Driving with Dunne

People driving electric cars are discovering that charging is totally different from the routine of filling up at the gas station. There is complexity. There is uncertainty. Sometimes the App does not work according to plan. Sometimes the charger is broken. And sometimes the fast charger is not so fast after all. Customers are understandably frustrated. Yesterday's range anxiety is giving way to t...

Joining us on this week's Winning in Asia conversation is Ganesh Iyer, Global CIO and EVP at NIO USA. Ganesh moved to NIO in 2016 after a 5 year tenure at Tesla . Think of NIO as a Chinese company with a global DNA. The seven year old automaker founded by Chinese billionaire William Li operates from bases in Munich, London, San Jose and Shanghai. NIO differentiates itself from the competition in s...

When she was nine years old, Linda Zhang got on a plane for the first time in her life and flew to America. Her father met her at the airport in Chicago and they drove three hours to Purdue University where he was a graduate student. Riding in a car - also for the very first time - taking in the bright city lights, Linda says she felt a "little bit like a princess" in a fairytale. Well, Linda's li...

In his new book, Race of Tomorrow, Simon Mundy recounts real life stories of how the climate crisis is changing the basic fabric of people's lives and planet earth itself. Mundy, Editor of Moral Money at the Financial Times, documents the profound changes during a 2 year journey that took him to 24 countries. His visits range from a thawing perma-frost area the size of China in Siberia to swelteri...

Shah Firoozi P.E., J.D. is one of the most savvy and insightful business people on the planet. Born in Iran, raised in the United States, Shah earned advanced degrees in engineering, business and law. He also speaks several languages. His company, PAC Global, works with automakers and suppliers in just about every time zone, from the US to Turkey from China to Brazil. In today's Winning in Asia co...

Walk the campus at the University of Michigan or downtown Ann Arbor with John U Bacon and you won't get more than two blocks before you're intercepted by an admirer or friend. The calls come from every direction: "Hey, John! Hey Bacon!" Bacon is the world's leading authority on Michigan football, having written several New York Times best-selling books, including Endzone, Three and Out and Overtim...

Born in Detroit, raised in Buenos Aires and San Paolo, teeth cut at the River Rouge plant, John McElroy is an auto industry insider par excellence. Since founding Autoline TV, John has cemented his reputation for knowing everything that matters and everyone who counts in the global auto industry. He and his team have engaged in conversation with hundreds of leading executives from America, Europe...

Mark Schaub, Managing Partner at the global law firm King & Wood Malleson, has been advising companies operating in China for almost 30 years. So, Mr Schaub is the perfect expert to walk us through China's aggressive new rules on data. Since late 2020, Chinese regulators have been cracking down on private companies from Alibaba to Didi Chuxing to on-line education powerhouses like TAL. The focus i...

Mazda is an intriguing company -- a little bit like that iconic European brand, Volvo. Both companies make excellent design a priority. Both are relatively small but still profitable. And both enjoy an army of devoted customers. One difference, of course, is that while Volvo is now Chinese-owned (Geely), Mazda remains independent. Will Mazda be able to stay autonomous in an era of massive spending...

In 2018, Wall Street Journal's highly-respected reporter Tim Higgins set out to write a book about the downfall of Tesla. He had good reason to think the company was in deep trouble. Early in 2018, Tesla found itself in exceptionally difficult circumstances.. Elon's vision for a revolutionary manufacturing line powered by robotos was turning into a colossal disaster. Full automation was not workin...

Our special guest this week on the Winning in Asia podcast is Dr Linda Lim, my corporate strategy professor at the University of Michigan and a forever mentor. Linda has a gift for presenting complex economic dynamics in a down-to-earth, folksy way. And her laughter is contagious. She and her husband Dr. Pete Gosling have hosted some of Ann Arbor's best-ever parties for former students. We would g...

In The Scientist and The Spy, Mara Hvistendahl recounts the story of how Robert Mo, a Chinese national with two PhDs and a home in Florida, got into trouble with the FBI. Hoping to find a way to earn more income for his young family, Mr Mo takes a job with DBN, a powerhouse seed producer based in Beijing. Before long, he finds himself conducting recon missions in the cornfields of Iowa. The Econom...

In the summer of 2020, Simon Moores delivered a wake-up call to the US Senate: China is building one mega battery factory every week. The United States is building at a pace of just three per year. By the end of the first quarter of 2021, there were a total of 200 mega battery factories in the pipeline globally. Of this total, China accounted for 75%. Europe had 10%, and the US totalled just 5%. I...

Henrik Fisker was born in a small town in Denmark in the 1960s. He loved taking rides on Danish country roads with his father in the family's Saab 96 sedan. One day a Maserati blew past them and Henrik instantly discovered his life's passion: Cool cars. He first went to work for BMW where he designed the Z8 and later was recruited by Aston Martin to develop the DB9 and Vantage. In 2007, Henrik fou...

Anil Paryani has been at the forefront of batteries and battery management systems since the early 1990s. He started at Honda and in 2007 pivoted to join a young startup called Tesla. There he worked on refining battery efficiency for the Model S. Today Anil is founder and CEO of Auto Motive Power (AMP ) a company with deep expertise in batteries and charging solutions.. Anil joins the Winning in...

Jack Cheng, co-founder at NIO and now CEO of MIH Alliance Foxconn, reveals how Foxconn will re-write the rules for EV manufacturing. In early 2021, Foxconn sent a tremor through automotive boardrooms across the world when it announced plans to enter the electric vehicle industry. Since then, MIH Alliance Foxconn has established new partnerships with several high profile companies including, Stella...

Michael Moe is intelligent, optimistic and inspiring. You learn something new from him in every conversation. In this episode we discover a lot about the man and the keys to his lifetime of successes, from his days playing football for Lou Holtz at Minnesota to his founding of Global Silicon Valley, a premier venture capital outfit. Michael Moe also shares the meaning and significance of "contempo...

Being a foreign reporter in China used to be a wide-open and exciting adventure. No more. Today, foreign journalists are constantly monitored, their travel is limited and fewer Chinese people feel free to speak with them. CNBC Beijing Bureau Chief Eunice Yoon is one of only a handful of American reporters still operating in Beijing earlier this decade. Many others have had to leave China for reaso...

China aspires to develop world-class capability in the designing, engineering and producing semiconductors. But as Chairman Mao liked to say: "The road ahead is bright but full of twists and turns, setbacks and adversities." Kevin shares the story of what he calls the "Theranos of China's Chip Industry" - how three clever con artists with zero experience in chips crafted a deal that resulted in $2...

Xpeng Motors is one of China's most impressive EV startups. The company was founded in 2014 by billionaire He Xiaopeng. Mr. He sensed an opportunity to bring his expertise in technology and software to the automotive arena. In 2018, Mr He Xiaopeng persuaded Brian Gu to leave his prestigious position as Chairman of JP Morgan Asia Pacific and join Xpeng. Mr. Gu quickly got to work preparing Xpeng fo...

Peter Horbury became one of the first high-profile Western designers to work for a Chinese company when Chairman Li Shufu appointed him to lead the Geely design team in 2011. At that time, Geely's design department consisted of "a small handful of people." Today, Geely designers number in the hundreds and operate in several time zones. Geely is not alone. Companies like Xpeng, NIO, BYD and Great W...

Chery Automobile is China's perennial leader in car exports, shipping to more than 70 markets worldwide. Now there are mounting rumors that Chery plans to crack the US market under the VANTAS brand name in 2021. After delivering some background on Chery, Michael Dunne gathers with Ray Bierzynski, Executive Vice President. Chery Automobile to talk about product, manufacturing quality, jumping dinos...

Our guest Reilly Brennan is co-founder of Trucks Venture Capital, a highly respected outfit based in San Francisco that invests in future technologies for the transportation industry. Trucks VC investments in autonomous vehicle technologies have proven exceptionally strong, including early round placements in Nutonomy, Nauto, Cruise, DeepScale and May Mobility and others. In this episode, we ask R...

Paul French is a British entrepreneur and prolific author of several books on business and crime with 30 years experience in China. In this episode Paul and I talk about how iconic American businessman, Carl Crow, taught us all the lessons we need to know about China business in his book, 400 Million Customers. Crow''s best-seller was published in 1937 but its lessons are more relevant than ever....

Ken Wilcox, former CEO of the Silicon Valley Bank and current Chairman of the Asia Society of Northern California has written a compelling and highly practical new book called Leading Through Culture: How Real Leaders Create Cultures That Motivate People To Achieve Great Things. Ken puts his book's principles to the test when he finds himself running a 50-50 joint venture bank in China. He discove...