April 24, 2014 • 37 mins
In the U.S., most people only see vending machines that sell snacks and beverages -- but that's not the case everywhere. Join Scott and Ben as they give you the facts on China's auto vending machine.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from house stuff works dot com. If then
I got a question for him. Shoot, what is the
most unusual thing that you've ever purchased out of a
venue machine? Personally purchased, personally purchased? Okay, all right, um,
(00:22):
I'm not going to complete the fifth I will tell
you the truth. Probably the weirdest thing I ever purchased
from a vending machine was an iPod Oh no kid
at an airport. Yeah. Really, you know they have those
to have, some of those vending machines for electronics. So
I got a little, uh, smaller iPods where it just
(00:44):
had the little screen. It was about the size of
just a few inches across. Yeah, yeah, cool, because that
made the list on I've got a kind of a
list here of unusual vending machines. And that kind of
leads into our topic for today, which is can you
buy a car from a vending machines? Yes? And uh
And I looked up you know, it's an intriguing question,
(01:05):
but I looked up unusual vending machines, the majority of
which are in Japan. Yeah, yeah, a lot of them
there and Germany. Find you find out has a lot
of unusual vending machines as well. But I mean, there's
no way I'm going to read this list because it's lengthy,
but um, just to do a couple because I bet
I can. I can guess. Okay, French fries. Didn't see
that with silk ties for businessmen, uh, blue jeans. There's beer,
(01:30):
liquor and whiskey in some places, which I find remarkable
because I don't know how they go about, you know,
without getting with verifying keep kids from getting exactly. I mean,
there's some many other stuff that's not quite so unusual,
like books or flower arrangements. Then there's live bait. Yeah,
by live bait, I've seen. I've seen those in person.
Um those in US apple products, which you just mentioned,
(01:51):
So you're you're one that that one blew me away
the first time I saw it, by the way, Yeah,
it's amazing. I mean you go to a vending machine
and you put in your credit card and it's four
hundred bucks for an iPod or whatever you want to buy. See,
that's the thing. I I was at this weird moment
where two unusual circumstances for me at least, collided and
(02:11):
one of those unusual circumstances was that I was walking
by a vending machine that actually sold iPods. Another one
of those circumstances was that I have been planning for
a while to buy an iPod. I felt like, this
is so dumb, because maybe this shows how cheap I am.
I felt like Kanye West or something, you know, and
I thought, WHOA, look at me. I'm just buying things
(02:32):
out of vending machines. Yeah, the round, everybody, I'm gonna
buy an iPod. Everyone, everyone, stop what you're doing? You
come here? Well, the first place I thought was in
Las Vegas, and I thought, I thought, no, this is
so amazing. This is incredible. Where else but in Las Vegas?
And then you know what, It turns out that they're
all over the world, really these machines, and they're really cool.
(02:52):
But there's and they're still unusual. But there's others out
there that sell things like gold bars. I mean there's
places on Las Vegas is one and in German is
another one. You can buy gold bars and coins at
supposedly the current rate, which is updated every I think
every sixty minutes. They change the prices on the whole
bars points I I would be stepped as well. It
turns out that you do get you take a little
(03:12):
bit of a hit because they they you know, of
course they want to make a little bit of property exactly.
There's a bit of a mark up on it. But
there's also soccer balls. You can buy socks, you can
buy cooking ingredients, live crabs, um all as a snack,
live crabs as a snack. A dozen eggs you can
buy a dozen eggs of any machine. But now I
(03:32):
want to point out something though here, and this kind
of leads into what we're talking about. You think about
the sock vending machine. When are you ever going to
walk by a vending machine and buy a pair of socks? Right?
And like an emergency situation. That's the thing. And it
all comes down to where if any machine is located,
and and is it valuable to the people that are there,
because you know certain places like you put a sock
(03:53):
vending machine here in our office, you know, in the
in the in the lobby downstairs, that thing is gonna
sit and gather dust. It's never ever gonna be used
where they sell socks in a veny machine? Ben is
it a bowling alley? People who go into a bowling
alley that may not have socks on, or have old
socks or whatever, and they're gonna rent shoes. They're definitely
gonna want socks. And you know, whether they're three dollars
(04:14):
a pair or five dollars a pair, they're gonna pay
that amount for that particular product in that place. And
it's a perfect placement, right because they targeted their demographic exactly.
And that's exactly what's going on with the machine that
we're going to talk about today. Yes, the machine we're
talking today about today is located and hung Shoo, China.
I'm probably mispronouncing that graphically. Uh. It is in eastern China.
(04:39):
It's got Um, it's a pretty big city. It's got
over or almost nine million people now maybe around that
around ten and which makes it double the size of Atlanta.
It was that win to ten million from eight point
seven million in two thousand ten. Uh. And if it
were in the United States, it would be the biggest
(04:59):
city in the United States. Um, it's still not even
half the size of the biggest city in China, Isn't
it crazy? There's something like what is it one point
three five billion people in China and so they have
this massive, massive overcrowding problem in their cities, right and
they're starting to uh, they've they've been on this trajectory,
this car buying craze. Uh. There there are more than
(05:22):
well over um, I don't know, I don't have a
great number, but for I know, for the past twenty
years they've been buying so many cars that by the
end of this decade, by twenty twenty, they're supposed to
be over eighty million cars in China. They are the
number one market right now for new cars. And we
talked about this in our Trends podcast, right if you recall,
(05:43):
that was one of the big things as they said
that cars in China, not cars from China being sent here,
but cars in China. You know, we're we're talking about
you know, manufacturers making inroads in China to sell vehicles
to the to the locals there and uh, and that's
supposedly one of the biggest markets that you know, there's
such a knee for vehicles there because right now a
lot of people are on scooters over there, and they're
(06:04):
on um, you know, bicycles, and you know there of
course a lot of them are walking and taking trains
and things like that, but there's a great need for
individual um and personal you know, like private transportation because
a lot of people never ever had the opportunity to
be inside an enclosed vehicle and able to go a
long distance and able to carry anything, because you know,
(06:26):
you can only carry what you can on a scooter.
And I've seen some remarkable balance backs that you know,
you go online and you search you know, China traffic
or scooter traffic, you're gonna find some amazing images of
families balanced on on scooters and also massive qualities of livestock.
Even I saw some images of a guy with he
(06:46):
must have had a dozen small pigs on the back
of his scooter in these in these cages, and it
was just remarkable and to see how this this thing
was able to even make it down the road. And
you know, of course there's crates a lot of times
you'll see that stacked up and you know, lighter things,
but but enormous, enormous loads, and somehow they're making it
down the street with you know, I don't know, it
looks like ten thousand other scooters because it seems like
(07:08):
a majority of the traffic is still on scooters there, right,
and uh, we know that one of the big problems
for a the average person in China, you know, as
defined by average income. One of the big problems for
them is that the entry level price for a car
is astronomical. And there are a couple of companies, one
(07:31):
in particular that we're going to talk about, that have
started working out a different way of using a car,
if not owning a car. And that's where we get
to Candy Technologies and the car vending machines. You see
my finger quotes here, right, And you know what's really
clever about this is that it's Candy Technologies called K
(07:52):
A N d I but pronounced Candy, and they call
it the Candy machine. And it's a it's a vending
machine for these electric vehicles that that Candy Technologies produces. Right. Yeah,
we'll talk about the products. And when I say vending machine,
now this is uh, you gotta take this a little
bit looser than you might. You might think. It's not like,
you know, when you buy a soda from a machine.
(08:13):
It doesn't exactly, Yeah, but it's in a way it's
sort of similar, Ben because I think about it like, um,
you're seen those really fancy UM automated garages. You know
that it's not a brand new concept. We've seen those
in UH and I think Germany has a few of them. UM.
It also reminded me of the way Smart Car stacks
up their vehicles, you know in display only. Really you
(08:33):
don't really purchase them that way. But UM, I was
watching an online video. This is just kind of a
sidebar pitch. But UM in Germany at the Wolfsburg plant
right next door, I guess they have an area where
consumers from Germany can come and pick up their brand
new VW at these towers that they have, and they
have this automated system that that UM. I think it
holds like each tower holds something like four hundred vehicles
(08:56):
and you can go online and search this and find it.
It's really amazing, as Sinatian watch. But I think they
said thirty of the people from Germany that buy a
brand new Volkswagen choose to go to this place to
pick up their brand new Volkswagen just for the experience
of seeing it. You know, go from the they go
from the factory directly into one of these these holding
(09:17):
towers and then when you come, they go search out
the vehicle that you've ordered, pick it up, bring it
down to you, and they have it delivered into the
showroom area where then you know, you pick up the
keys and you you you drive away with zero miles
on the odometer, which is really kind of cool there
zero kilometers zero. But it's a cool thing. And they're
mimicking this with this, uh this candy machine differences. It's
(09:39):
essentially yeah, it's it's an automated garage. Yeah. And there's
what two now, I think there are two of them
right now in uh In Hanjo, which I think I
said Hanjo Hanjou, and um, the idea is, oh my gosh.
But they're saying that they want to have something like
twenty hundred stations all across China. And I know that
(09:59):
we hear a lot about things like this. You know
that they say, well, our plan is to do this,
and it's gonna be an amazing thing of them. Again, however,
I have a I have a good feeling that this
is going to take off because they're modeling it after
a very popular bike share program that's going on right
now in in China as well, and and that as
a matter of fact, originated in Hauju as well. Yeah, yeah,
it's uh, it's a UM. I don't want to say
(10:23):
reverse engineering, but it's an adaptation of this strategy for
what for something works out to about three dollars in
cents US per hour. You can rent one of these cars,
UM and that the company builds themselves with UH, with
another Chinese company called Geeli, and uh. These vehicles are
(10:47):
not you know, they're not ve rans, but they're not
built to be vrans. They're built to give you that
covered private transit throughout the city. UM. And the concept
is that you can rent it and then you return
it and you're charged for the hours that you used afterwards.
They don't have to do some of the weird calculations
(11:08):
that rental car companies have to do with gas. And
they don't have to teach the population about this kind
of program because the population already knows about it through bicycles. Yeah,
the bicycle share thing. It's exactly the same idea, but
the difference right now because they have so few stations.
And I think when we watched there's a there's a
video on Wired that we watched about this, and it
(11:29):
was an interesting video. Gave us a lot of information.
But at the time they all had one station. Now
they have two, which makes a big difference because the
initial plant or the initial way that this work was
you picked it up at one location, you drove it
and did your errands or whatever you had to do,
and you went shopping or something, and then you brought
it back to the same location. The idea is that,
you know, eventually, when they get more stations, you'll be
(11:50):
able to pick it up and drop it off wherever
you happen to be the next nearest station, and that's
good enough, and then the company will take care of,
you know, shuttling around the vehicles to where they need
to be and make sure that you know, there is
enough supply for everybody right now. I think these towers
they said that the first tower had something like one
hundred and twenty cars in it available for rental, and
when they went there for the video, they said, well,
(12:10):
it's been a busy morning already. We've already had fifty
people that have come here to to rent a vehicle
this morning, which is huge. I mean, it's it's it's
amazing that's that's taken off like like wildfire. I mean,
it's it's really really popular. People love it and they're
all they're doing right now, they're they're building these towers
in the factory. They're getting ready to go there there
(12:31):
pre assembling them. And the variable sizes Yeah modular yea,
so maybe one might be as big as three cars,
one might be as small as thirty cars. Yeah, so
they're they're very very modular and you know, all dimensions.
And they said that all that we're doing right now
is they're looking for locations to purchase land, so as
far as they can, until they can find just tiny
(12:51):
little bits of land which would normally be like a
parking lot. You know, it doesn't have to be very
big because the towers go up it looks like six
seven stories and you know it's it's the same type
of system as those automated parking systems I mentioned. So
you know, a robot or whatever goes up and picks
up the um it's almost like a tray I guess,
like like a palette that holds the vehicle. It's a
(13:11):
metal device obviously, and it locks in. It's very secure,
but it does go up and retrieve a vehicle and
bring it back down. So when they say it's like
a vending machine. It is and it isn't. I mean,
they call for a vehicle and then the one that
has the greatest amount of charge available is brought down
to you and then you're checked out with car number
you know, seven or whatever it is. And they're able
to monitor that car on a screen and in real
(13:33):
time and see where it is in town and if
it has a problem, if the vehicle is stranded in
some way. Uh, there's an indicator for that so they
can send out, you know, repair vehicles or you know,
whatever is necessary for that situation. UM, it seems like
it's a it's a well put together plan. And the
Candy Technologies Group that's doing this, the guy's name is Um,
I'm gonna try this Ben, It's Shao meng Hu and
(13:56):
he's the CEO of Candy Technologies Group, and Candy Technologies
Group UM has been building well building electric vehicles for
a while. Now. I guess they've got a whole line
of vehicles. They've got five categories of vehicles that if
you don't mind, I'd like to talk about it for
just a minute. Sure, UM. Now they've got e cars,
which are of course all electric cars. They've got go karts.
(14:17):
They've got a tv s, tricycles, and something called utv
s which are like small utility vehicles, I guess, and
I look through through this and they do they do everything.
They do the design, the development, the manufacturer of everything,
I mean, the commercialize into the whole thing. They do
a lot of joint ventures too with other companies. Yeah, exactly. There.
The rank is one of the top five companies in
(14:38):
the machine industry in China. And they're also a member
of the U S. China Clean Vehicle Consortium, which is uh,
you know, manufacturers all terrain vehicles and you know for
here in the US and all around the world really
and their products all conformed to ISO nine thousand one
two thousand eight quality standards so and management standards. So
there they've got all the required certification to sell their
(14:59):
products in the United States and in European Union. So
this is a company that it's a real it's the
real deal. It's not like a fly by night type
place to you. No, it's it's not vaporware. That's maybe
the best way to stay it. But but they have
I looked into all their products here and I've got
to print out that I just kind of cut and
pasted each one of their vehicles. I'm not going to
(15:19):
tell you about them because there's many of them, but
they create eight different types of electric vehicles right now.
So you know, some are like the vehicle that we're
talking about, which looks a little bit like a smart
car suspiciously enough, right, um. And also they have some
some small like cargo van type vehicles that are electric
as well, and um, you know they've got three or
(15:39):
four different versions of that. And they've got go karts.
I mean, the go carts are really cool and you
know those are and we mentioned that the vehicles those
are all electric. Obviously. The go carts range anywhere from
a single cylinder up to the four cylinder all four
stroke gasoline engines with you know, they've got reverse and
hydraulic breaks and electric start and everything that you'd want
on an a t V, I guess and more. Um oh,
(16:00):
I just mentioned a TVs, but a t V S
but they go. Again, most of these are single cylinder
a TV, so they're not the strongest a TVs, but
they again their four stroke air cooled engines. Um, I
guess they'll probably hold their own with most of the
yet A t v s are kind of they're almost
like more rugged versions of their go cart line. Yeah,
that's probably right, that's a good way to say it.
(16:21):
And then there's also U t v s which you
know against single cylinder up to four cylinder same thing,
you know, four stroke engines, aaron water cooled, UM typical
U TVs you can see. But I do want to
mention this and the tricycles. Now, they have three tricycles
that they offer. And I said suspiciously before because if
you ever looked up take a look at this, if
(16:42):
you want to do something interesting, look up Chinese copycat
cars and find out what's going on there, because there's
a lot of design copying that goes on there that
seems to be I don't know, it seems to be allowed.
It's just kind of like they look the other way
about this. Can I take a swing at this, Please do.
But I definitely want to talk about the tricycles, definitely.
And so we'll take a note for we'll take a
(17:03):
sidebar for the the great debate over intellectual property and
its status in China now as we know it, as
we know the UM, the i P laws of China um,
or at least the enforcement of those laws often fall
far short of what other companies and even other nations
(17:25):
would like. Uh, it doesn't just go to cars. There
are there are surprising copycat cars in China, and the
um sophistication of those copycats or I'm sure like Mercedes
would call them counterfeits, but the the sophistication of these
(17:45):
has increased greatly, however, and I'm I'm not gonna I'm
gonna say virtually all of the cases these copycat cars
are not of the same quality. While while they may
appear to be a BMW, while they may appear to
be a Porsche, uh, they are nowhere near as durable
(18:07):
there or remotely dependable. Well, in a lot of cases,
they may just have decided to not put in things
like air bags, or they may not, you know, make
sure that they use the proper diameter of webbing for
the seatbelts. Or it might just be a crap engine, yeah,
or the you know, the the crumble zones just don't
work the way they should. And I don't know if
you've ever seen Chinese cars crash tested, but unfortunately a
(18:31):
lot of them just end up in a ball of metal. Really.
I mean it's you can really see the difference between
a true Mercedes and a counterfeit Mercedes. And I mean,
I know there's there's little difference, but in the way
it appears. But when you get right down to it,
as far as as comfort features, as well as quality,
as well as safety, especially safety, you're gonna find that
the Mercedes is a far superior product that the genuine
(18:54):
Mercedes versus the knockoff Mercedes. And part of that is
due to quality, the standards and enforceability of those tires. Um.
I also want to say that this is not this
is not something necessarily limited to cars. Is a funny
story for a lot of people who enjoy reading. The Uh.
(19:15):
Literacy is huge in China and reading is a very
popular pastime. There are so many sequels and additions and
news stories of some of your favorite characters in literature
that haven't made it to the West. Because you know, um,
Harry Potter has done a lot more in his Chinese books,
(19:37):
uh than J. K. Rowling ever wrote. And Uh, this
this kind of popularity, this bit of a cavalier approach
to intellectual property, UM has you know it's going to
be debatable when I say it has its pros and cons,
and uh, in some ways, like in some ways we
(19:58):
see this ability. What what Candy Technology is doing is
encompasses both the pros and the cons. As we're about
to explore the pro that the pros that they have
from this are taking really good ideas like the bike
share idea, which is also Chinese, right and making um,
making it work for cars because they have two towers completed.
(20:21):
But the reason you and I are not saying it's
vaporwear right now is because they have construction going on
on eighteen other towers in that city and a line
of eight electric vehicles that they're they're working on. But
you know one one vehicle is the one they're focusing
on for the for the share program. Right. That's their
model layer model T exactly. And uh, now when we
talk about the cons, let's get back to that tricycle
(20:44):
or should I what what should we officially call it? Well, officially,
it's got a it's got just a Numerica numeric code here,
I mean it's it's called the k D two fifty
m D two, Okay, And if you look up the
k D T m D two you're gonna find it
look very similar to the the as a Campania Motors
(21:05):
t Rex. Yeah, the t Rex, which is the motorcycle
vehicle from Canada, from Montreal, Canada. However, the Candy Tricycle,
as I looked into the set the specs on this thing,
because it's very similar in appearance to an older t
Rex vehicle, not the brand new one which I'm going
to talk about in just a second. But um, the
Candy Tricycle has a single cylinder two c C engine
(21:28):
which is good for nine point five kilowats of power,
which equals twelve point seven horse power let me get
my helmet. Twelve point seven horse power and a top
speed of eighty five kilometers per hour, which is fifty
two point eight miles per hour, which okay, I just
want to point out that at least in the city
where Candy Technologies is building these towers, uh, the average
(21:51):
speed is much lower than fifty. That's good point then,
because most people are in single cylinder scooters that are
that are very low powered. And again this is this
EATS two and you're actually seated. You're not in a
completely open vehicle. It's mostly open. But anyways, you're gonna
find it looks very similar to the t Rex vehicle
if you look up, you know, the the tricycle in
this site. Um, and if you want to compare that
(22:13):
to the newest t Rex, which is the genuine article,
the one from Canada U six s is what they
call the newest one. It is a BMW six cylinder
engine which has one hundred and sixty horsepower, goes from
zero to sixty and just three point nine seconds, and
has a top speed one d and twenty nine miles
per hour. You can see a dramatic difference in the
(22:35):
quality of what you get there. Now, I'm not saying
anything about the build quality, but I know that I
do know that the Companion Motors t t Rex in
from Canada is a strong vehicle that is well put together.
I've seen them on the road. I can tell you
that it's a it's a it's a good looking vehicle.
I know that the one that I saw, the guy
was just beating the crap out of the thing on
(22:57):
the road. I mean, I know it was taking a
lot of abuse. UM. I've seen a couple of them,
but one in particular, the first one I ever saw,
the guy was really just thrashing the thing, and it
was it was holding up to it, I'll tell you that. Yeah.
So here's my question that do you think that, um,
the engineers at Candy, do you think that they were
I don't know, inspired, that's maybe a good way to
(23:19):
say it. There. This is an inspired design. But then
if you look at something called the k D two
fifty m B two, uh, they must have been inspired
by the Canam Spider model because that looks almost identical
to the Canam Spider as well. So you see that
there's a lot of similarities here in the designs. Now,
I'm not saying that Candy is copying all their designs
or anything like that. I don't know enough about U
(23:41):
TVs and a TV s to say like that that
model looks just like that. But you know, even these
small electric vehicles, a lot of them do have a
very similar look, not exactly to a similar smart car,
to a smart car. Yeah. Yeah, so they've got a
good idea though, Ben I mean, and the the idea
that we're really focused on today, and we don't want
to get too far off to the the copycat car thing. Yeah,
(24:02):
it's a it's a neat sidebar and it is worth
your time to google. But I wanna, Oh that's all right, good.
I want to jump into something different because, like I
kind of excited, we're talking about the t Rex and
the high speeds that the new gen is available to do.
You know when you said street availability, That's something I
want to talk about with Candy. But before we do,
(24:23):
I want to go back to our point, just real
briefly here and say that we're not I'm not trying
at least to vilify um Chinese companies. I'm not saying
that there. You know that Geely or Candy are doing
uh copycats stuff left and right. When I say copycat,
I don't know about you, Scott. I'm I'm more. I'm
(24:45):
more against the guys who are out there trying to
make fake Mercedes and UDEs and calling it and Mercedes
which is key, and badging it because they're not doing that.
They're just making something that looks similar if at first
glance you think that's what it is, but um, you
know it doesn't have all of the bells and whistles.
And these things shortly are going to be available throughout
(25:11):
not just the city, but they're going to expand to
other cities they want to follow the steps of the
spike sharing program. Yeah, and there's a huge investment that's
being pushed along with us, so that you know, they're
they're giving them something like now four hundred billion one
which is UH which is if you want to convert
that to US dollars, and in subsidies, sixty five billion
dollars US is being is being pushed in towards this
(25:33):
this program, And so that shows you that they believe
in this. They say that, you know, like, well, this
is there's a complete need for this in this area
because you know, there's it's such an overcrowded area. And
we mentioned a lot of scooter traffic right well, there's
one hundred and twenty million electric motorbikes and scooters you know,
and gasoline scooters that are currently on the roads in
all of China right now. So you can see that
(25:55):
a lot of those people are wanting to kind of
step up to a fully enclosed vehicle, if not just
or a couple of hours, just to get out of
all the congestion and chaos and maybe go out into
the country for a while, take a day off, you know,
go out to uh you know, a waterfall somewhere and
have a picnicker whatever they do, go to a store
and buy something which they can't do on a on
a scooter. Yeah, you can actually get maybe uh small
(26:17):
piece of furniture or something, you know, an appliance or something. Yeah,
there's something else we have to mention your two, which
is if they do manage to expand across China, this
could be huge during the new year when families, when
you know, families returned from the cities where they might
be working, to where their parents live or where their
kids live. And typically China's transit is massively pressed during
(26:42):
this time. So what if you could just rent a car,
drive out, you know, to wherever your family lives, and
then drop it at the at the local car park.
That's a good plate point them because they have something
like a seventy five mile range on a single charge,
and you can have to fifty miles per hour, So
it's a it's a great step up from you know,
the scooter ranges and capabilities I guess, I mean, because
(27:04):
you know, you've got a very small gas tank. I
don't know if they would even make it seventy five miles,
you know, they say they get a hunter miles per gallon,
but you only got you know, half a gallon tank
on the thing. And they've got the they've got the
batteries charge out, which we haven't even talked about. Oh yeah,
they've got a unique design right right. Yet, Well, it's
it's a good concept. It's similar to what our boy
(27:25):
musk Overt Tesla is proposing. Isn't that funny? Isn't that
a hoot? Uh and uh so, if you recall from
some of the stuff we talked about with the Tesla
plan to expand infrastructure of the electric cars, he wants
to have battery swap stations. Yeah, and this is called
the side slide quick battery Exchange, which is what that
(27:46):
what the system is called. Now, it's supposedly a patented
design for Candy because it's unique in some way. Right now,
they're all a little bit different. But in the battery
low is easily loaded from the side of the vehicle.
You know, if you get under the vehicle, you don't
have to you know, remove the body of the vehicle
or anything crazy like that. It's just simply a battery
that you know, the panel opens up, you pull the
battery out from the side. I'm sure it's very heavy,
(28:07):
and it's supposed to be automated. It's supposed to be automated.
I'm sure that it will be and uh, you know,
if if they can kind of work that into the
system as well, they'll be able to make sure that,
you know, all these vehicles can be charged all the time.
It should be pretty easy. Like you said, let's say
somebody travels to a rural location but it's you know,
let's say that the range is one these but the
family lives one and twenty five miles away. So what
(28:28):
would you do in that case, Well, I guess you could. Um,
you could rent a vehicle, drive across town, then drop
that vehicle off, pick up a new vehicle at that location,
and then head on the way, and then when you
get close to their, find the nearest station, pick up
a new battery in the same vehicle, or or just
simply drop it and get another vehicle and bring it back.
You could you could use as many as three or
four or five vehicles to make the one trip. It
(28:49):
doesn't matter if you've got you're still just paying the
same rate per hour, so you're paying the same thing
you would if you were just driving the one vehicle,
which is pretty neat. Um. There's another thing that we
should talk about here, which is that some people say, well,
I don't want to be bound by an hourly rate.
You know, if I need a vehicle for that long
(29:10):
and I want to have the vehicle for the whole trip,
then I can't pay, you know, twenty four hours per hour.
So Candy has this thing they called the long lease,
which is funny because it's a short lease here in
the West. How long is the long lease? It could
be one to three years. One to three years really, yeah,
so a one year lease is pretty short by our standards. Um.
(29:33):
So we talked about it's funny because we just talked
about car payments in earlier podcasts. But the price of
this would be about a hundred and thirty two hundred
sixty U s per month um. So extremely affordable. That's
extremely affordable in terms in some in some terms, I think,
especially compared to the hourly cost of renting it for
(29:56):
an entire month. It's it's a great deal. Yeah, I mean,
you'll pay that for a day's rental on a minivan
here in Florida. You know, you get insurance, maintenance, and
power no kidding, you get as well. Yeah, yeah, because
a lot of people think, well, with an electric vehicle,
you're gonna have to have, you know, some type of
station and installed. UM. I'm guessing that you know, they're
(30:18):
gonna build some type of infrastructure that goes along with this. UM.
You know that, you know, outside of the candy vending locations,
they're gonna have charging stations as well. So when you
do drive to that shopping mall, you're gonna be able
to charge up that candy vehicle because that helps them
in the long run as well. You bring back a
vehicle that's you know, still has a ninety percent charge,
then you know, in just a matter of maybe an hour,
(30:39):
it's gonna be ready to go again with charge. So
you know, it pays for them to have those stations
around as well. I'm going to reveal my bias here
just quickly. We talked a lot about the facts. Here's
my bias. I think this is a great idea, especially
for a place with um so many densely populated areas.
You know, the cost of the cost of parking a
(31:02):
car would be unaffordable for a lot of people. Me
included living in China and the the advantage is offered
by this if if this stuff gets gets built, which
I believe it will because as support from the biggest
car company they're the biggest domestic car company and the government.
(31:22):
So I think it will get built. And if it happens,
I think it could really change the game. And depending
on how it works out Scott, it may well change
in a way that leaves Western countries thinking how did
we miss that? Exactly? Yeah, they have a you know,
we mentioned a huge push. They want to get two
million vehicles electric vehicles on the road by and it's
(31:44):
not all from Candy obviously, but Candies is doing their part,
I guess, and that you know, they're trying to push
that as well. And you know with these subsidies that
they're allowing, you know, with these and I don't know
if the subsidies are in the form of you know,
production subsidies or consumer subsidies, but be that's what's keeping
the rental costs so low as well. Maybe they're saying,
you know, if you if you do this, will give
you every vehicle you rent, will give you a little
(32:05):
kickback on this this amount of your taxes or whatever,
and um that you can able to you'll be able
to keep the rental cost down at you know, the
equivalent to three dollars and fives US. They're probably subsidizing
costs and materials would I would think so, and I
would think that on the manufacturing, and they're probably also
doing something as well. You know that they're getting subsidies
on that and maybe even the property because they really
(32:28):
have an interest in getting this up and going, because
you know, the bike thing took off so well and
it really helped a lot of people. They see that,
you know, we've got so much scooter traffic, and I mean,
if you if you're if you haven't looked it up yet,
please do take a look at again China scooter traffic
or anything like that, and you'll see some street scenes
that will really open your eyes to just how many
(32:48):
scooters are on Chinese roads at any given time. It's
it's amazing. Yeah, let me go back to parking one more,
of course, Yeah, because if you this is something that
any of our listeners who have lived in a really
dense urban area are going to understand instantly, that quest
for parking lot. If we weren't a family show, Scott,
(33:11):
I'd be cursing like sailor right now because I know
that you have been in the same situation. People in
cities in China or even in you know, just New
York can spend hours looking for a parking spot. So
this might be enough, this ev thing, if it, if
it gets the right infrastructure, it might be so successful
(33:34):
that people already own orthodox or conventional cars in China
might chuck their car just because the idea of being
able to rent a car and know it always has
a guaranteed parking spot for free. It might be a
good deal that's not bad. And I'll tell you, Ben,
I can be upfront with you here. I when I
(33:54):
drive downtown to an event, they're going to a baseball game.
If I drive down there, I've got a severe amount
of anxiety about where I'm gonna park, how much it's
gonna cost, is going to be a safe neighborhood to
walk through? All of that, you know, it comes into mind,
And I'll tell you like I'm I'm seriously like you're
not shaking or anything, but you know it does give
you a moment of thought, you know, a moment of
(34:16):
pause to say, do I even really want to see
this ballgame? Or can I just watch it on television.
I mean, you're thinking, like it's it becomes kind of
a hassle to go down there and try to figure
out where you're gonna park. If you don't know exactly
the neighborhood that you want to park in and how
much it's gonna be and all that, it's all kind
of an unknown. You have a real there's a I
don't know, I call it anxiety. Maybe it's maybe there is,
maybe it's a term for it, but it's like a
(34:37):
parking anxiety, I guess, and that you know, every event
is like this. You know, you go down to town
for the circus or you know, whatever it happens. And
I just always feel that lightway because I'm I'm not
real familiar with the city because I'm I live outside
of the city. But if I if I know the
city a little better, I might be a little more comfortable.
And I think for sure, if you when you go
down there and say like, well, of course, I'm just
gonna drop the car off at the at the candy
(34:59):
location next to next to the ballpark, and then when
I'm done, I'll just go back and swipe my card
and get in the car and drive home and again
drop it off right next to where I live and
walk two blocks home. Yeah, piece of cake. I mean
that that simplifies the whole process, right, and you and I,
I mean, we've talked about this. We're not huge electric
vehicle fans overall. I think it has potential, but currently
(35:21):
the vehicles are out now that I could buy. Yeah,
I just have to wait. But see, we're in a
different situation. We're not in an overcrowded I mean really overcrowded, right,
massively overcrowded area like like Honjoe places like that, where
you know, there's just really no way to get around
this is this is a good, good use of this technology,
I think, Yeah, but you have you have maybe a
(35:44):
way to get around PTSD, which would be like parking
time space disorder. Maybe that's it. Yeah, it's the time
and space of parking. Um. I just want to point
out that there are probably people familiar with Atlanta listening.
We're saying, all you guys, don't be suckers. You should
ride Marta to a downtown event. While that is true,
(36:05):
the calculation begins to become something like ten to even
eighteen dollars for parking space versus an hour plus on Marta.
So how much is your time worth? Yeah, and you
know there's just the whole privacy thing, like would you
rather be in your own, um, you know, vehicle that
has air conditioning, your own stereo system, nice comfy seats,
(36:27):
or do you want to stand on a platform for
ten minutes and wait for a train and then crowd
on there with everybody else's going to the ballgame and
then try to come back and wait in line to
get on the next train that goes to your direction
game junks exactly. Yeah, I mean there's there's a lot
of considerations like that, because I mean, just thinking about
getting on the train then gives me hives. That's just
about yeah, I just can't do it. I I can't
(36:48):
do it. We should take a field trip one day, um,
But for now, Scott and I would like to hear
from you, what do you think the future of this
electric vehicle rental thing to share a car outfit is
gonna be? Do you think candy technologies will be successful?
Could you see this catching on in your neck of
the woods, wherever that neck of the woods might be
(37:11):
let us know. We're on Twitter, We're on Facebook, We're
car Stuff hs W, both of those. Uh. We are
car Stuff Show dot com, our own little spot of
the Internet, and you can bypass all of the social
media that's not your thing and write to us directly
with you know whatever. Our email address is car Stuff
Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(37:36):
other topics is how stuff Works dot com. Let us
know what you think, send an email to podcast at
how stuff Works dot com.
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from house stuff works dot com. If then
I got a question for him. Shoot, what is the
most unusual thing that you've ever purchased out of a
venue machine? Personally purchased, personally purchased? Okay, all right, um,
(00:22):
I'm not going to complete the fifth I will tell
you the truth. Probably the weirdest thing I ever purchased
from a vending machine was an iPod Oh no kid
at an airport. Yeah. Really, you know they have those
to have, some of those vending machines for electronics. So
I got a little, uh, smaller iPods where it just
(00:44):
had the little screen. It was about the size of
just a few inches across. Yeah, yeah, cool, because that
made the list on I've got a kind of a
list here of unusual vending machines. And that kind of
leads into our topic for today, which is can you
buy a car from a vending machines? Yes? And uh
And I looked up you know, it's an intriguing question,
(01:05):
but I looked up unusual vending machines, the majority of
which are in Japan. Yeah, yeah, a lot of them
there and Germany. Find you find out has a lot
of unusual vending machines as well. But I mean, there's
no way I'm going to read this list because it's lengthy,
but um, just to do a couple because I bet
I can. I can guess. Okay, French fries. Didn't see
that with silk ties for businessmen, uh, blue jeans. There's beer,
(01:30):
liquor and whiskey in some places, which I find remarkable
because I don't know how they go about, you know,
without getting with verifying keep kids from getting exactly. I mean,
there's some many other stuff that's not quite so unusual,
like books or flower arrangements. Then there's live bait. Yeah,
by live bait, I've seen. I've seen those in person.
Um those in US apple products, which you just mentioned,
(01:51):
So you're you're one that that one blew me away
the first time I saw it, by the way, Yeah,
it's amazing. I mean you go to a vending machine
and you put in your credit card and it's four
hundred bucks for an iPod or whatever you want to buy. See,
that's the thing. I I was at this weird moment
where two unusual circumstances for me at least, collided and
(02:11):
one of those unusual circumstances was that I was walking
by a vending machine that actually sold iPods. Another one
of those circumstances was that I have been planning for
a while to buy an iPod. I felt like, this
is so dumb, because maybe this shows how cheap I am.
I felt like Kanye West or something, you know, and
I thought, WHOA, look at me. I'm just buying things
(02:32):
out of vending machines. Yeah, the round, everybody, I'm gonna
buy an iPod. Everyone, everyone, stop what you're doing? You
come here? Well, the first place I thought was in
Las Vegas, and I thought, I thought, no, this is
so amazing. This is incredible. Where else but in Las Vegas?
And then you know what, It turns out that they're
all over the world, really these machines, and they're really cool.
(02:52):
But there's and they're still unusual. But there's others out
there that sell things like gold bars. I mean there's
places on Las Vegas is one and in German is
another one. You can buy gold bars and coins at
supposedly the current rate, which is updated every I think
every sixty minutes. They change the prices on the whole
bars points I I would be stepped as well. It
turns out that you do get you take a little
(03:12):
bit of a hit because they they you know, of
course they want to make a little bit of property exactly.
There's a bit of a mark up on it. But
there's also soccer balls. You can buy socks, you can
buy cooking ingredients, live crabs, um all as a snack,
live crabs as a snack. A dozen eggs you can
buy a dozen eggs of any machine. But now I
(03:32):
want to point out something though here, and this kind
of leads into what we're talking about. You think about
the sock vending machine. When are you ever going to
walk by a vending machine and buy a pair of socks? Right?
And like an emergency situation. That's the thing. And it
all comes down to where if any machine is located,
and and is it valuable to the people that are there,
because you know certain places like you put a sock
(03:53):
vending machine here in our office, you know, in the
in the in the lobby downstairs, that thing is gonna
sit and gather dust. It's never ever gonna be used
where they sell socks in a veny machine? Ben is
it a bowling alley? People who go into a bowling
alley that may not have socks on, or have old
socks or whatever, and they're gonna rent shoes. They're definitely
gonna want socks. And you know, whether they're three dollars
(04:14):
a pair or five dollars a pair, they're gonna pay
that amount for that particular product in that place. And
it's a perfect placement, right because they targeted their demographic exactly.
And that's exactly what's going on with the machine that
we're going to talk about today. Yes, the machine we're
talking today about today is located and hung Shoo, China.
I'm probably mispronouncing that graphically. Uh. It is in eastern China.
(04:39):
It's got Um, it's a pretty big city. It's got
over or almost nine million people now maybe around that
around ten and which makes it double the size of Atlanta.
It was that win to ten million from eight point
seven million in two thousand ten. Uh. And if it
were in the United States, it would be the biggest
(04:59):
city in the United States. Um, it's still not even
half the size of the biggest city in China, Isn't
it crazy? There's something like what is it one point
three five billion people in China and so they have
this massive, massive overcrowding problem in their cities, right and
they're starting to uh, they've they've been on this trajectory,
this car buying craze. Uh. There there are more than
(05:22):
well over um, I don't know, I don't have a
great number, but for I know, for the past twenty
years they've been buying so many cars that by the
end of this decade, by twenty twenty, they're supposed to
be over eighty million cars in China. They are the
number one market right now for new cars. And we
talked about this in our Trends podcast, right if you recall,
(05:43):
that was one of the big things as they said
that cars in China, not cars from China being sent here,
but cars in China. You know, we're we're talking about
you know, manufacturers making inroads in China to sell vehicles
to the to the locals there and uh, and that's
supposedly one of the biggest markets that you know, there's
such a knee for vehicles there because right now a
lot of people are on scooters over there, and they're
(06:04):
on um, you know, bicycles, and you know there of
course a lot of them are walking and taking trains
and things like that, but there's a great need for
individual um and personal you know, like private transportation because
a lot of people never ever had the opportunity to
be inside an enclosed vehicle and able to go a
long distance and able to carry anything, because you know,
(06:26):
you can only carry what you can on a scooter.
And I've seen some remarkable balance backs that you know,
you go online and you search you know, China traffic
or scooter traffic, you're gonna find some amazing images of
families balanced on on scooters and also massive qualities of livestock.
Even I saw some images of a guy with he
(06:46):
must have had a dozen small pigs on the back
of his scooter in these in these cages, and it
was just remarkable and to see how this this thing
was able to even make it down the road. And
you know, of course there's crates a lot of times
you'll see that stacked up and you know, lighter things,
but but enormous, enormous loads, and somehow they're making it
down the street with you know, I don't know, it
looks like ten thousand other scooters because it seems like
(07:08):
a majority of the traffic is still on scooters there, right,
and uh, we know that one of the big problems
for a the average person in China, you know, as
defined by average income. One of the big problems for
them is that the entry level price for a car
is astronomical. And there are a couple of companies, one
(07:31):
in particular that we're going to talk about, that have
started working out a different way of using a car,
if not owning a car. And that's where we get
to Candy Technologies and the car vending machines. You see
my finger quotes here, right, And you know what's really
clever about this is that it's Candy Technologies called K
(07:52):
A N d I but pronounced Candy, and they call
it the Candy machine. And it's a it's a vending
machine for these electric vehicles that that Candy Technologies produces. Right. Yeah,
we'll talk about the products. And when I say vending machine,
now this is uh, you gotta take this a little
bit looser than you might. You might think. It's not like,
you know, when you buy a soda from a machine.
(08:13):
It doesn't exactly, Yeah, but it's in a way it's
sort of similar, Ben because I think about it like, um,
you're seen those really fancy UM automated garages. You know
that it's not a brand new concept. We've seen those
in UH and I think Germany has a few of them. UM.
It also reminded me of the way Smart Car stacks
up their vehicles, you know in display only. Really you
(08:33):
don't really purchase them that way. But UM, I was
watching an online video. This is just kind of a
sidebar pitch. But UM in Germany at the Wolfsburg plant
right next door, I guess they have an area where
consumers from Germany can come and pick up their brand
new VW at these towers that they have, and they
have this automated system that that UM. I think it
holds like each tower holds something like four hundred vehicles
(08:56):
and you can go online and search this and find it.
It's really amazing, as Sinatian watch. But I think they
said thirty of the people from Germany that buy a
brand new Volkswagen choose to go to this place to
pick up their brand new Volkswagen just for the experience
of seeing it. You know, go from the they go
from the factory directly into one of these these holding
(09:17):
towers and then when you come, they go search out
the vehicle that you've ordered, pick it up, bring it
down to you, and they have it delivered into the
showroom area where then you know, you pick up the
keys and you you you drive away with zero miles
on the odometer, which is really kind of cool there
zero kilometers zero. But it's a cool thing. And they're
mimicking this with this, uh this candy machine differences. It's
(09:39):
essentially yeah, it's it's an automated garage. Yeah. And there's
what two now, I think there are two of them
right now in uh In Hanjo, which I think I
said Hanjo Hanjou, and um, the idea is, oh my gosh.
But they're saying that they want to have something like
twenty hundred stations all across China. And I know that
(09:59):
we hear a lot about things like this. You know
that they say, well, our plan is to do this,
and it's gonna be an amazing thing of them. Again, however,
I have a I have a good feeling that this
is going to take off because they're modeling it after
a very popular bike share program that's going on right
now in in China as well, and and that as
a matter of fact, originated in Hauju as well. Yeah, yeah,
it's uh, it's a UM. I don't want to say
(10:23):
reverse engineering, but it's an adaptation of this strategy for
what for something works out to about three dollars in
cents US per hour. You can rent one of these cars,
UM and that the company builds themselves with UH, with
another Chinese company called Geeli, and uh. These vehicles are
(10:47):
not you know, they're not ve rans, but they're not
built to be vrans. They're built to give you that
covered private transit throughout the city. UM. And the concept
is that you can rent it and then you return
it and you're charged for the hours that you used afterwards.
They don't have to do some of the weird calculations
(11:08):
that rental car companies have to do with gas. And
they don't have to teach the population about this kind
of program because the population already knows about it through bicycles. Yeah,
the bicycle share thing. It's exactly the same idea, but
the difference right now because they have so few stations.
And I think when we watched there's a there's a
video on Wired that we watched about this, and it
(11:29):
was an interesting video. Gave us a lot of information.
But at the time they all had one station. Now
they have two, which makes a big difference because the
initial plant or the initial way that this work was
you picked it up at one location, you drove it
and did your errands or whatever you had to do,
and you went shopping or something, and then you brought
it back to the same location. The idea is that,
you know, eventually, when they get more stations, you'll be
(11:50):
able to pick it up and drop it off wherever
you happen to be the next nearest station, and that's
good enough, and then the company will take care of,
you know, shuttling around the vehicles to where they need
to be and make sure that you know, there is
enough supply for everybody right now. I think these towers
they said that the first tower had something like one
hundred and twenty cars in it available for rental, and
when they went there for the video, they said, well,
(12:10):
it's been a busy morning already. We've already had fifty
people that have come here to to rent a vehicle
this morning, which is huge. I mean, it's it's it's
amazing that's that's taken off like like wildfire. I mean,
it's it's really really popular. People love it and they're
all they're doing right now, they're they're building these towers
in the factory. They're getting ready to go there there
(12:31):
pre assembling them. And the variable sizes Yeah modular yea,
so maybe one might be as big as three cars,
one might be as small as thirty cars. Yeah, so
they're they're very very modular and you know, all dimensions.
And they said that all that we're doing right now
is they're looking for locations to purchase land, so as
far as they can, until they can find just tiny
(12:51):
little bits of land which would normally be like a
parking lot. You know, it doesn't have to be very
big because the towers go up it looks like six
seven stories and you know it's it's the same type
of system as those automated parking systems I mentioned. So
you know, a robot or whatever goes up and picks
up the um it's almost like a tray I guess,
like like a palette that holds the vehicle. It's a
(13:11):
metal device obviously, and it locks in. It's very secure,
but it does go up and retrieve a vehicle and
bring it back down. So when they say it's like
a vending machine. It is and it isn't. I mean,
they call for a vehicle and then the one that
has the greatest amount of charge available is brought down
to you and then you're checked out with car number
you know, seven or whatever it is. And they're able
to monitor that car on a screen and in real
(13:33):
time and see where it is in town and if
it has a problem, if the vehicle is stranded in
some way. Uh, there's an indicator for that so they
can send out, you know, repair vehicles or you know,
whatever is necessary for that situation. UM, it seems like
it's a it's a well put together plan. And the
Candy Technologies Group that's doing this, the guy's name is Um,
I'm gonna try this Ben, It's Shao meng Hu and
(13:56):
he's the CEO of Candy Technologies Group, and Candy Technologies
Group UM has been building well building electric vehicles for
a while. Now. I guess they've got a whole line
of vehicles. They've got five categories of vehicles that if
you don't mind, I'd like to talk about it for
just a minute. Sure, UM. Now they've got e cars,
which are of course all electric cars. They've got go karts.
(14:17):
They've got a tv s, tricycles, and something called utv
s which are like small utility vehicles, I guess, and
I look through through this and they do they do everything.
They do the design, the development, the manufacturer of everything,
I mean, the commercialize into the whole thing. They do
a lot of joint ventures too with other companies. Yeah, exactly. There.
The rank is one of the top five companies in
(14:38):
the machine industry in China. And they're also a member
of the U S. China Clean Vehicle Consortium, which is uh,
you know, manufacturers all terrain vehicles and you know for
here in the US and all around the world really
and their products all conformed to ISO nine thousand one
two thousand eight quality standards so and management standards. So
there they've got all the required certification to sell their
(14:59):
products in the United States and in European Union. So
this is a company that it's a real it's the
real deal. It's not like a fly by night type
place to you. No, it's it's not vaporware. That's maybe
the best way to stay it. But but they have
I looked into all their products here and I've got
to print out that I just kind of cut and
pasted each one of their vehicles. I'm not going to
(15:19):
tell you about them because there's many of them, but
they create eight different types of electric vehicles right now.
So you know, some are like the vehicle that we're
talking about, which looks a little bit like a smart
car suspiciously enough, right, um. And also they have some
some small like cargo van type vehicles that are electric
as well, and um, you know they've got three or
(15:39):
four different versions of that. And they've got go karts.
I mean, the go carts are really cool and you
know those are and we mentioned that the vehicles those
are all electric. Obviously. The go carts range anywhere from
a single cylinder up to the four cylinder all four
stroke gasoline engines with you know, they've got reverse and
hydraulic breaks and electric start and everything that you'd want
on an a t V, I guess and more. Um oh,
(16:00):
I just mentioned a TVs, but a t V S
but they go. Again, most of these are single cylinder
a TV, so they're not the strongest a TVs, but
they again their four stroke air cooled engines. Um, I
guess they'll probably hold their own with most of the
yet A t v s are kind of they're almost
like more rugged versions of their go cart line. Yeah,
that's probably right, that's a good way to say it.
(16:21):
And then there's also U t v s which you
know against single cylinder up to four cylinder same thing,
you know, four stroke engines, aaron water cooled, UM typical
U TVs you can see. But I do want to
mention this and the tricycles. Now, they have three tricycles
that they offer. And I said suspiciously before because if
you ever looked up take a look at this, if
(16:42):
you want to do something interesting, look up Chinese copycat
cars and find out what's going on there, because there's
a lot of design copying that goes on there that
seems to be I don't know, it seems to be allowed.
It's just kind of like they look the other way
about this. Can I take a swing at this, Please do.
But I definitely want to talk about the tricycles, definitely.
And so we'll take a note for we'll take a
(17:03):
sidebar for the the great debate over intellectual property and
its status in China now as we know it, as
we know the UM, the i P laws of China um,
or at least the enforcement of those laws often fall
far short of what other companies and even other nations
(17:25):
would like. Uh, it doesn't just go to cars. There
are there are surprising copycat cars in China, and the
um sophistication of those copycats or I'm sure like Mercedes
would call them counterfeits, but the the sophistication of these
(17:45):
has increased greatly, however, and I'm I'm not gonna I'm
gonna say virtually all of the cases these copycat cars
are not of the same quality. While while they may
appear to be a BMW, while they may appear to
be a Porsche, uh, they are nowhere near as durable
(18:07):
there or remotely dependable. Well, in a lot of cases,
they may just have decided to not put in things
like air bags, or they may not, you know, make
sure that they use the proper diameter of webbing for
the seatbelts. Or it might just be a crap engine, yeah,
or the you know, the the crumble zones just don't
work the way they should. And I don't know if
you've ever seen Chinese cars crash tested, but unfortunately a
(18:31):
lot of them just end up in a ball of metal. Really.
I mean it's you can really see the difference between
a true Mercedes and a counterfeit Mercedes. And I mean,
I know there's there's little difference, but in the way
it appears. But when you get right down to it,
as far as as comfort features, as well as quality,
as well as safety, especially safety, you're gonna find that
the Mercedes is a far superior product that the genuine
(18:54):
Mercedes versus the knockoff Mercedes. And part of that is
due to quality, the standards and enforceability of those tires. Um.
I also want to say that this is not this
is not something necessarily limited to cars. Is a funny
story for a lot of people who enjoy reading. The Uh.
(19:15):
Literacy is huge in China and reading is a very
popular pastime. There are so many sequels and additions and
news stories of some of your favorite characters in literature
that haven't made it to the West. Because you know, um,
Harry Potter has done a lot more in his Chinese books,
(19:37):
uh than J. K. Rowling ever wrote. And Uh, this
this kind of popularity, this bit of a cavalier approach
to intellectual property, UM has you know it's going to
be debatable when I say it has its pros and cons,
and uh, in some ways, like in some ways we
(19:58):
see this ability. What what Candy Technology is doing is
encompasses both the pros and the cons. As we're about
to explore the pro that the pros that they have
from this are taking really good ideas like the bike
share idea, which is also Chinese, right and making um,
making it work for cars because they have two towers completed.
(20:21):
But the reason you and I are not saying it's
vaporwear right now is because they have construction going on
on eighteen other towers in that city and a line
of eight electric vehicles that they're they're working on. But
you know one one vehicle is the one they're focusing
on for the for the share program. Right. That's their
model layer model T exactly. And uh, now when we
talk about the cons, let's get back to that tricycle
(20:44):
or should I what what should we officially call it? Well, officially,
it's got a it's got just a Numerica numeric code here,
I mean it's it's called the k D two fifty
m D two, Okay, And if you look up the
k D T m D two you're gonna find it
look very similar to the the as a Campania Motors
(21:05):
t Rex. Yeah, the t Rex, which is the motorcycle
vehicle from Canada, from Montreal, Canada. However, the Candy Tricycle,
as I looked into the set the specs on this thing,
because it's very similar in appearance to an older t
Rex vehicle, not the brand new one which I'm going
to talk about in just a second. But um, the
Candy Tricycle has a single cylinder two c C engine
(21:28):
which is good for nine point five kilowats of power,
which equals twelve point seven horse power let me get
my helmet. Twelve point seven horse power and a top
speed of eighty five kilometers per hour, which is fifty
two point eight miles per hour, which okay, I just
want to point out that at least in the city
where Candy Technologies is building these towers, uh, the average
(21:51):
speed is much lower than fifty. That's good point then,
because most people are in single cylinder scooters that are
that are very low powered. And again this is this
EATS two and you're actually seated. You're not in a
completely open vehicle. It's mostly open. But anyways, you're gonna
find it looks very similar to the t Rex vehicle
if you look up, you know, the the tricycle in
this site. Um, and if you want to compare that
(22:13):
to the newest t Rex, which is the genuine article,
the one from Canada U six s is what they
call the newest one. It is a BMW six cylinder
engine which has one hundred and sixty horsepower, goes from
zero to sixty and just three point nine seconds, and
has a top speed one d and twenty nine miles
per hour. You can see a dramatic difference in the
(22:35):
quality of what you get there. Now, I'm not saying
anything about the build quality, but I know that I
do know that the Companion Motors t t Rex in
from Canada is a strong vehicle that is well put together.
I've seen them on the road. I can tell you
that it's a it's a it's a good looking vehicle.
I know that the one that I saw, the guy
was just beating the crap out of the thing on
(22:57):
the road. I mean, I know it was taking a
lot of abuse. UM. I've seen a couple of them,
but one in particular, the first one I ever saw,
the guy was really just thrashing the thing, and it
was it was holding up to it, I'll tell you that. Yeah.
So here's my question that do you think that, um,
the engineers at Candy, do you think that they were
I don't know, inspired, that's maybe a good way to
(23:19):
say it. There. This is an inspired design. But then
if you look at something called the k D two
fifty m B two, uh, they must have been inspired
by the Canam Spider model because that looks almost identical
to the Canam Spider as well. So you see that
there's a lot of similarities here in the designs. Now,
I'm not saying that Candy is copying all their designs
or anything like that. I don't know enough about U
(23:41):
TVs and a TV s to say like that that
model looks just like that. But you know, even these
small electric vehicles, a lot of them do have a
very similar look, not exactly to a similar smart car,
to a smart car. Yeah. Yeah, so they've got a
good idea though, Ben I mean, and the the idea
that we're really focused on today, and we don't want
to get too far off to the the copycat car thing. Yeah,
(24:02):
it's a it's a neat sidebar and it is worth
your time to google. But I wanna, Oh that's all right, good.
I want to jump into something different because, like I
kind of excited, we're talking about the t Rex and
the high speeds that the new gen is available to do.
You know when you said street availability, That's something I
want to talk about with Candy. But before we do,
(24:23):
I want to go back to our point, just real
briefly here and say that we're not I'm not trying
at least to vilify um Chinese companies. I'm not saying
that there. You know that Geely or Candy are doing
uh copycats stuff left and right. When I say copycat,
I don't know about you, Scott. I'm I'm more. I'm
(24:45):
more against the guys who are out there trying to
make fake Mercedes and UDEs and calling it and Mercedes
which is key, and badging it because they're not doing that.
They're just making something that looks similar if at first
glance you think that's what it is, but um, you
know it doesn't have all of the bells and whistles.
And these things shortly are going to be available throughout
(25:11):
not just the city, but they're going to expand to
other cities they want to follow the steps of the
spike sharing program. Yeah, and there's a huge investment that's
being pushed along with us, so that you know, they're
they're giving them something like now four hundred billion one
which is UH which is if you want to convert
that to US dollars, and in subsidies, sixty five billion
dollars US is being is being pushed in towards this
(25:33):
this program, And so that shows you that they believe
in this. They say that, you know, like, well, this
is there's a complete need for this in this area
because you know, there's it's such an overcrowded area. And
we mentioned a lot of scooter traffic right well, there's
one hundred and twenty million electric motorbikes and scooters you know,
and gasoline scooters that are currently on the roads in
all of China right now. So you can see that
(25:55):
a lot of those people are wanting to kind of
step up to a fully enclosed vehicle, if not just
or a couple of hours, just to get out of
all the congestion and chaos and maybe go out into
the country for a while, take a day off, you know,
go out to uh you know, a waterfall somewhere and
have a picnicker whatever they do, go to a store
and buy something which they can't do on a on
a scooter. Yeah, you can actually get maybe uh small
(26:17):
piece of furniture or something, you know, an appliance or something. Yeah,
there's something else we have to mention your two, which
is if they do manage to expand across China, this
could be huge during the new year when families, when
you know, families returned from the cities where they might
be working, to where their parents live or where their
kids live. And typically China's transit is massively pressed during
(26:42):
this time. So what if you could just rent a car,
drive out, you know, to wherever your family lives, and
then drop it at the at the local car park.
That's a good plate point them because they have something
like a seventy five mile range on a single charge,
and you can have to fifty miles per hour, So
it's a it's a great step up from you know,
the scooter ranges and capabilities I guess, I mean, because
(27:04):
you know, you've got a very small gas tank. I
don't know if they would even make it seventy five miles,
you know, they say they get a hunter miles per gallon,
but you only got you know, half a gallon tank
on the thing. And they've got the they've got the
batteries charge out, which we haven't even talked about. Oh yeah,
they've got a unique design right right. Yet, Well, it's
it's a good concept. It's similar to what our boy
(27:25):
musk Overt Tesla is proposing. Isn't that funny? Isn't that
a hoot? Uh and uh so, if you recall from
some of the stuff we talked about with the Tesla
plan to expand infrastructure of the electric cars, he wants
to have battery swap stations. Yeah, and this is called
the side slide quick battery Exchange, which is what that
(27:46):
what the system is called. Now, it's supposedly a patented
design for Candy because it's unique in some way. Right now,
they're all a little bit different. But in the battery
low is easily loaded from the side of the vehicle.
You know, if you get under the vehicle, you don't
have to you know, remove the body of the vehicle
or anything crazy like that. It's just simply a battery
that you know, the panel opens up, you pull the
battery out from the side. I'm sure it's very heavy,
(28:07):
and it's supposed to be automated. It's supposed to be automated.
I'm sure that it will be and uh, you know,
if if they can kind of work that into the
system as well, they'll be able to make sure that,
you know, all these vehicles can be charged all the time.
It should be pretty easy. Like you said, let's say
somebody travels to a rural location but it's you know,
let's say that the range is one these but the
family lives one and twenty five miles away. So what
(28:28):
would you do in that case, Well, I guess you could. Um,
you could rent a vehicle, drive across town, then drop
that vehicle off, pick up a new vehicle at that location,
and then head on the way, and then when you
get close to their, find the nearest station, pick up
a new battery in the same vehicle, or or just
simply drop it and get another vehicle and bring it back.
You could you could use as many as three or
four or five vehicles to make the one trip. It
(28:49):
doesn't matter if you've got you're still just paying the
same rate per hour, so you're paying the same thing
you would if you were just driving the one vehicle,
which is pretty neat. Um. There's another thing that we
should talk about here, which is that some people say, well,
I don't want to be bound by an hourly rate.
You know, if I need a vehicle for that long
(29:10):
and I want to have the vehicle for the whole trip,
then I can't pay, you know, twenty four hours per hour.
So Candy has this thing they called the long lease,
which is funny because it's a short lease here in
the West. How long is the long lease? It could
be one to three years. One to three years really, yeah,
so a one year lease is pretty short by our standards. Um.
(29:33):
So we talked about it's funny because we just talked
about car payments in earlier podcasts. But the price of
this would be about a hundred and thirty two hundred
sixty U s per month um. So extremely affordable. That's
extremely affordable in terms in some in some terms, I think,
especially compared to the hourly cost of renting it for
(29:56):
an entire month. It's it's a great deal. Yeah, I mean,
you'll pay that for a day's rental on a minivan
here in Florida. You know, you get insurance, maintenance, and
power no kidding, you get as well. Yeah, yeah, because
a lot of people think, well, with an electric vehicle,
you're gonna have to have, you know, some type of
station and installed. UM. I'm guessing that you know, they're
(30:18):
gonna build some type of infrastructure that goes along with this. UM.
You know that, you know, outside of the candy vending locations,
they're gonna have charging stations as well. So when you
do drive to that shopping mall, you're gonna be able
to charge up that candy vehicle because that helps them
in the long run as well. You bring back a
vehicle that's you know, still has a ninety percent charge,
then you know, in just a matter of maybe an hour,
(30:39):
it's gonna be ready to go again with charge. So
you know, it pays for them to have those stations
around as well. I'm going to reveal my bias here
just quickly. We talked a lot about the facts. Here's
my bias. I think this is a great idea, especially
for a place with um so many densely populated areas.
You know, the cost of the cost of parking a
(31:02):
car would be unaffordable for a lot of people. Me
included living in China and the the advantage is offered
by this if if this stuff gets gets built, which
I believe it will because as support from the biggest
car company they're the biggest domestic car company and the government.
(31:22):
So I think it will get built. And if it happens,
I think it could really change the game. And depending
on how it works out Scott, it may well change
in a way that leaves Western countries thinking how did
we miss that? Exactly? Yeah, they have a you know,
we mentioned a huge push. They want to get two
million vehicles electric vehicles on the road by and it's
(31:44):
not all from Candy obviously, but Candies is doing their part,
I guess, and that you know, they're trying to push
that as well. And you know with these subsidies that
they're allowing, you know, with these and I don't know
if the subsidies are in the form of you know,
production subsidies or consumer subsidies, but be that's what's keeping
the rental costs so low as well. Maybe they're saying,
you know, if you if you do this, will give
you every vehicle you rent, will give you a little
(32:05):
kickback on this this amount of your taxes or whatever,
and um that you can able to you'll be able
to keep the rental cost down at you know, the
equivalent to three dollars and fives US. They're probably subsidizing
costs and materials would I would think so, and I
would think that on the manufacturing, and they're probably also
doing something as well. You know that they're getting subsidies
on that and maybe even the property because they really
(32:28):
have an interest in getting this up and going, because
you know, the bike thing took off so well and
it really helped a lot of people. They see that,
you know, we've got so much scooter traffic, and I mean,
if you if you're if you haven't looked it up yet,
please do take a look at again China scooter traffic
or anything like that, and you'll see some street scenes
that will really open your eyes to just how many
(32:48):
scooters are on Chinese roads at any given time. It's
it's amazing. Yeah, let me go back to parking one more,
of course, Yeah, because if you this is something that
any of our listeners who have lived in a really
dense urban area are going to understand instantly, that quest
for parking lot. If we weren't a family show, Scott,
(33:11):
I'd be cursing like sailor right now because I know
that you have been in the same situation. People in
cities in China or even in you know, just New
York can spend hours looking for a parking spot. So
this might be enough, this ev thing, if it, if
it gets the right infrastructure, it might be so successful
(33:34):
that people already own orthodox or conventional cars in China
might chuck their car just because the idea of being
able to rent a car and know it always has
a guaranteed parking spot for free. It might be a
good deal that's not bad. And I'll tell you, Ben,
I can be upfront with you here. I when I
(33:54):
drive downtown to an event, they're going to a baseball game.
If I drive down there, I've got a severe amount
of anxiety about where I'm gonna park, how much it's
gonna cost, is going to be a safe neighborhood to
walk through? All of that, you know, it comes into mind,
And I'll tell you like I'm I'm seriously like you're
not shaking or anything, but you know it does give
you a moment of thought, you know, a moment of
(34:16):
pause to say, do I even really want to see
this ballgame? Or can I just watch it on television.
I mean, you're thinking, like it's it becomes kind of
a hassle to go down there and try to figure
out where you're gonna park. If you don't know exactly
the neighborhood that you want to park in and how
much it's gonna be and all that, it's all kind
of an unknown. You have a real there's a I
don't know, I call it anxiety. Maybe it's maybe there is,
maybe it's a term for it, but it's like a
(34:37):
parking anxiety, I guess, and that you know, every event
is like this. You know, you go down to town
for the circus or you know, whatever it happens. And
I just always feel that lightway because I'm I'm not
real familiar with the city because I'm I live outside
of the city. But if I if I know the
city a little better, I might be a little more comfortable.
And I think for sure, if you when you go
down there and say like, well, of course, I'm just
gonna drop the car off at the at the candy
(34:59):
location next to next to the ballpark, and then when
I'm done, I'll just go back and swipe my card
and get in the car and drive home and again
drop it off right next to where I live and
walk two blocks home. Yeah, piece of cake. I mean
that that simplifies the whole process, right, and you and I,
I mean, we've talked about this. We're not huge electric
vehicle fans overall. I think it has potential, but currently
(35:21):
the vehicles are out now that I could buy. Yeah,
I just have to wait. But see, we're in a
different situation. We're not in an overcrowded I mean really overcrowded, right,
massively overcrowded area like like Honjoe places like that, where
you know, there's just really no way to get around
this is this is a good, good use of this technology,
I think, Yeah, but you have you have maybe a
(35:44):
way to get around PTSD, which would be like parking
time space disorder. Maybe that's it. Yeah, it's the time
and space of parking. Um. I just want to point
out that there are probably people familiar with Atlanta listening.
We're saying, all you guys, don't be suckers. You should
ride Marta to a downtown event. While that is true,
(36:05):
the calculation begins to become something like ten to even
eighteen dollars for parking space versus an hour plus on Marta.
So how much is your time worth? Yeah, and you
know there's just the whole privacy thing, like would you
rather be in your own, um, you know, vehicle that
has air conditioning, your own stereo system, nice comfy seats,
(36:27):
or do you want to stand on a platform for
ten minutes and wait for a train and then crowd
on there with everybody else's going to the ballgame and
then try to come back and wait in line to
get on the next train that goes to your direction
game junks exactly. Yeah, I mean there's there's a lot
of considerations like that, because I mean, just thinking about
getting on the train then gives me hives. That's just
about yeah, I just can't do it. I I can't
(36:48):
do it. We should take a field trip one day, um,
But for now, Scott and I would like to hear
from you, what do you think the future of this
electric vehicle rental thing to share a car outfit is
gonna be? Do you think candy technologies will be successful?
Could you see this catching on in your neck of
the woods, wherever that neck of the woods might be
(37:11):
let us know. We're on Twitter, We're on Facebook, We're
car Stuff hs W, both of those. Uh. We are
car Stuff Show dot com, our own little spot of
the Internet, and you can bypass all of the social
media that's not your thing and write to us directly
with you know whatever. Our email address is car Stuff
Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(37:36):
other topics is how stuff Works dot com. Let us
know what you think, send an email to podcast at
how stuff Works dot com.
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.