Things Frederic Lambert Has Said on Podcasts

“They literally do everything except the rubber on the tires. This is not the case for Tesla. This is not the case for Toyota. The entire auto industry has globalized and now relies on a heavy supply chain, which we've seen can cause some issues. So BYD's real strength is its vertical integration and its logistics.” — Frederic Lambert, Electrek

Covering BYD's earnings, Lambert notes BYD turns out far fewer cars per employee than Tesla, and explains that the comparison misleads because BYD makes almost everything in-house.

Electrek · 2026-10-30 Permalink → Listen →

Electrek Around 08:17 into the episode

Frederic Lambert

…I could see even a deal with Rivian. Maybe they do some kind of, maybe that's how Rivian gets to China eventually. Could you see that? Europe too. And Europe as well. Europe is for sure coming when the R3 launches, in my opinion. But, you know, from my understanding, Rivian has global ambitions.

Seth Weintraub

…some of what they've built, it's a little bit sad because you don't see a lot of competitive products coming from Volkswagen. Volkswagens used to be like, you know, like aspirational vehicles. And now they're kind of like, you know, that kind of looks like, you know, every other car. So. Yeah,

Frederic Lambert

they carved themselves a nice pace. And like, it's premium. Like it's not luxury. It's premium. It's mass market still. It's, yeah, they had a great spot and they can't let it go. But you're absolutely right. I think, I think the but it's not like that China wasn't like everyone knew the playbook. Everyone knew that this is what was going to happen. It's just that the temptation of such a huge market with one of the rare growing middle class out there that could buy vehicles, it's like the allure was too good. And now the same thing with the US. Now the US is trying to do the other way around, especially with the tax pre-Trump with the tax credit on edge vehicle assembled in North America. That was like the other way around. Like now come bring your knowledge here if you want to have access to the market. Of course, and it was working for a minute until the orange men threw a stick into the whole program. But still, you see the history repeating itself all over again. I wouldn't be surprised if now the US all done for so long that they convinced the Chinese to deploy manufacturing capabilities in…

Speaker 3

Yeah, I mean, the U.S. has convinced the Koreans, the Japanese, the Germans, like to build factories in the U.S. So why not the Chinese?

Frederic Lambert

Very possible. All right, speaking of the Chinese, BYD also had their earnings. And we've been tracking them for a little bit. They were having some issues like any other Chinese automaker right now because the market in China is slowing down quite a bit. And not EV adoption. So the market, the…

Speaker 3

I've never seen one in the wild.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

“There's no actual usefulness to making the service area rocket shape. And sure enough, if you actually try to order a Robotaxi in a bunch of these areas that get the fin of the rocket, you can't. So a lot of it is fake. It's more marketing than actual progress.” — Frederic Lambert, Electrek

Discussing Tesla's newly expanded Houston Robotaxi map, drawn in the shape of a rocket, Lambert says the map does not reflect where rides can actually be hailed.

Electrek · 2026-10-30 Permalink → Listen →

Electrek Around 11:36 into the episode

Frederic Lambert

…the Jaguar Eye Pace. Now they have the Hong Ho-Hai, which is the Zika one. And I don't know what's happening set with the Ionic 5. There was this big deal with Ionic 5. Hyundai send a bunch of cars to Waymo, but we're not really seeing them on the roads yet. So I don't know what's happening there.

Speaker 3

I've never seen one in the wild.

Frederic Lambert

Yeah, me neither. But they are adding another car to the lineup. What it sounds like to me, it sounds like now, and also a lot of these other cars, the automakers send them the cars to Waymo, modified a little bit sometimes, depending on Waymo's request. And then Waymo or Waymo's partners install the Waymo driver, so the suite of sensors and computers and everything that Waymo needs to drive autonomously. Now Toyota is going to do everything. So Toyota is the manufacturing partner there. That's a big deal. I think it's going to facilitate a lot of things for Waymo. And it sounds like now Toyota is going to be the manufacturing partner for right-and-drive markets, starting with Japan, but also the UK coming in other markets. So it sounds like it's going to be the plan. And the other big thing in the announcement, even though it's light on detail, so all of that is starting next year, is Toyota and Waymo talking about integrating Waymo into Toyota's consumer vehicle. So that's the other aspect of Waymo. Yeah, that's the big deal. That's Waymo…

Seth Weintraub

I wonder if Toyota, Ford just sell the Waymo hardware. Just say, look, you probably want a car that's going to full self-drive you. It's going to be really expensive. It's going to be like a quarter million dollars or something. But like, here's a BZ with the full Waymo hardware, and you can tell…

Frederic Lambert

would be a lot cheaper than that. It sounds like Waymo has it down to about $25,000 to $30,000 now, the Waymo driver itself. So you just combine that with the price of the car, you combine that with some gross margin basically. So I think it's doable. But so this news is kind of related to what…

Speaker 3

You're probably going to be the

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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