STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Tesla stopped taking orders last week for some cars in China. The company makes two models in the U.S. for export there, and China's retaliatory tariffs would apply to them. Tesla is still selling two models that it makes inside China. And shortly before the trade war, we got a street-level view of the auto business there. In Beijing last month, we summoned a car on DiDi, China's version of Uber.
A3092, a gray Tesla.
The car pulled up. And through our producer Aowen Cao, we had a conversation with the Tesla driver.
XUE HAO: (Non-English language spoken).
AOWEN CAO, BYLINE: (Non-English language spoken).
He's asking, which country do you come from?
INSKEEP: Meiguo is America. Xue Hao (ph) was driving his American-brand car.
Why did you choose Tesla?
XUE: (Non-English language spoken).
INSKEEP: The driver said their marketing is less hyped up than for Chinese brands. In China, unlike other places, CEO Elon Musk is an asset to Tesla's reputation.
XUE: (Through interpreter) He is a great man in this world.
INSKEEP: What makes him a great man?
XUE: (Non-English language spoken).
INSKEEP: The driver said Elon wants to go to Mars. He's recycling rockets. I think people would still hail him after 1,000 years, like Steve Jobs. This driver has followed the news from America about Musk becoming a presidential aide and cutting government jobs.
XUE: (Through interpreter) Of course, what Elon Musk has done with the American government might hurt some people's interests, but I still think he is a great man. He's like Chairman Mao in China or Napoleon or even Hitler (laughter).
INSKEEP: When Musk built a factory in Shanghai, he was plugging into the world's biggest auto market. Tu Le, who writes a newsletter on China's auto industry, says demand is soaring for EVs and hybrids, what China calls new energy vehicles.
TU LE: Let me summarize this, if I can.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
LE: A million and a half in 2020. Three and a half in 2021, 6 1/2 in 2022. Eight and a half in '23, and then 11 million.
INSKEEP: Yet in recent years, Tu Le says, Tesla has begun to struggle.
LE: The unfortunate thing - and this is Tesla around the world, not just in China - is that they don't have any new products.
INSKEEP: Tesla's Model 3 is still a big seller, and the Model Y is the top selling car in the world. But it has fierce competition from Chinese brands, so many it's hard to count.
LE: According to Bloomberg, there are about 135, 150.
INSKEEP: China's government has openly supported new energy vehicles, an industry it wants to dominate globally. Some of the companies are huge, and we went to see one that's trending.
CAO: Whoa, look at these cars.
INSKEEP: Oh, these are Xiaomi cars all lined up on a lot, ready to be driven away.
We were arriving at the Xiaomi factory outside Beijing. That's X-I-A-O-M-I, Xiaomi. It's a huge gray complex, so big we had to catch an electric shuttle to cross it. It's a blustery day, the wind blowing the plastic flaps on the side of this bus. This oversized golf cart dropped us at the factory showroom. The cars inside were sporty. The company bought the designs from Porsche. When I think of the colors of these cars, they're so bright, they pop. It's like gelato. And our guide pointed out some of the features.
There's a refrigerator there with room for a couple of bottles. If you talk to this car, it will play your favorite music.
AUTOMATED VOICE: (Non-English language spoken).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOVE STORY")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) See the lights, see the party, the ball gowns.
INSKEEP: And it's fitting that the car plays your tunes as easily as your phone would because Xiaomi started as a phone company. A number of phone makers, including Apple, have tried to transition into EVs, but Xiaomi succeeded with great speed. In just three years, they produced a car that has a lot of speed, as Aowen Cao and I realized when a professional driver took us around sharp turns on a track.
CAO: Oh, my God (laughter).
INSKEEP: It's going to be OK.
CAO: Yeah (laughter).
INSKEEP: I think.
CAO: It's like a racing car.
INSKEEP: On a straightaway, the driver demonstrated the acceleration.
UNIDENTIFIED XIAOMI DRIVER: Three, two, one, go.
INSKEEP: OK, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 miles - kilometers per hour.
CAO: We are at racing car speed.
INSKEEP: Also on our tour, the company let us ride a shuttle through the factory itself. No photography is allowed, but they let us bring you the sounds.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINE SQUEAKING)
INSKEEP: You can hear the space. The company says this factory is bigger than the Forbidden City, the old imperial palace complex in the center of Beijing. Our tour guide said most of the work is done by machines and robots.
I see a giant robot that is dipping this freshly made part in a cooling liquid. Is that right?
UNIDENTIFIED TOUR GUIDE: Yeah.
INSKEEP: And there's no human being involved in that?
UNIDENTIFIED TOUR GUIDE: Yeah.
INSKEEP: The assembly line is elevated, cars coming together up in the air. Down here on the ground, our shuttle rolled past little four-wheeled vehicles that moved on their own, carrying cargo while playing music, like ice cream trucks.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: The music is to warn the relatively few humans who work here to get out of the way. Our producer Milton Guevara heard our tour guide give these robots a name.
UNIDENTIFIED TOUR GUIDE: Yeah, this robots, we call it Happiest Worker.
MILTON GUEVARA, BYLINE: Wait, sorry, what do you call the robots?
UNIDENTIFIED TOUR GUIDE: The Happiest Worker, because they are doing their job while they're singing.
INSKEEP: At full capacity, this factory, with its singing robots, can produce several hundred thousand cars per year. But they're selling so quickly that buyers have to get on a waiting list. We found a couple at the factory waiting to pick up theirs. Lee Haibin (ph) says he likes the technology, the design and one more thing.
LEE HAIBIN: (Non-English language spoken).
INSKEEP: "The color is vibrant," he says, "and as soon as my wife saw it, she chose it immediately." This couple didn't really think about a Tesla, preferring a Chinese brand, just as many Americans buy American. The industry analyst Tu Le says China's competition brought up quality and brought down prices.
Would it be a lot cheaper for me to buy an electric car in China right now than the United States?
LE: I'm going to one-up you on this, Steve. It's not only going to be cheaper, but you're going to get a much better car for the same price. Longer range, better features.
INSKEEP: Americans often see unfairness in stories like this. China supports companies that flood the market. But Elon Musk of Tesla has made it clear he's no fan of tariffs either. His Shanghai-made cars still compete, and the initial effect of the trade war seems to be that Teslas made in the USA are no longer affordable in China. This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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