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well the car market in China is a huge market and they happen to be located in China so that's the main focus of byd I think the first cars they will try and bring here will be for fleets in California where we have environmental troubles and so on there may be a market for electric cars with that uh and of course there are various subsidies that come to people who use electric cars I have some relatives who commute into Washington DC and they can only use the fast lane on the freeway if they buy a Prius and that's been very helpful to Toyota and we'll see a lot more of that sort of thing generally speaking I think byd is an interesting company you stop to think about it here's one of eight children of a peasant that becomes a a famous engineering School professor and before he's reached 50 he's won the equivalent of China's Nobel Prize and he has created a company which has a hundred and eighty some thousand employees a land holding about the size of a cow and a hundred and some million square feet of buildings it's a very interesting startup company what percent of the cars you think in 2030 will be electrician not many I should I think Society it's like the it's like the wind power that's being subsidized in Iowa we should subsidize electric car uh in various ways as they do in Washington DC by letting them use the fast lane on the freeway in order to get the technology going so that we can wean ourselves from oil more quickly so I think there will be more subsidies and there will be more electric cars but I'm not expecting a sudden Revolution yeah I drove the latest version of byd's electric car a guy drove I was driven around the block Tuesday and I was flabbergasted at how much improved that car was it's simply amazing how fast people in China are learning to do what's took us a long time to learn and the world is getting very much more competitive I think it is quite interesting that we got into byd because byd is surfing along on the developing edge of new technology and that is not we have always bragged about avoiding that isn't that a bear statement that's fair and yeah here we are I think it's because we've shown some capability for Learning and and and I think the byd investment is going to work out very well and and I think it'll work out very well in a way that gives great pleasure to all of us shareholders because I think they're going to help solve some significant problems of the world and that place is you know I spoke with pride of Kiewit they tried harder they were more self-disciplined that's the way I feel about byd e and uh it's a pleasure to associate with such people in my life those are the people with whom I have achieved the most so as far as I'm concerned I we found our own kind except they're better and and we may do more of that we wouldn't have felt confident enough to go into Venture Capital typically with just the bright young man with an idea no matter how brilliant not me no I wouldn't either but be lady had won at spurs in life by the time we found it they had accomplished things that struck me as almost impossible to do and yet they've done them and so I don't think that's the last unusual thing that Berkshire will do and I and and the last one that'll work and so what I would like to understand is if you can make it more concrete recently you make investment in byd a company in China that makes batteries and also electric cars which are arguably technology companies so can you go through the example and see how you sort of like announce analyze the case and to ask questions that helped you make the decision to invest in such a company thank you Charlie deserves 100 of the credit for byd so I'm gonna let him answer that well it's an interesting example because Berkshire would not have made an investment in byd if the opportunity had come along five or ten years earlier and it shows that the old men are continuing to learn and that's absolutely essential Berkshire would have a lower potential than it does if we had stayed The Way We Were and and so you are absolutely right in calling attention to this this episode again Dave Sokol helped I didn't I wasn't at all sure I could get warned to do this all by myself so I unveiled Dave into going over to China and the two of us were able to to help the learning process well put well put it Humane is attractive a long-term investment now as it was when you acquired your stake if so why has byd's recent pattern of unexplained product launch delays affected your confidence in the operation Charlie's the byd expert so I'm going to let him start on that one well of course the price is still way higher than the price Berkshire paid and so but it's almost by definition it's not quite as cheap as it was then uh any company that tries to move as fast as byd does not as many fronts is going to have various delays and glitches and uh but I would say I'm quite encouraged by what's going on and I expect delays and glitches I got in trouble in the auto distribution but they tried to double Auto Sales every year for six years and it worked the first five times
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