Note: I am currently travelling. Hence the more limited postings. Actually, today Suzanne, David and myself are travelling to China for a 10-day China tech tour. I don’t know if I will be able to post for a while.
Shhh…enzhen and the Chinese champions.
Perhaps the first surprise in this 18 million people city is the near silence on the streets. People everywhere, but mostly calm and focused, generally staring at their phones.
Cars and motorcycles zip by in all directions, but mostly electric. In fact, by city law, all motorcycles and scooters must run on batteries.
So little noise in this bustling city. This is far from Manilla, Ho-Chi-Minh City and even Hong Kong, let alone NYC or Montreal.
Shenzhen is a calm city. A fishing village only 45 years ago, Shenzhen is now a key world tech hub. Its Electronics Market is immensely immense, selling anything and everything electronic, from mundane gadgets to flying cars to supply chain parts manufactured quite literally next door..
Mostly young people, probably techy or pure geeks drawn by Shenzhen’s need for smart labor: 85% of the population immigrated from elsewhere in China.
Nice, very helpful and patient people, even immigration officers (unlike in the USA lately). Few speak English, but all carry an electronic translator to quickly help.
Shhh…Cameras everywhere, in plain sight, like everybody. People don’t seem to care and don’t complain. They feel safe, they are safe. Very low crime rate.
In the huge and fantastic Shenzhen Science and Technology Museum, opened in May 2025, a large section explains how the government takes care of all aspects of national security, from health to environment, to transportation, to communications, to space, etc….
This museum covers every science and tech aspects of life, showing and explaining just about everything, from how the human body works to how technology boosts manufacturing, distribution, communications, transportation, space exploration, even quantum physics.
The museum is full of young Chinese -even very young ones, an early immersion into technology with hands-on experimentation. They grow techy, if not geeks already.
Before kindergarten, they know that tech is their future. They live it, love it, embrace it, continually improving it.
Huawei is China’s national champion. Its technology is ubiquitous. Barred from using Google’s Android OS 10 years ago, it developed Harmony OS which is now used almost everywhere.
Xiaomi, initially a cell phone manufacturer, has developed a complete range of household products, from coffee makers to washers/dryers, to a red hot line up of electric cars, all integrated and operating seamlessly on its own HyperOS and proprietary AI.
I am writing this on the Shenzhen-Shanghai bullet train, at 310kmh (195mh with a peak at 350kmh), a 7-hour comfy ride. Later we will do Shanghai-Beijing in 3.5 hours.
This 2700 km (1700 miles) corridor is China’s Silicon Valley where most tech products and software are created and efficiently manufactured/integrated in ever improving fashion, controlling quality and costs within the huge Chinese end market.
BYD cars are everywhere in Shenzhen, particularly since all taxis are BYDs. Certainly one of the best car manufacturers in the world.
But for how long?
We visited a Huawei showroom with displays of all Huawei’s excellent products such as laptops, watches, tablets, etc. and, surprisingly, cars. Huawei cars, really? Is there anything they cannot do?
HIMA (Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance) is a growing alliance of manufacturers using Huawei technology. Huawei provides the brains (OS, Autonomous Driving Software, Lidar) while the OEMs provide the body, which involves Huawei in product definition, design, marketing and sales. The Stelato S9 car (BAIC) was on display last week.
The HIMA alliance delivered only 94k vehicles in 2023 but sales took off in 2024 (445k vehicles) and in 2025 (500k through November 2025 including 82k in November alone).
Still much less than BYD’s China sales of 348k in November but HIMA sales jumped 89% YoY in November while BYD’s slumped 27%.
What is happening in China should worry every car manufacturer in the world.
Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the world largest battery manufacturer, is now offering an Integrated Intelligent Chassis (CIIC), a “skateboard chassis” that packages the entire powertrain into one module, combining the battery packs, electric motors, suspension, braking, steering and thermal management systems into a single chassis unit.
Essentially, CIIC allows the upper body (car’s cabin and design) to be separated from the lower body (chassis, etc.). Automakers no more!
This is as close to “design your own car” as can be.
The number of automobile (trucks coming) brands will explode as manufacturing gets “simplified” and cheaper and software can be outsourced. Huawei last September introduced the HI Plus software model giving “automakers” more control over the software design allowing for differentiating software offerings.
Already, the HIMA alliance includes 5 partner manufacturers, each offering its own brand and models built with Huawei’s technology.
CATL has already announced CICC partnerships with 7 Chinese flagship manufacturers as well as with Mazda to develop EVs using the CIIC skateboard chassis, marking its first such deal with a foreign auto brand.
AI-based research suggests that CIIC offers significant cost reductions for automakers. Adopting the CIIC platform can reduce R&D costs by 60-70% and materials costs by 5%.
Significantly, time-to-market can shrink from 36-48 months to 12-18 months.
Brands and models will mushroom as “automakers” simply change shells with innovative designs.
If my AI agent is right, R&D expenses are roughly 5% of revenues. Materials costs range between 50% and 70%. If so, CIIC can reduce a car cost by roughly 5-8%, offering meaningful competitive advantages on such expensive consumer products.
There are already approximately 150 active automotive brands operating in the Chinese market. This figure includes roughly 97 domestic Chinese brands and 43 joint-venture (JV) brands. (We have yet to see one American made car on the road (Teslas here are made in China – and exported from China).
Within the New Energy Vehicle (NEV) sector alone, there are roughly 129 brands currently competing.
CATL’s Integrated Intelligent Chassis is revolutionary and will likely trigger a complete reorganization (i.e. rationalization) of the current automotive supply chain in North American and Europe.
My sense is that automotive is getting seriously disrupted from top to bottom.
Who’s talking about that?
Shhh…