Beyond Charging: Is This the Key to EV Adoption?

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This morning, Barchart's Aaron Bry sat down with Johnny Lee, CEO of U Power Ltd. (UCAR). They discussed the current state of the electric vehicle (EV) market and how U Power is creating an innovative way to revolutionize EV technology. Click below to watch the interview:

Aaron Bry: I Welcome back everybody to another edition of Barchart Live. I'm Aaron Bry streaming here We're doing something a little interesting today, where we're bringing you an exciting company, talking to the founder of that company to learn more about it, learn about the story. So I have the pleasure of being joined here today by Johnny Lee, the founder of U Power (UCAR). Johnny, how are you doing today?

Johnny Lee: Hi, all right, how are you? I'm fine, very good. Hi, everybody, I'm Johnny. I'm the founder and chairman of U Power.

Aaron Bry: Awesome, well, I appreciate you joining me tonight. I know it's morning for me, but it's not morning for you right now. Is that correct?

Johnny Lee: Yes, it's Asia. Right now it's almost the evening.

Aaron Bry: Awesome. Well, we're joining from opposite ends of the world, different times of the day, but that doesn't stop us from having a great conversation, learning more about the company. So Johnny, tell me a little bit about U Power, kind of when you started the company, why you started the company and what it is.

Johnny Lee: Okay, thank you, Aaron. So, hello everyone. This is Johnny. I'm the founder of U Power and the chairman. So we founded this company in 2013, around 10 years ago. So before that, I was the China's biggest auto industry group, which is a SAIC, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation. I'm the vice president. I'm working for auto business for over 20 years. So why I do this company? Because the EV, the electric vehicle industry goes up, But the biggest challenge is how to do the energy ink for these vehicles. So right now you see this is our army centers in their factories. We have the very, very important branding is Utah. So you see these are our technologies. It's heavy chalk, but it's not charging. We're just swapping that because the battery can swap in within three minutes. So that means this heavy truck can easily get all energies. So we copy these solutions to this logistic van, you see. The electric van is very good for green and it can't cost down. But the big challenge is how you can find the charging stations in the city. So that's why we have this technologies that is better swapping. We can do this swapping within 30 minutes. This video choose the taxi. This is we did a lot in China and in Asia right now in Hong Kong in Thailand and even in Portugal in Europe will be quickly launch. You see the taxi can quickly swap in the battery within three minutes. This means you no need to wait for charging one hour. It's a very very impressive. So this is for pickup. The pickup is the only one in the world who is electricity, but is swapping, not by charging. So, you know, right now I'm in Bangkok, it's a lot of the pickup, but how you can make the pickup to easy to get the energy from electricity. We buy this solution. That means swapping the battery and charging in the night. So that's why this is what our Utah brand stands for. That means we did a lot of this kind of battery swapping stations. You see this box is the charging, but we're swapping the battery quickly, three minutes to this pickup. Then I can go within three minutes. See, it's very easy. So by this way, we build up an energy grid in the country. Okay. So we listed last year, 2023, we are the only one company in the world focus on these battery swapping technologies. We do believe it's a huge, very big business and a new energy for worldwide. What's the reason? Because most of countries, such as Hong Kong, such as Thailand, such as a lot of regions, such as Latin America, even Europe, even States, now so many charging stations along with the EV goes up. So how to break through this bottleneck, we think, is by this kind of the better swappinginfrastructures. Yes, Aaron. 

Aaron Bry: I know a lot of people, Johnny, that, you know, they want an EV, but they don't like the inconvenience of it. They don't like the fact that they have to wait eight hours for it to charge. You know, they like being able to just go to a gas station, pump up your gas. It takes five minutes and now you can drive for another 400 miles. I mean, I mean, like how do you see, what would you say to customers like that, that want an EV, but they just don't like the inconvenience of having to wait for the charge?

Johnny Lee: Yes, that's always happened in many countries, such as in Thailand here. Also the problem is, if I want to find a charging station in the city, it's very difficult. Almost take maybe one hour to find the open available charging station. So I find it, I should wait, because maybe other guy is charging there. But when I have to do charging, at least I need one hour. So that means it's not convenience. It's also happening in the States, in Latin America, in Japan, many countries in the world. So our solution is we just build up this kind of better swapping station, that then three minutes, we can finish that and it could go. So Aaron, that's our scenarios and the technology.

Aaron Bry: What about people that want an EV, but they worry that the EVs are a little bit more expensive than, you know, than traditional ICE cars?

Johnny Lee: Okay. That's a good question. I'm an auto guy for many years. So I want to say, so right now, it's true. If we compare the EV to the traditional car, it is, EV will be a little expensive. But why expensive? battery. The battery, yes, is more than expensive than the tech, right? But right now, by battery swapping, we split the sales model to the customers. We now sell the battery, just replaced by rent. That means people can just buy the car body and rental the battery by mileage. So that means you can cut down the cost at least 40 percent off. It's happened in China, in Asia. So that's why I want to build this model also worldwide.

Aaron Bry: Yeah. And you mentioned that, you know, we've seen that in China specifically. I mean, I know BYD is putting out electric vehicles that are 10,000 U.S. dollars. So in a lot of cases, that's cheaper. Do you think that trend will continue in terms of EVs becoming cheaper? And then what's the limit? I mean, like how much cheaper can a can an EV in China be than $10,000? How low can they go?

Johnny Lee: OK, I know, Aaron, this is a good question. For my personal view, it's just like a semiconductor. Why? The battery is a physical and a chemistry. So when your volume is huge, the battery price will down quickly. It's true, you can check about the battery price since last year is almost down more than 50%. So that means if we go EV more quickly, the EV price will down also quickly. So you know Tesla also have a factory in Shanghai, China. Why in Shanghai? And Toyota also announced a new EV factory in Shanghai. Why all in Shanghai? China have very the biggest the battery supply chain in the world. So that means so this is cannot say it's part of this right. It's not parties because every person every country want to go for green and want to save the money. So that means by EV you can see the cost at least 50 percent. So that's why I think it's trend.

Aaron Bry: What about right now for U Power, is there any competition or are you guys really the only one focusing on this swapping thing? What is your guys' competitive advantage right now? Because I know I've seen a Tesla video from way back in the day where Tesla was swapping out a battery pretty quickly, but I don't know if Tesla is actually doing that right now.

Johnny Lee: Yeah. Actually, so far, worldwide, we are the only tech company in the world already listed and focused on this solution. The solution is combined swapping and better bank. But why Tesla not use it? Because Tesla mainly focuses on passenger vehicles. Because passenger vehicles, especially in China, you don't need long mileage every day, maybe just 50 miles every day, you go to work and back. But if you go to the taxi, if you go to the Uber, if you go to the bus and even truck, no, you have no time to charge it. And a big mileage, every day you run maybe 400 miles a day. So that means faster swapping is not compete with charging. It's just one way to focus on the commercial purpose fleet, such as taxi, truck, bus, and also the UberTax as well. So that's why. But it's also open to the passenger vehicles, such as in Thailand here. We also open our AMG model to family car, also to Uber car as well. So it's welcome, warmly here.

Aaron Bry: What about from the more the battery side of things right now, Johnny? I mean, there are a bunch of different companies out there working on new batteries and lithium solutions, quantum scape, you have all these. What do you, how do you see the battery industry developing and are there any companies out there that you think are doing exciting things with the actual development of the batteries?

Johnny Lee: Yeah, actually a battery technology is also increased but since the China already did it for over 25 years. So we know the battery, all the technology history before. So to be honest, right now, more and more new technology come up, such as solid or the other models, super fast charging. But I want to say, it's not really proven in the reality. It's all in the laboratory. That means if you want to do it very widely and globally, so only the very stable, the technology for the battery, we think is also focused on the traditional one. So that one will be very safe and not high demand for charging the power infrastructures. So that's why we use this kind of a traditional way to utilize the battery, very mature battery technologies and fully combine with our better swapping technologies to provide this kind of solutions. So we think it should take also 10 years later, maybe happen some difference. Right now, it's a good way. It's the best way to do this.

Aaron Bry: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I know I would be way more willing to buy an EV and drive an EV if I could roll up to a station, get the battery swapped off and be right on my way instead of having to wait hours. Let's transition Johnny here. And I want to talk a little bit about the management of the company. So I see the management team has experience at big companies like HP, Siemens, HSBC. How does that integrate into the company's growth plans? And I see some of the large investors are big players in Asia. Do they play an active role in the company right now?

Johnny Lee: Yes. I think this is a good question. So my response is yes, we are now real, U Power is not a China company. We are a global tech company. Right now, our strategy is very clear. Yes, it's a supply chain from Asia, but also global market and also global capital, because we are listed in Wall Street. So for our management, yes, we are very international. We have a British high-level management at our individual border. And also we have a Fortune 500 company background, such as HP, Siemens, HSBC, high-level management as a management. It's a very, very professional and rich experience. And for the stakeholders right now, we can see there's a big family in Asia is CP Group, CP, who's headquartered in Bangkok. So right now, they are also very, very important, our stakeholders in this company. The other one is also from Hong Kong, very famous and very rich, and also our very stakeholders. So these two key stakeholders support us a lot in business in Asia. And from Asia, we copy the solution to Latin America, to Europe. So for this one, we think we get a lot of support from the management and the board. Aaron.

Aaron Bry: Great. And then Johnny, I also wanted to ask about, you know, I saw a headline earlier this month that U Power and SAIC Motor CP are expanding or starting a partnership. Can you tell me about this deal and what it means for the company?

Johnny Lee: Yeah. Okay. So CP is also one of the biggest family in Asia, the headquarter in Bangkok. So for example, tomorrow morning I will meet with the CP, the agriculture chairman. So you know, CP come from agriculture. They almost take the market share of 50% of the whole Thailand farmers, you know, is millions. So what's our solution for that? We're offering a better swapping pick up. And with John. Do you know John? John? Yeah. Yeah. So we do it for agriculture. So John is purely electric, but how you can charge in that, we use better swapping. And the pickup is a platform to carry on a John to the farmers, to the agricultures, to do some operations on the farm for the lands. So millions of that. So that means this kind of examples, how CP support our business. But you can see, we talk about the green business, not only for green transportation, but right also talking about the green agriculture as well. 

Aaron Bry: Johnny, I think you're talking about the tractors and different types of vehicles that farmers will use. You know, if you start swap, you know, those as those become more electric, doing battery swapping for those two, that could be a huge market there as well. So that's very interesting. And now, Johnny, I kind of want to transition a little bit to see or to talk about the actual stock here. And one of my favorite metrics to look at growth companies is insider ownership to see if shareholders are aligned with the management. Does your team own a lot of stock in this company?

Johnny Lee: Not so many. Yes, our founder team take around not more than I think not more than 15 percent. Still quite healthy. All the stakeholders and also for all the globally retail customers. Yeah. Retail investors. Okay.

Aaron Bry: And I think it's a great sign again at a growth company when you have, you know, people like yourself that the founder of the company is still holding significant shares, because that shows that you're you're bought in and believe in the mission here. So looking ahead, I mean, we just started a new year, we're still only about two months in what what can investors expect for the rest of this year in 2025? And maybe even looking ahead into 2026? What's on the horizon?

Johnny Lee: I think it's brilliant. We are a tech company. To be honest, we've invested a lot of money for R&D in the past. A lot of money, because every car, every truck and every battery swapping and patents, we need to invest and do a lot of R&D. We own the hardware and also the software, all the patents and IP in our hands. So that's why we spend a lot of money for investment technologies. But from last year and also this year and next year, we're totally different because it would be a lot of some real projects running on the site. So right now our overseas market has totally four regions. That means we have Southeast Asia region headquarter in Bangkok, We have Macau and the Hong Kong region, the headquarter office in Hong Kong. We have Latin American office in Mexico City and also have European region, the office which located in Lisbon, Europe. So right now we have four regions. This year we open North Africa and Middle East. Why? We are so welcome because we quickly save a lot of the cost and improved green transportation, green cultures to many customers and fleets in the countries. So we can see we will quickly announce our last year financial report. It's a very big increase. I cannot tell the real number because it's still almost finishing the auditing, but I can see a big, big difference. And also this year, we have had many projects. Right now in our forecast, we have nearly, let me say, 20 or 30 times of last year's forecast. So that means we are very confident. So you will see quickly in the media from next month, next month, and next month, in the first half, many big news happened from Asia to Europe.

Aaron Bry: Well, it's really exciting and I'm sure for people out there like myself who might not be invested in U Power now, but they might be interested in it. It's exciting to know that you guys have a lot of upcoming catalysts and growth to look forward to. So certainly something that I'm going to put on my watch list here, Johnny. So let's see, I mean, anything else that you would like to talk about or would like potential investors to know today?

Johnny Lee: OK, so represent our board and also our founder team, I would say thanks for all the global investors pay attention and support to U Power. Actually, we are living though we are a tech company, we are from Asia. But we are very open and widely a mind to cooperate with global partners and also customers. So here I want to say, so as stakeholders or shareholders of U Power, we will not make you miss the confidence to us. You will get a very good return in the coming years or in the coming months. So that's what I want to say. OK, Aaron.

Aaron Bry: Beautiful. Well, Johnny, it's been it's been great to learn more about your story. How you founded U Power why you founded it and what you guys are doing The technology is is clearly really cool We played the video again If you're just now joining us on this on the stream if you go back to the beginning We played a video that actually showcases the technology and I'm ready for that technology to come here to the United States so that I can finally get an EV and again U Power trading on the Nasdaq under ticker (UCAR), so again go check that out, you guys can look at at the different fundamentals on bar chart and Johnny, again, it's a pleasure to meet you, to talk about U Power, to learn more about the company, and I hope we get to hear some more exciting updates soon.

Johnny Lee: Thank you, Aaron, and thank you, everybody. We were very hard-working and hands-on to do something. Thank you so much.

Aaron Bry: Beautiful. Johnny, we'll have a great rest of your evening. Like I said, hopefully, we'll get some great updates soon.

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