Gross Profit Margin & Net Profit Margin of Chinese digital & analog chip design firms from Q1 of 2022 to most recently
You can see the massive gap bw the 2 starting to emerge in Q3 of 2022
While gross margins still look reasonable, the net profit margin is quite low
Capex is

China's HDT sector electrifying rapidly so far in 2024
8908 BEVs, 6148 Battery swap EVs, 573 FCEVs & 54 PHEVs = 15683 NEVs have been sold this yr
Among BEVs, tractors accounted for 47%, Dump truck 22% & Mixer trucks 19%
BEV sales up 193% YoY, Total NEVs up 129% YoY
Sany, XCMG &

Top imported models from EU in 2023 were
Benz GLE, Benz S class, Porsche Cayenne, BMW 4 Series & Porsche Panamera
Not large Qty, but very expensive cars
Porsche rev in China down 12.9% in Q1 YoY
Combo of better Chinese EV options & 25% tariff would do serious damage to Porsche's

BYD plant in Thailand expected to start production by end of Q2. Has storage center able to store 1 million parts
Trial production has started for assembly & parts including blade battery pack, seating & 8-in-1 motor
Key for BYD to expand its local presence
src 源之头

BaiChuan 4 has been released
SuperClue evaluates it to be the best Chinese lang LLM
It also performs well in English lang MMMU, MMBench & MathVista
Very interesting to see this LLM, SenseChat 5 & Yi-Large & Qwen-2.5 have all reached GPT-4 level in recent days
Other higher

FAW confirms joining NIO's battery swap alliance (8th company to do so)
It has also signed up iFlytek to make use of their smart cockpit platform for voice com & more (BYD also uses iFlytek)
src ithome.com/0/769/737.htm

Chinese firms now climbing to 50% mkt share in domestic industrial robot mkt
Its Achilles' Heel is reliance on Japan for reducers
Crown jewel is RV reducers where Nabtesco has 61% share followed by Sumitomo
双环传动 is China's national champion here
Already climbed to 14% in

Hesai reporting Q1 #
Rev up to 360m RMB
59101 Lidar sales & 38.8% margin in Robotaxi/ADAS
ADAS Lidar sales up 86% YoY to 52462 units
Lidar cost & cape improving rapidly
-> China is likely to get far ahead in critical laser tech which has wide range of applications

Big wk for China's automotive industry as NEV registrations exceeded ICE registrations for the 1st time on record
168k NEV registrations down 14% WoW
167K ICE registration down 32% WoW
NEV gains likely to solidify in June as BYD DM5.0 PHEVs + Sea Lion 07 deliveries get started

Once Japanese govt bent to American pressure on chipmaking exports, no sane Chinese business would consider Japanese suppliers to be reliable
Biden admin sanctions + pressure on its allies to cripple China's IC sector has done more to promote Chinese IC supply chain than anything

Our Q1 24 results have just been unveiled. Here are the key highlights:

Revenue - Quarterly revenues increased by 178.0% YoY, achieved positive operating cash flow for the second consecutive quarter.

Full report is now available here: ir.ehang.com/news-releases/…

BYD nearing deal to supply 100+ 400-mile eBus BD11 (532kWh battery pack) to London's Go-Ahead transport group @ £400,000 each
BYD has delivered 1800+ Buses in UK mkt thru local partner Alexander Dennis
Bus can travel 0.9 miles/kWh
plenty for day-to-day bus usage cases
src

Climate activists take note
Biden admin is not only imposing its own tariffs, but also pressuring other countries to not decarbonize
Who could possibly want cheap, clean energy?
No, you want expensive LNG & Crude from America
w/e you do, do not hurt stock px of Big oil companies

Good old Chinese px war coming to LLMs
After Bytedance lowered its px, Alibaba lowered its commercial Qwen model px by as much as 97% to undercut Bytedance
Open src LLM down big time also
Baidu made ENIRE Speed/Lite free
Now AI firms can adopt these models cheaply & run them w/

Carfans National market report of the second half of May

From the market perspective:

1. The market remained stable in the third week, with orders holding steady, but the store inflow declining.

2. Local intensive in some regions have notably stimulated sales of new cars for

New Look BYD Song L
Quite possibly the best looking BYD SUV

BYD showcasing Song Pro DM-i customers from across China, focusing on Middle class & customers getting their 1st car
While BEVs do well in Tier 1/2 cities, PHEVs like Song Pro are driving the NEV transition we are now seeing in other parts of China
BYD has a nationwide strategy

Apple doing so well in China that it's advertising largest ever px cut on TMall (up to 2300 RMB)
Also px cut for iPhone 13/14, Apple Watch & AirPods
Now iPhone 15 standard @ same level as Xiaomi 14 Pro & cheaper than P70 entry level
src eet-china.com/mp/a315758.html

Li Auto is pushing M series (BEV SUVs) back to 1st half of next yr
Cost likely to high this yr, so slowing sales -> personnel cuts -> slower development
1st major hurdle in a while for Li Auto
src ithome.com/0/769/386.htm