car prices continue to shoot.

up year after year and people are taking out longer, more predatory loans in order to afford these expensive vehicles. And that's going to lead to some sort of, I think, reckoning at some point when it comes, you know, when it comes time for it. So, you know, there's a lot of things that could end up happening. You know, we could go to war with Venezuela and that could cause all sorts of problems in the global oil market. Who knows? You know, like these things have happened before in the past and we've seen sort of, you know, U.S. interests shopper, car buying interest shift to smaller vehicles, it could certainly happen again. So all of these sort of outward externalities make me think that there is bound to be just a gray or black market for Chinese vehicles coming into the United

States. And I'm frankly already surprised that there aren't car enthusiasts out there driving these things and just sort of hoping nobody notices. So my life. last question to you, Andy, is if I want one, and I will be honest, I do want one, is it even theoretically possible to get one in the United States right now? Well, do you have $90,000? Let's say yes. Okay. Then, yeah, let's go, man.

Rocket roll. I mean, like, because, yeah, that is like legitimately a $20,000 BYD would cost about $90,000 to import and purchase. in the United States because of all set and done with tariffs and everything like. So you're talking like, you're talking like Lamborghini prices for what is essentially a Honda fit. I don't know if that's a good value proposition, but it's not impossible. That's either the coolest flex of all time or you should have control of your money taken away from you. I don't know. It's one of those and I couldn't tell you which one. I mean, like something's got to break because we talked about the influencers. I did this story on the

verge a couple months ago about a U.S.-based auto car influencers driving these Chinese cars that have been brought here by a company that's owned by one of the Chinese OEMs. Gili owns one of the companies that sort of markets these cars to U.S. influencers specifically so they can start to like start to generate some buzz, right? Because they have been eye in this market for for many, many years. And it's totally working, by the way. Just to, like, it's very clearly been a successful effort. People want Chinese cars. They are like a lust worthy object in a really funny way.

I'm sure some of it is a little astro-turphy. Like, there might be some influencers who are getting paid under the table to promote these vehicles. But all the ones that I spoke to said that they are like not taking money. They are legit. This is their honest opinion of them. And, you know, like from, you know, from like Marquez to like all the way down are loving these cars. And that's going to resonate with these viewers, right? When they are looking at these cars and looking at the tech that's available in them,

seeing how cheap they are to purchase for people in China, and wondering why can't we have that? Why am I stuck with this, you know, $85,000 Ford truck when I could be driving around in this sleek, fashionable tech forward Chinese car? And I think that that's going to, that's going to resonate. And we'll have to see what happens. You know, like, there's a lot of pieces that still need to fall into place. Yeah.

But I do think I have to agree with like the smart people I've talked to in this industry. It will be inevitable that a Chinese car will eventually be available for sale here in the U.S. Interesting. All right. Well, until then, here's what we're going to do. We're going to see which one is more expensive. David and Andy top gear their way around China or David and Andy sketchily import a BYD car into the United States. I love this plan.

And then we pitch it as think of the savings. You know what I mean? You're welcome. Diverge. Look at all the money we're saving you. It's citizen journalism at its finest. We're just here to help. All right, Andy, thank you.

This was very helpful. This was exactly the explainer I needed. Thank you for coming to do it. No problem. Thanks, David. All right, we've got to take a break. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Anthropic.

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Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Before the disembarko, asymptomatikas. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID. Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus.

And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning. And we assessed that individual. they are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, Explain, drops every weekday afternoon. All right, we're back. Let's get to a question from the Virgcast hotline.

As always, the number is 866 Verge11. The email is Vergecast at theverge.com. Thank you to everybody who's been reaching out with all of this stuff that happened over the holidays. There's been a lot of fun, tech-supporty kinds of questions that I've been getting in my email and my social inboxes. Please keep them all coming. All the stuff that you went through over the holidays,

all the stuff you saw at CES, everything you're thinking about right now, anytime you're just like, hmm, I have feelings about technology. Call the Vergecast Hotline. That's what we're here for. This week, we have a question from Rob from Texas. Hey, David. It's Rob and Texas. I'm driving back from Oklahoma visiting my family up there with my five-year-old and four-year-old.

Essentially, my question is kind of like in a rectangle, a square as it relates to kids, repurpose iPhones versus iPads. My sister thinks she holds the high ground. thinks my kids are on, air quote, their phones way too much. Essentially, they've got an iPhone, old iPhone X and an iPhone 12. They've been to wipe and just have, like, YouTube kids, which obviously I don't love, but, you know, necessity sometimes. And Disney Plus, and she is always always on me of, like,

your kids are always on their phone. And then, you know, of course, her kids are really psyched to see technology because they don't have much at home because they're a little bit of a stricter family. I was like, well, would you feel better with his iPad? She's like, yes, I would. But I think that's just like a, it's an optics thing for her, and I think for many people that people see kids with their phone and just assume it's like they're on Instagram or social media.

Anyway, I just love to hear your thoughts. Yeah, as a technology, I guess, new parents. Sorry to drag into the family drama, but I think you all can put this to rest. Thanks so much. Really appreciate you all. I have a short answer to this and a longer. answer to this. The short answer is that I actually think that in many ways, not only are they identical screens, I think there are actually big advantages to giving your kid an iPhone versus an

iPad. So the reasons people generally navigate towards iPad over iPhone is iPhones are more expensive. Cell phones in general are more expensive than tablets. Because they're not primary devices, tablets tend to be easier to lock down. Like if I'm just going to give my kid my phone, it's very hard to quickly put in all the parental controls and turn off all the things that I need to turn off, whereas something like an iPad is not a device that I'm carrying around to do my own stuff anyway, so I can just have it be theirs much more easily

as opposed to spending another $1,000 on a phone. But I think an old phone is a terrific thing to use as a kid tablet, especially if it's just like a Wi-Fi connected, think about it as sort of an iPod touch. I think that's a terrific idea. It's a smaller screen, which has real, upsides in terms of not wanting the kids to be sort of too immersed and too engrossed in the content. It's actually easier for them to hold, which means it's going to be easier for them to be able to

play games with their thumbs and do things that are interactive, as opposed to just sort of holding the screen and staring at it the whole time. It's a thing that's easier for you to manage. Like you said, it's smaller. It's easier to travel with. There's a bigger ecosystem of accessories that you can do all kinds of interesting stuff with. I think in a lot of ways, if I were to travel with my kid, I would rather give them, I have a bin of old phones back here.

And I think rather than give them a, you know, big iPad in a huge case, giving them a small phone in a like Otterbox case that's very hard for them to break, it makes a lot of sense to me. The bigger point, I think, is that I think we need to stop thinking about screen time in general. And this is not an, I'm not inventing this idea. I've just been reading about this a lot and talking to a lot of people about it. And I have become very convicted on this. That we talk about screen time in terms of screens and we should stop. We should talk about screen time in terms of what is on the screen, right? Like, there is a meaningful, powerful difference between giving your kid a screen on which they are watching, I don't know, cocoa melon.

Not to single out cocoa melon, but I think it's emblematic of a very particular kind of content versus giving your kid a screen on which they, like, read a book. You know what I mean? Like, those things are qualitatively different despite the fact that they both happen on a screen that your kid holds in their hand. even the kinds of stuff that we watch. A thing that my wife and I talk about a lot is I'm less interested in sort of minimizing specific screen time than I am in like the kinds of things that we watch. And there's a lot of evidence to back up this thing that like if you want your kids to have a better screen time experience rather than giving them the sort of super fast moving

stuff where there's quick cuts and lots of colors and everything is very like bright and sensory overloading to have sort of slower things or bigger long. longer stories. We watch a lot of Disney movies in our house. And I think there's something to the idea that you should be watching a longer story that unfolds over time and has multiple characters and makes you feel things. And do I think that all of that stuff is better than them like turning off the TV and going and playing outside? Probably not. They should turn off the TV and go play outside more. I feel a lot of feelings, including guilt about the screen time that my kids do have. But in general, I think the idea that all screen time is created equal and is bad is just wrong.

And we're still learning about what this stuff does to kids' brands. But one thing I've seen a lot of recently is that there's been this push towards like old TV from the 1980s. Like kids shows, you know, the Winnie the Poos and the Mr. Rogers neighborhood and all of these things that were much slower. And they feel like teeth pullingly slow now. Even to me, these are the shows I grew up with. And I watch them now and it's like, my God, nothing is happening on this show. And that's good. And that is actually, I think people are starting to see that meaningfully change the way that their kid interacts with the TV and the way that they feel. I've had the experience recently.

My kid is really into Spidey and his amazing friends right now, like a lot of kids are. And I see the thing where a show gets really exciting. There's something going on and he just disappears. Right. Like he barely hears me anymore. He doesn't look over when I talk to him. He's just sort of gone inside of the show. That frightens me.

And so that kind of thing is the sort of screen time that I'm spending a lot of time thinking about. I'm much less worried about the size and shape of the screen that he's on than what he is looking at on the screen. And I think increasingly that is where the conversation is heading and should be heading. All that said, there are lots of good things kids can be doing on screens. And it is my job and other parents' job to be thoughtful about what those things are and what we're giving them and at what pace. and in what quantity. All that stuff matters and all this stuff is complicated.

And like I'm doing a bad job and I assume most other people are doing a bad job. If you're doing a good job, please let me know what you're doing so I can steal all of your ideas. But the way that we think about this stuff just needs to be a lot more nuanced. And so the idea that like you gave your kid your phone,

like yes, if your kid is sitting in the back seat of your car while you drive scrolling on Instagram for hours at a time and they're whatever four years old, that's bad. I feel pretty comfortable saying that's bad. But inherently there is nothing. worse about the idea of handing them a phone than handing them an iPad. It's what is on the screen, their relationship with it, what's happening in the world, what's happening to them. All of this stuff

is like bigger and more complicated than we want it to be to just say, here's a limit on screen time, and here's how much we're going to do, and here's how much we're not going to do. And we will get more careful and more nuanced and more thoughtful about it over time. But for right now, give them an old phone. I think it's fine. I have become totally okay with we need to solve car rides by giving the kid's screens because the job is for all of us to get there without completely losing our minds. And look, it's not like my kid is going to be out of the car having, you know, the most intellectually stimulating time. It was like, he's sitting in the back of a car, sitting in the back of a car sucks.

Give the kid a screen. Let him watch a movie. I don't know. There are bigger fish to fry as far as I'm concerned. So if you want to give them a phone and let them watch a movie while you drive, you have my blessing. That's all. Rob, I hope that helps. And also, if you figure out the real sort of iPod touchiness of it all and how to take an old phone, get just the right apps on it, do the parental controls and get it set up perfectly,

I want you to share your tips because I think a lot of people in the Vergecast universe are sitting around with an old phone that should be or could be repurposed for that. And I would like to know how to do it right. So if you've done it, get at me. Vergecast to theverse.com. 866 version 11. I think there's a lot of stuff we can do in this space that we should keep talking about.

Until then, that's it for the show. Thank you to Hayden and Andy for being here. And thank you, as always for listening. If you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or other things you think my kid should watch that won't give him that crazy look on his face that he doesn't even seem to be paying attention to me anymore. I want to hear all about them. Email Vergecast to theverge.com. Call 866, Verge 11.

And don't forget if you subscribe to The Verge, you can get this and all of our podcasts, add free just by going to your account settings. Theverge.com slash subscribe. Go do it. It's a good website. The Verge cast is a production of the Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. Neil and I will be back on Friday to talk about just all of the AI news that just will not stop happening. It's just going to be that kind of year, my friends. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.