Episode 28: Marcel Münch

And one part was talking about, of course, these new EV startups like NIO, Xiaopeng, Liado and so on.

And What happened next was maybe where it got the most traction is when people saw during the COVID years that these stocks are flying, like the stocks of these US listed companies.

And that's really when everybody got on board.

And after this whole Tesla story already, was kind of a bit more known.

Sorry, Marcel, can I just

stop you for a second there? I just want to put the timeline into it a little bit.

Because during the COVID lockdowns, a lot of us couldn't really go to China to see it firsthand by ourselves.

What was the last time that you went to China before COVID? And what was the time you went after? just give people an idea of how long that was and, you know, what the experience felt like from that, the last visit to the first visit after COVID.

Sure.

So, you know, I could have been actually patient zero in a sense, because I returned, I still remember that in 2019 from Beijing, I think it was the 18th of December, like very close to Christmas.

That's usually when I would come back to Europe.

I've been actually to the other show back then as well and doing other events in the automotive field and came back to Europe.

I fell sick, fell ill.

Some strange flu that I didn't have before was really quite heavy.

Then in March, obviously, the lockdowns happened at some point.

But of course, COVID was already around a little bit before that.

But anyways, it was really like kind of maybe the first, the last people to exit the country in a sense.

And then I only came back in 2023 actually.

So I didn't go to China during the whole lockdown periods, because that was very difficult in order to obtain the visa and whatnot.

But yeah, that's kind of the timeline here.

Well, I would say like in your case, that is still very, you know, you still really, you know, that's three years.

It's still not that long, really, to be honest, because last time I went to China before last year was 2013.

And for my wife, she last went to China also was 2019.

And we didn't go back until 2025.

So, you know, you still have like a shorter view of like the changes in China during those years.