Speaker 1: With Laurent Seglement from London and Gerard read from Berlin.
Speaker 2: This is redefining energy linutes today on redefind erg. While
Speaker 2: Gerard is the rock star at ted X, I brought
Speaker 2: a special friend Roger Atkins. Roger Atkins is one of
Speaker 2: the top voice for EV's. Is that correct, Roger.
Speaker 1: I'll take that. Yeah, that's fine, thank you.
Speaker 2: We're all sitting on our desk and we'll reports and
Speaker 2: looking at charts and you know, Bloomberg. But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, the story of the incredible development
Speaker 2: of EV's is a story of people, and Roger, you
Speaker 2: are the ultimate storyteller.
Speaker 1: Well, I hope I'm going to live up to that billing.
Speaker 1: Thank you. It's something I've been doing sort of for
Speaker 1: twenty years, primarily through LinkedIn. Yeah, it is a story
Speaker 1: of people, You're absolutely right, champions of change, brave people,
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs and often then people that their names just aren't familiar,
Speaker 1: people have never heard of them, but they have been,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, pivotal to where we are today and
Speaker 1: where we're going to be tomorrow.
Speaker 2: I love when we meet and you'll always have those
Speaker 2: great andecdotes, and I mean one of them is probably
Speaker 2: the meeting you at that the Chinese embassy about fifteen
Speaker 2: years ago.
Speaker 1: Well it wasn't the Chinese Embassy. What had happened was
Speaker 1: I was working at Modek, which was a company building
Speaker 1: an electric truck back in two thousand and seven in
Speaker 1: the UK. They came to market in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: which was exciting, which was amazing. We had no idea
Speaker 1: we were so innovative. A UK company using LFP batteries
Speaker 1: Thundersky cells assembled into a battery pack by a Scottish
Speaker 1: company called Axion. Yeah, that's where the journey began. But
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven is just before the financial crisis,
Speaker 1: and then we found ourselves in great difficulty. The Chinese
Speaker 1: ambassador to the UK, Madam Fu Yin, invited a number
Speaker 1: of industrialists, including Jamie Borick, a founder of Modek. He
Speaker 1: was unavailable to go and have lunch with the other
Speaker 1: people and the ambassador, so I went in his place,
Speaker 1: and to cut a long story short, I got on
Speaker 1: very well with the ambassador because I introduced myself in Chinese.
Speaker 1: I only knew a little bit, but just doing that
Speaker 1: seemed to have an impact. And then she said, mister Akins,
Speaker 1: you should bring your company to China by then. This
Speaker 1: is the autumn of two thousand and nine. She says,
Speaker 1: bring your company to China. We know you're in financial
Speaker 1: difficulty because everybody in the West is. But we have
Speaker 1: grand plans for what we call new energy vehicles. She said,
Speaker 1: you call them electric vehicles. So I said, well, why
Speaker 1: do you call them new energy vehicles? Said, well, because
Speaker 1: ultimately they need to be charged up with renewable energy,
Speaker 1: and we have a big ambition in our country to
Speaker 1: do this. So we'd like you to come bring your
Speaker 1: company to China. We'll help you. You can help us,
Speaker 1: will help you. That's called collaboration. Way above my pay
Speaker 1: grade to agree that kind of thing on the spot.
Speaker 1: But if it had been my company, I would have
Speaker 1: said yes. As it turned out, we didn't. What it
Speaker 1: meant was I got early sight of something which really
Speaker 1: very few people had any sense of at that time,
Speaker 1: that there was going to be a significant move in
Speaker 1: China in regards to the auto industry, energy and batteries.
Speaker 2: For the best of fifteen years, you've met extraordinary people.
Speaker 2: One of them is the CEO of CTV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Robin Zeng. I found myself at the China Auto
Speaker 1: Show earlier this year, twenty twenty four, and a mutual friend,
Speaker 1: Jack Cheng, who's one of the founders of NEO. I
Speaker 1: was with Jack and we saw Robin, and you know,
Speaker 1: I was a bit in awe Robins in the battery world,
Speaker 1: as you know, a bit of a rock star. So
Speaker 1: I said to Jack, I'd love to meet Robin Zeng.
Speaker 1: So he just took me straight over and introduced me,
Speaker 1: as you know, the electric cowboy. There I am with
Speaker 1: a cowboy hat, the sunglasses, the usual, and we had
Speaker 1: a quick exchange, a little chat. Yeah, hopefully there's a
Speaker 1: good follow up to that. But that was in many ways,
Speaker 1: my passion and real excitement of meeting Robin had been
Speaker 1: fueled even more than than it had for years, to
Speaker 1: be honest, by Bob Gallian. Bob Gallian an American engineer,
Speaker 1: an American automotive legend in some people's minds, because he
Speaker 1: was at GM with the EV one way back and
Speaker 1: had been on an incredible journey, had been the CTO
Speaker 1: for c ATL for a good number of years, I
Speaker 1: think seven or eight years, and was very much pivotal
Speaker 1: in enabling Robin to fast track that company and Bob's
Speaker 1: become a friend. I've met Bob several times, We've talked
Speaker 1: at different events. We met last week, we'll be meeting
Speaker 1: again soon. And I enjoy being in Bob's company because
Speaker 1: he's just a really nice person, but he really understands
Speaker 1: what's going on.
Speaker 2: Roger, among the people you met, you had the encounter
Speaker 2: with Elon Musk So how did you go.
Speaker 1: Well, a brief encounter, but yeah, very exciting. When they
Speaker 1: asked for my name, I stuttered. I don't normally do that,
Speaker 1: but it was the moment I said, Hi, Elon, it's Roger.
Speaker 1: It's because you know in a bit of all of him.
Speaker 1: It was ten years ago. It was at the opening
Speaker 1: of the Tesla store in Westfield, London, and my question
Speaker 1: was out of battery swapping, wireless charging and fast cable
Speaker 1: chap arging Elon, what do you think the journey's going
Speaker 1: to be with those three and will one of them
Speaker 1: ultimately prevail? And Elon said, well, wireless charging maybe not
Speaker 1: because of inefficiency and alignment. Battery swapping, he said, we've
Speaker 1: engineered it into the mode less. You can actually battery
Speaker 1: swap the mode less automatically in a facility. So they
Speaker 1: showed that, but better place had come and gone by
Speaker 1: that time, and I don't think he wasn't a fan,
Speaker 1: but he said, if customers want it, we'd do it.
Speaker 1: So he concluded that ultimately the story would all be
Speaker 1: about cabled fast charging. And of course that's ten years ago.
Speaker 1: If I asked him the same question again, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: certain the answer would be different in one particular area.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was my elon encounter. And as a Bersun,
Speaker 1: he was very polite when he used to do his
Speaker 1: town hall call it what you will, going around the
Speaker 1: world meeting and talking to people, he was always super polite.
Speaker 1: The way he answered my question wasn't flippant, it was
Speaker 1: ice and concise he was. I think he was very courteous,
Speaker 1: and I've seen him do that many many times. I
Speaker 1: think behind closed doors he is an absolute ogre, a
Speaker 1: nightmare because he is so fixated with progressing things, and
Speaker 1: for as many aspects that we can all criticize him for,
Speaker 1: I would suggest that the return of rockets back down
Speaker 1: onto the Earth is as significant technically as landing a
Speaker 1: man on the moon was in nineteen sixty nine, because
Speaker 1: the difference there is Okay, we had a number of
Speaker 1: lunar missions, Apollo missions, twelve people were on the Moon,
Speaker 1: but it hasn't happened since because it was technically possible
Speaker 1: but horrendously expensive. The difference and the significance of what
Speaker 1: Elon's done with space travel with rockets is that it
Speaker 1: could be done over and over again. It's one thing
Speaker 1: to solve a problem technically, it's another thing to do
Speaker 1: it at the right cost level. That feeds into much
Speaker 1: of your work, the work of many people listening to this.
Speaker 1: The real test, ironically isn't necessarily the technical challenges to overcome.
Speaker 1: It's the business model. It's the economic proposition.
Speaker 2: When you're in contact with those great CEOs and CEOs,
Speaker 2: do you see a cultural alignment or do you see
Speaker 2: some very different intus between I would say incubans and
Speaker 2: rising styles.
Speaker 1: So I think in Asia, and let's talk specifically China.
Speaker 1: Thinking back to what Madame fu Ying said all those
Speaker 1: years ago. China's got on with tackling climate change as
Speaker 1: best it can. And yes, it has a lot of
Speaker 1: coal fired power stations, but it also has a massively
Speaker 1: significant number of solar farms wind farms, So in many
Speaker 1: ways China has got it and has been more demonstrable
Speaker 1: in doing something about it than the West. And that's
Speaker 1: a big cultural difference. And unfortunately that's all mixed up
Speaker 1: and ming good now with industry with incumbents and disruptors,
Speaker 1: certainly the big challenge on the auto industry for America
Speaker 1: and Europe, it's all become a bit of a conundrum.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm a number of guys, so I'm going to
Speaker 2: give you a few numbers. And of course I'm an
Speaker 2: avid reader of Michael Dunn, who is for me the
Speaker 2: best and at EASTA Yeah, ordinary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd agree. I'd agree with that.
Speaker 2: China did not export any cars six or seven years ago.
Speaker 2: This year they're going to export six million cars. Seventy
Speaker 2: five percent of them are Ice. Yes, And of course
Speaker 2: the market share of Chinese brands in China, which used
Speaker 2: to be less than thirty percent, now it's seventy percent,
Speaker 2: which means Volkswagen GM had been fisting on China and
Speaker 2: bringing back billions every year. The game is over because
Speaker 2: the China money really helped all the Western auto industry
Speaker 2: for fifteen years to give dividends and probably even the
Speaker 2: thing changes because times were good. You want numbers I'll
Speaker 2: give you numbers. Those six million cars exported. If I
Speaker 2: do a bit of a back of the enveloped calculation,
Speaker 2: that's one hundred and twenty billion dollar. China imports three
Speaker 2: one hundred billion dollars avoid per year. So climate change
Speaker 2: everybody goes to cup every say, oh, climate change is
Speaker 2: so important. But I look at the numbers. China imports
Speaker 2: three hundred billion dollar avoid per year, and that is
Speaker 2: a strong motivation to develop electric Well, of course it.
Speaker 1: Is, and an energy security is absolutely at the front
Speaker 1: of this. If you look at the origin, go back
Speaker 1: to people, go back to you know, who are the
Speaker 1: people architects of this. You look at the Audi engineer.
Speaker 1: There's the irony Chinese guy who worked for Audi for
Speaker 1: many years, then becomes the architect of the new energy
Speaker 1: revolution in China. It comes back, becomes the science minister
Speaker 1: we're talking about gang and effectively says we can leap
Speaker 1: frog the West. We'll never catch up with combustion engines,
Speaker 1: but we can leap frog them with electric vehicle technology.
Speaker 1: And then they look at what happened in America. This
Speaker 1: is the irony they've really learnt from. People will call
Speaker 1: it copying, but they've learned from America in what carb
Speaker 1: did with the challenge of air quality, particularly in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles many years ago. They saw the structure of how
Speaker 1: they managed that. They also saw how the Japanese developed
Speaker 1: a battery capability to power up the consumer electronics industry,
Speaker 1: and they coupled those two things together brilliantly so. But
Speaker 1: they didn't do it at night. They didn't do it
Speaker 1: with the curtains drawn. They did it with everybody watching.
Speaker 1: So your point a moment ago about the money that's
Speaker 1: been made by Western OEMs in China for many, many years,
Speaker 1: ten fifteen, almost twenty years. To give it a biblical analogy,
Speaker 1: that's the seven years of good harvest and now the
Speaker 1: challenge in the transition to manage the transition to full electrification.
Speaker 1: But what have they done with that money? Did they
Speaker 1: spend that money on large scale and scoping investing in
Speaker 1: R and D terms, Yes, some of it, but certainly
Speaker 1: not enough. And they're now winging that the Chinese are
Speaker 1: coming in with all of this, when we had every opportunity,
Speaker 1: year after year after year to actually either keep apace
Speaker 1: with China or maybe keep ahead of China, but we
Speaker 1: chose not to why, because, of course, it's if it
Speaker 1: ain't broke, don't fix it philosophy, And for shareholders, for
Speaker 1: supervisory boards, for all the other people, it was why
Speaker 1: do we need to change if we're making money hand
Speaker 1: over fists selling the internal combustion proposition, And just as
Speaker 1: a quick tangent on that, only recently a seer put
Speaker 1: out a notification saying, look at the numbers, look at
Speaker 1: the trends, look at what the consumer actually wants. They
Speaker 1: don't seem to want ev and there's an increasing negative
Speaker 1: narrative which is fueled by all sorts of people for
Speaker 1: all sorts of vested interest reasons. That yeah, is kicked
Speaker 1: the cavern down the road, and it's being at That
Speaker 1: narrative is being engineered, which is why I feel a
Speaker 1: sense of responsibility to say what I see, to be
Speaker 1: independent and to use the forty years I've had in
Speaker 1: the auto industry to say it as I see it.
Speaker 1: And there are some things I'm wrong about. I'm not
Speaker 1: an engineer, I'm not a chemist. I'm not particularly academic,
Speaker 1: to be frank, going back to your point, it's getting
Speaker 1: to know.
Speaker 2: People talk about those people.
Speaker 1: I bumped into. Leis shue Fu were in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five or six when I worked at London Taxis
Speaker 1: And look at where Geelie's gone on that journey. It's
Speaker 1: extraordinary to watch how people have progressed the ten years
Speaker 1: I've done my own thing. Simon Moore's the guy that
Speaker 1: bounded Benchmark with an amazing team. I met Simon five
Speaker 1: years ago, or and his address to the US Senate
Speaker 1: arg know that you know that moment we are in
Speaker 1: the midst of a global battery arms ratio which the
Speaker 1: United States is a bystander. Oh my god, that's like
Speaker 1: a movie sequence. Now that, now, through Simon and all
Speaker 1: of the people I've met as a consequence, has really
Speaker 1: enriched my storytelling. Let me make a distinction by the way,
Speaker 1: I've been on LinkedIn for twenty years, almost since it started.
Speaker 1: I pride myself on being a storyteller, not an influencer.
Speaker 1: I don't want to take paid for content and put
Speaker 1: it in front of people and suggest that this is good.
Speaker 1: That's not what I am. I actually do get paid
Speaker 1: to occasionally show up on stage, which I absolutely love
Speaker 1: because I shouldn't tell anyone this, but you know I
Speaker 1: do it for nothing because in the dim and distant past.
Speaker 1: I was in the music business and to be frank,
Speaker 1: I'd rather be a rock star now. But I suppose
Speaker 1: you are.
Speaker 2: A rock star. Roger, Well, who are people recognize you
Speaker 2: when you go from Australia to Canada to Europe. When
Speaker 2: you show up, people know who you are. I know
Speaker 2: you're very umber, but I can take you. You say you're
Speaker 2: one of the voices, but you're one of sort of
Speaker 2: the faces of the Ivy Revolution and probably in China
Speaker 2: now it's mainstream. But you know, in the old world,
Speaker 2: we're still the mavericks. We're still the one carrying the
Speaker 2: positive aspect, which is a positive of tech, energy, security,
Speaker 2: the environment. Now we need to make sure the jobs
Speaker 2: stay here.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, lour, I'm completely with you. I'm British, I'm European,
Speaker 1: I'm a citizen of the world. So that's the lens
Speaker 1: through which I see things. And you mentioned being recognized.
Speaker 1: Of course, I got an ego like everybody else, and
Speaker 1: I'm flattered by that fact. But I have to when
Speaker 1: I can feel that or see that, use that responsibly.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a quick anecdote when I went to
Speaker 1: China Evy one hundred. This is a forum in China
Speaker 1: that brings together politicians, investors, entrepreneurs, et cetera. It's been
Speaker 1: running since twenty fifteen, I think it is, and essentially
Speaker 1: it gets stuff done because it's annual and people say
Speaker 1: what did we say we're going to do, and there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of reconciliation, then they plan what they're
Speaker 1: going to do next. It's a brilliant forum. The first
Speaker 1: one I went to as part of a British trade delegation,
Speaker 1: somebody that I was connected to in China and LinkedIn
Speaker 1: met me and said, oh, we're very pleased you'll hear
Speaker 1: a few people know what you do. And I was
Speaker 1: sort of a bit surprised, not quite sure how to
Speaker 1: take that, but then she said who would you like
Speaker 1: to meet, and I almost jokingly said, well, it would
Speaker 1: be good to meet Chairman Wang Chang Fu byd the
Speaker 1: guy over there, Lee Bin or William Lee had just
Speaker 1: set up next TV, which is NEO. So she took
Speaker 1: me to the front of the hall and introduced me
Speaker 1: to Chairman Wang Chang Fu and said, Roger is on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1: He talks about electric vehicles. He has broad outlook at
Speaker 1: a pragmatic approach. You should say hello, and then through
Speaker 1: a bit of an aturb we had a chat. Same
Speaker 1: with Lee Bin. So yes, it's nice to have that recognition,
Speaker 1: but it's only really good if you can then put
Speaker 1: it to good use. It's a responsibility. I'll truly take
Speaker 1: it as a responsibility to use those connections, to use
Speaker 1: that access to get to talk to people and ask
Speaker 1: them the question that I think someone on LinkedIn. Whenever
Speaker 1: I write, I write in the first person. So if
Speaker 1: I'm posting on LinkedIn, I'm talking to you rather than
Speaker 1: the audience, because so that's what I try to do.
Speaker 1: So thank you for what you've said. But it's equally
Speaker 1: a big responsibility to be frank.
Speaker 2: Well, Roger, it was a very nice conversation, and I
Speaker 2: really would like to say to all our listeners, but
Speaker 2: I'm sure a lot of them already your followers to
Speaker 2: follow Roger on LinkedIn, but also go to all of
Speaker 2: your shows where you are with your your moor, your candor,
Speaker 2: but also your integrity promoting ev because that's the world
Speaker 2: of the future. This clear.
Speaker 1: We've got to explain it to people in a fashion
Speaker 1: that helps them take the journey. A bit of pushing
Speaker 1: and shoving now and then, for sure, but mostly it
Speaker 1: should be cajoling, informing, educating, and yeah, maybe even entertaining. Entertaining.
Speaker 1: Now and then, why not, can I just say, I'm
Speaker 1: so flattered to be on your show, because, like Michael
Speaker 1: Dunn's podcast, like stuff that I see from people like
Speaker 1: Bill Russo and Robert Llewellen are fully charged actively listen
Speaker 1: to these, I listen and learn to a lot. I've
Speaker 1: never read as much in my life as I do
Speaker 1: these days. I've never listened as much as I do
Speaker 1: these days. So I'm an unashamed plagiarist. And I then
Speaker 1: try and take all of that, shake it down into
Speaker 1: a bit of a thought process, a bit of a storyline,
Speaker 1: and that's what I pop up on LinkedIn now and then,
Speaker 1: thank you Roger, thank you Laurel, thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to Redefining Energy. Don't forget to read the show. Subscribe
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