In the good old days of driving, we needed to make sure the mechanical things worked: Things like the engine, of course, the steering and the brakes. We were in charge of driving the car. Now, for better and for worse, technologies are moving in and taking over. Sensors, cameras, on-board computers, software. Those powerful technologies are mostly invisible to the naked eye. They give us directions and infotainment; they help to avoid accidents. The more advanced technologies can now deliver us ...
Jun 19, 2025•37 min
By now, you have probably heard that there are more than 200 million connected cars on the road today. But, wait a minute. What is a connected car – and how does a connected car make our lives better? A simple way to think about it is that a connected car is one that is linked to the internet, just like our phone. And like our smartphones, that linkage gives cars an ability to deliver countless new features and functions via over-the-air updates. Connected cars are new in another way: For the fi...
Jun 05, 2025•43 min
It is hard for Americans to imagine not being No. 1. The US has been the leading industrial, economic and military power since the end of WWII. But now America confronts a challenger that appears to be bigger, faster and more ambitious. That challenger is China. The PRC now manufactures one third of the world's cars, sixty percent of EVs, seventy percent of batteries and utterly dominates battery supply chains. How did Chinese companies get so powerful so quickly? What can America and the West l...
May 29, 2025•37 min
How do we begin to get our minds around the global blitz of tariffs unleashed by the Trump Administration. Is it madness or is there a method to the madness? One thing is certain: Donald Trump has definitely captured the attention of leaders in Asia, Europe, Mexico and Canada. They are trying to come to terms with arguably the greatest economic and trade shock in decades. Joining us today is Wendy, Cutler, one of the most skilled negotiators on the planet. She knows trade, she knows tariffs and ...
May 08, 2025•31 min
When it comes to China, most Americans are mostly in the dark. Don't believe me? Just quiz your friends. Ask them to name the five largest cities in China. Or to tell you the difference between people in Fujian and Sichuan, or Beijing and Guangzhou? Or how many cars China exported last year. Is China's economy booming on the back of record exports or reeling from a property meltdown and tanking consumer confidence? How many of us can say we know for sure. How many of us are in regular communicat...
Apr 17, 2025•35 min
When it comes to EVs, people seem to embrace one of two schools of thought. In school one, electric vehicles may have a role to play but that role is limited. Manufacturers should not be required to build them. And citizens should not be required to pay taxes to subsidize purchase of EVs. In school two, the belief is that electric vehicles are, without a doubt, the future. By 2040 the vast majority of all new vehicles will be propelled by motors driven with energy from batteries. Which school ha...
Apr 10, 2025•46 min
Chinese leaders believe overcapacity across industries including automotive is a cyclical problem that fresh growth will solve. Foreign investors with experience in the PRC see things differently. To them, overcapacity is a direct result of China's planned economy. Not only does massive overcapacity spark price wars inside China, it also threatens to spur an avalanche of exports into markets worldwide, undermining industries and killing jobs. Joerg Wuttke led the China operations of BASF, the Ge...
Mar 27, 2025•48 min
We're trying something a little different this week! Michael Dunne recently appeared as a guest on the podcast FACE-OFF: The U.S. vs. China, where he had an insightful and engaging conversation with host Jane Perlez. He enjoyed the discussion so much that he wanted to share it with you. The description below is from the FACE-OFF podcast. ==================== Back in 2015 the Chinese government declared that they would become the world leader in EVs by 2025. Major car companies scoffed. Who wants...
Mar 20, 2025•46 min
Alex Roy and his co-pilots recently made two historic coast to coast trips - California to New York - in his brand new Model S. Their mission: Measure the efficiency and safety of the Tesla FSD system. How close was Tesla to mastering full autonomy? Roy and Team use two key metrics. The first is the total number of disengagements – whether voluntary or involuntary. The second: How quickly could the system recover after a disengagement? Roy, who previously set the Electric Car Cannonball record i...
Mar 13, 2025•54 min
What are the industrial crown jewels of the future? Most of us can name two of them right away: Chips that power the brains behind everything, including AI. And batteries or energy storage systems. Batteries power not only EVs but have a much wider application in delivering energy to factories and countless military applications. There is a third one that might be just as crucial: magnets. Magnets are produced with materials derived from the processing of rare earths. Today, China has an abundan...
Feb 27, 2025•23 min
What can we say for sure about China? Many of us can rattle off some incredible statistics. It is a manufacturing and technology powerhouse. China ran up an astonishing $1 trillion dollar surplus in 2024. China builds more EVs than all other countries combined. And China has enough capacity to supply total global demand for batteries. We know these facts. But what we know much less well is how to engage with Chinese business people in a productive way that leads to successful outcomes. That's be...
Jan 30, 2025•45 min
Europe's aim is to become a global leader in adopting next generation clean technologies. In the first phase, beginning in 2020, the focus was on meeting ambitious emission reductions goals. Four years later, the European Commission is making an important adjustment to its strategy. The new goal is to have Europe be a global leader in adopting and producing those technologies. They call it the Clean Industrial Deal. Some background: Up until very recently, Europe's climate goals were met by sour...
Nov 22, 2024•48 min
Europe wants to go green in a hurry. China has EVs to help Europe achieve their goal faster. What's the problem? The problem is that too many Chinese cars are flooding into France, Germany and Italy And that is putting enormous pressure on Europe's auto industry. Making things worse, European brands' sales are skidding in China, which used to be their forever profit machines. VW is now talking about closing three plants and laying off tens of thousands. And we are not even in a recession. Joinin...
Nov 08, 2024•46 min
One of the most significant limiters to EV adoption in America is the dreaded charging experience. Where do I find the nearest station? Wil, the chargers work? Do I need an app? Will I be safe sitting alone in my car for thirty minutes? Who can I call if things go wrong? In this episode, we learn from Christopher Balcom of Schneider Electric that improvements are on the way. Specifically, the mission is to simplify the charging experience by bringing several separate parts - the hardware, the so...
Oct 31, 2024•39 min
Dr. Daniel Sperling is one of the world's leading experts on electric vehicles. His knowledge runs very deep. Dr. Sperling founded the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. He has written 13 books, including Two Billion Cars, and published 250 papers. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed him to the powerful California Air Resources Board, a position he held for 13 years. Dr Sperling has also built a deep understanding of China's EV industry. In this epis...
Oct 17, 2024•46 min
Here is a candidate for the single most important development in the global auto industry this year: One of every two new cars sold in China this year will be electric. Half! In the US and Europe, we are experiencing a kind of EV wheel spin. EVs as a share of total sales in America still hover under 10%. Europe is a bit higher at 15%, but the pace of growth has slowed dramatically. Why is EV demand growing so much faster in China than in the West? One big factor is the cost of batteries. That is...
Aug 29, 2024•51 min
It is no secret that electric cars are fast - very fast. But for many drivers, EVs like Tesla or Lucid - even Porsche - do not seem to fuel quite the same emotion as sports cars powered by internal combustion engines. To borrow the French term, the piece de resistance seems to be missing. This makes today's buyers ask: What is the point of driving a sports car if you're not feeling something extraordinary? Toni Piech and Tobias Moers agree. That is why they have set out a vision for an electric ...
Jul 11, 2024•55 min
In his best-selling book, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari describes the most important feature that separates human beings from all other species on the planet: Imagination. We have the ability to imagine something that does not (yet) exist, communicate the concept to others and persuade them to believe it. As a concrete example, he cites the limited liability company, an idea first hatched by the Dutch back in the 1600s. Today we are going to explore the imaginative idea of Web 3.0, an ambitious pro...
Jun 20, 2024•28 min
By now you may have heard the term software defined vehicle. But what does it mean? Tesla was the first to make one. Chinese automakers like NIO and Xpeng followed quickly. Most Western OEMs today are still figuring out how to make them. But what exactly is a software-defined vehicle? How do they work? Today I am joined on the Driving With Dunne podcast by John Wall, the SVP and Head of QNX Engineering, Product and Operations at Blackberry QNX. This Ottawa, Canada based company makes some of the...
May 23, 2024•47 min
Dr. Ilaria Mazzocco and her colleagues at CSIS found that Chinese subsidies to companies in strategic industries are more than twice as high as in other countries. The numbers are not insignificant. This week, we learned that BYD secured some $3.4 billion in subsidies in 2023 alone. As a group Chinese automakers have benefited from tens of billions of dollars in supply side and consumer subsidies since 2010. Complicating the picture, however, is the reality that China is also home to some fast-m...
Apr 18, 2024•40 min
The world is in the midst of a monumental transition from fossil fuels to critical minerals. Those critical minerals, like lithium, cobalt and nickel, are the key ingredients in the batteries that power electric cars, cell phones, electric lawn mowers and more. Today, the minerals are extracted from the ground at mining sites around the world. Massive lithium deposits, for example, are located in Australia, Chile and Argentina. China has minerals, too. China also controls most of the world's min...
Mar 28, 2024•45 min
By now everyone understands US-China relations are at their worst in 50 years. There is mutual distrust. And mutual animosity. China complains bitterly that America is trying to keep it down. America, meanwhile, is wary of China's new-found aggressiveness. Are the world's two most powerful countries heading for a showdown? If so, how should companies in the West prepare. Stay the course in China? Pare back operations? Or beat it for the exits? This week our special guest on the Driving With Dunn...
Mar 14, 2024•46 min
What is an autonomous vehicle? And how will we know one when we see one? Today, the picture is pretty confusing. We have all sorts of names out there: autonomous, self-driving, fully self driving, drive pilot, autopilot, blue cruise, super cruise, Sensing 360, Apollo and NGP navigated guided pilot. Further complicating the picture: In recent months, two of the leaders in the autonomous vehicle industry - Cruise and Waymo - have each suffered setbacks to their reputations in their hyper-intensive...
Feb 22, 2024•29 min
It is time to take an honest look at battery technologies. The fact is that batteries that power electric cars today have many limitations. There are limits to the range they can deliver. There are limits to how quickly you can charge them. And there are limits to how many times they can be charged before they start losing their full capacity. And then there are limits to their safety. Lithium-ion battery fires are rare. But once a lithium battery catches fire, it is not easy to put out. These l...
Feb 08, 2024•37 min
In this episode, we use our imagination, well, to imagine a totally different kind of future. One in which we get to where we want to go in town not in several thousand pound SUVs but in sensible light weight vehicles that save on fuel and are good for the environment. Our guest is Hakan Lutz, founder and CEO of Luvly, developer of the Luvly O, a two-seater vehicle that can travel up to 60 miles on a single charge. The Luvly O (that's LUV) is short for light urban vehicle. It's electric, lightwe...
Jan 19, 2024•37 min
Many say that price is the single biggest limiter to EV demand in Western countries. In the United States, the average price of a new EV is $53,000. In Europe, the number is even higher - $60,000. On the other hand, China produces EVs across the price spectrum – from $5,500 to $160,000. Why is it so hard to match China on cost? What steps must Western automakers - and governments - take to compete with Chinese firms? The key is batteries. This week three executives with deep expertise in batteri...
Dec 21, 2023•57 min
When a Western executive is called on to build business in China what should be his or her mindset? What are the most important things they need to know before they go? Ken Wilcox, former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, has answers. For three years, Mr Wilcox ran a 50-50 joint venture with the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. On paper the two partners' mission and objectives were totally aligned. Reality was a different story. In this week's episode, Mr Wilcox delivers a master class in the realiti...
Nov 30, 2023•55 min
What is the truth about China' economy today? Read the headlines or social media and we could be forgiven for thinking that the People's Republic is falling apart. The 42 trillion property market seems to be in a death spiral. Youth unemployment is at record highs. Government debt keeps rocketing higher. And just this week, reports that foreign companies took $160 billion out of the country in the past 6 quarters. All of this makes for a riveting picture of a fragile China, a cracking and crumbl...
Nov 09, 2023•38 min
When it comes to batteries for Evs, can we be done with the incremental, inch by inch improvements? Everyone in the battery business is looking for a breakthrough. Dramatically more range. Lower costs. Faster charging. And, of course, make them safer. Today we meet a potential game changer: AI. Artificial Intelligence has the ability to assess and make sense of mountains of data at very high speed. This, in turn, let's engineers develop the ideal battery chemistry for specific applications at li...
Oct 26, 2023•39 min
China is surpassing Japan in 2023 to become the world's leading exporter of cars. BYDs, Cherys and Zeekrs are finding their way to more than 100 markets worldwide. Top destinations include Russia, Mexico, Australia and Spain. Never before in the history of the car has the world witnessed such explosive growth in car exports from a single country. Not surprisingly, the blitz of Chinese cars on global roads has unsettled auto executives and policy leaders alike. How on earth will legacy automakers...
Oct 19, 2023•39 min
