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David Pierce
Editor-at-Large; Co-host of The Vergecast, The Verge

How BYD beat Tesla | The Vergecast

📅 Jan 20, 2026 The Verge 76 MIN 20676 VIEWS 145 SEGMENTS · 4 SPEAKERS
There’s a new biggest name in EVs, and if you live in the US, you pretty much can’t buy one. But before we get to that, we have some stuff to catch up on: The Verge's Hayden Field joins us for a round of “Big Deal Medium Deal Small Deal” with some AI news, from the launch of ChatGPT Health to the recent viral moment for Claude Code. After that, The Verge’s Andy Hawkins joins the show to explain how BYD recently eclipsed Tesla as the world’s largest seller of electric vehicles, what makes its cars so desirable, and when you, too, might be able to buy a Dolphin Surf. Finally, David tackles a que...

Questions asked in this interview

12
  1. 7:17Yeah. You know what I mean?
  2. 7:26Yeah, I always say throwing pancakes in the wall, see what sticks. What if it's spaghetti?
  3. 17:32Like you can't do that, right?
  4. 19:26You can buy something right then and there. Why wouldn't you?
  5. 27:23It's probably because we're journalists, you know?
  6. 29:57Go to your inbox. How many do you have?
  7. 45:05And it was like my kind of, like my introduction, right?
  8. 48:54People want to use the baked-in native software in these vehicles because of how good they are, right?
  9. 51:26That, you know, GM previously has sort of been sort of like the model of how you can compete across all of these different markets from Chevy to Cadillac, right?
  10. 55:25I mean, it just goes to show that you can have a car that is cheap, gets the job done, and doesn't look like [__], right?
  11. 58:03Why not let China do that as well?
  12. 1:03:35Geely owns one of the companies that sort of markets these cars to US influencers specifically so they can start to generate some buzz, right?
David Pierce 0:02 ↗
Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge. If that is three words that you have never heard in that order before, don't worry, it's all going to make sense later in this episode. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I have huge news for you, which is that I finally, after I don't know how many hours of trying, got this silly little IKEA button hooked up to my smart home. So now, if you're watching this on YouTube, it's not going to look very exciting either way, but let's be honest. Now I have a thing where I can turn two lights off all at once with one press of a button, and then another press of a button turns them back on. This is all I want out of my smart home. And somehow this took a whole lot of work, and I had to update my Echo Dot and my Eero network, and then I had to do a bunch of weird, insane stuff. I don't think it was worth it at all, but it felt good, and I'm glad I accomplished something. This is the smart home road I am somehow going down, and I think it will be the end of me. Anyway, no smart home stuff on today's show.
Today, we're going to do two things on the show. First, we're going to talk to Hayden Field about some of the AI stuff that's been going on the last couple of weeks. While we were out over the holidays and then while we were at CES, there's been this interesting drumbeat of AI products. I think this is the year we're going to talk about how we actually use AI and what it means in our lives. Hayden's been covering a lot of it. A lot of it has been coming out, so we're going to just try to catch up on all of it kind of all at once. Then we're going to talk to Andy Hawkins about this company BYD, which has come from not necessarily nowhere, but relatively small beginnings to become one of the most important car companies in the world, and as of very recently, the biggest, most successful EV maker on the planet. I don't know a lot about BYD. And on this episode, we're going to change that. Plus, we have a really fun hotline question about all the different size screens in your life. Lots of fun stuff to get to, but first, I have terrible news, which is that I have two more of these buttons, and now I have to figure out what to do with them. Wish me luck. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back.
All right, we're back. Hayden Field is here. Hi, Hayden.
Hayden Field 2:04 ↗
Hey, great to be here.
David Pierce 2:06 ↗
So, you and I have this problem, which is that you have other things to do, but also there is Vergecast AI material to do like every 45 minutes in the world. So, it was the holidays. There was a lot going on. Lots of sort of bits and pieces of what I think are interesting news moments and bigger stories. So, I want to play a game with you that we've played before on this show. This game is called Big Deal, Medium Deal, Small Deal. I suspect you can figure out the parameters of this game by the title of the game. And basically what's going to happen is I just want to run through a bunch of news stories and moments that have happened and things that have launched over the course of the last several weeks. And I want you to tell me for each one whether it's a big deal, a medium deal, or a small deal. Sound good?
Hayden Field 2:58 ↗
Love it.
David Pierce 2:58 ↗
All right. So, the first one I want to do here is a bit of news that happened this week that I think is connected to the thing that has been all over my social feeds for the last several weeks, which is Claude Code. Anthropic launched something called Cowork, which is kind of a normie version of Claude Code, I would say.
Hayden Field 3:16 ↗
That's the best way to describe it.
David Pierce 3:18 ↗
Yeah. Okay. So let's start with Cowork. Big deal, medium deal, small deal?
Hayden Field 3:21 ↗
I would say like between small and medium. I think a lot of people are excited about it. It's been really helpful. I've seen some really cool applications. But at the end of the day it's just, you know, a wrapper. So it's good for UI. It's good for more people to be using the benefits of Claude Code, but it's not anything like super crazy. I do think it'll bring it to more people. So, between small and medium.
David Pierce 3:45 ↗
Okay. What about the sort of big picture Claude Code moment that's happening? Big deal, medium deal, small deal?
Hayden Field 3:52 ↗
I think that's a big deal. I mean, I have not seen so much hype around just one company since, you know, OpenAI's last hype cycle two years ago. You know, I think it's just partially hype, but also Anthropic has been at the top of a lot of benchmarks for a long time. And even where other companies are surpassing it, anecdotally, a lot of people are sticking with Anthropic because of either the reputation of the company, the fact that they feel it's more safe or more like the adult in the room, or the fact that they just love Claude Code. So, I think that, you know, we're seeing a little bit of loyalty emerge here in a way that we haven't seen really before. You know, a lot of times people just switch between models based on what's best at the time, which people are all still doing obviously, but I've seen more anecdotal evidence than ever before that some people are just sticking with Claude because they like it, they feel a little loyalty to it, they like Claude Code specifically, they like the tone of Claude. But there's a lot of things that are kind of just making people gravitate towards Claude in a way that I haven't really seen in the last couple of years in this way, you know.
David Pierce 5:05 ↗
Yeah, I think you and I have kind of shared the theory over the last couple of years that Anthropic seems to have a much better and more capable organization for making actual consumer products than OpenAI. And I think to me at least that's really starting to bear out, right? Like OpenAI is building a lot of stuff. Most of it is not working. We're going to get to some of it in this segment. But like it's out there doing the App Store thing and it's out there doing custom GPTs and they just launched ChatGPT Health, which we're going to talk about. Like OpenAI is building a lot of stuff, but the stuff by and large other than ChatGPT itself doesn't really seem to be hitting. But it feels like Anthropic with Claude, with Claude Code, and like the reason I bring up Cowork is it feels like Anthropic has found something that works that people like and are gravitating to and actually feel good about in really important ways, and that feels important to me. Like I just really feel like the product that Claude is becoming kind of as a whole and within Claude Code in particular, it feels like it has turned some kind of corner that I can't fully name yet, but feels important.
Hayden Field 6:12 ↗
Yeah, I think that they're building a little bit slower and more intentionally, which has been really helpful because OpenAI's reputation for better or worse right now is that they're kind of just like throwing a ton of pancakes at the wall and seeing what sticks. Now I will say Anthropic is in danger of going there because, you know, OpenAI has been announcing thing after thing and then usually within a day or two Anthropic will sometimes announce a similar thing. So with OpenAI's health announcement they did, Anthropic came out with one a day or two later. So, you know, I think Anthropic has to be careful not to just try to catch up with the competition in every single category and just stick to what they're good at. There's a lot of like FOMO in this cycle right now. There's a lot of companies worried that they're going to miss out if they don't go into every single area. And I think it's important to stick with the 'should we use AI to do this at all' and 'should we use our resources to do this?' So hopefully Anthropic, you know, is a little more intentional about that. But for now, they're being more intentional than most other companies.
David Pierce 7:12 ↗
Totally. Okay. This is a totally random aside. Did you just say throwing pancakes against the wall?
Hayden Field 7:17 ↗
Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, or maybe the ceiling is a thing people say.
David Pierce 7:20 ↗
I have only ever heard spaghetti thrown against the wall, but pancakes against the wall is fantastic.
Hayden Field 7:26 ↗
Wait, what if I've been misusing this for 10 years? I say this all the time. Okay. Yeah, I always say throwing pancakes in the wall, see what sticks. What if it's spaghetti?
David Pierce 7:37 ↗
Maybe. What?
Hayden Field 7:38 ↗
You can tell I don't cook.
David Pierce 7:39 ↗
I'm now very into the idea of this being like a regional dialect of what you're throwing against the wall to see what sticks. I need everyone to please send us an email and tell us what you throw against the wall to see what sticks. Is it spaghetti? Is it pancakes? Is it something else? Is this like a Coke pop soda thing that it depends on where you grew up?
Hayden Field 7:56 ↗
I'm now obsessed with this and need to know. But we're throwing pancakes against the wall.
David Pierce 8:01 ↗
It's very good. Okay. One more on Anthropic actually before we switch gears here. Mike Krieger, who I think gets a lot of credit for being the engine behind this product culture we're talking about. He's the chief product officer. He was at Instagram. He is like a sort of product legend in the tech industry. Got a new job with the labs team. You wrote a story about this. Big deal, medium deal, small deal?
Hayden Field 8:25 ↗
I think it's a medium deal because it's kind of a sign of how much competition is increasing even more than before in AI. I mean, Anthropic is clearly trying to invest a lot in their experimental, like bleeding edge stuff, and that's why they're bringing Mike to the labs team. Since mid-2024, it's been about two people. And now they're trying to double it in the next six months. And they're bringing Mike over. His role is going to revert to just being a member of technical staff. He's no longer going to be in the C-suite. They're replacing him with the head of product, but not replacing the CPO title. And yeah, I just think it's going to be really interesting to see what they do. They said that all the type of thing they want to build is Claude Code, skills, other types of features that they've been just kind of experimenting on and engineers have been experimenting with in their free time. Just on the side, I guess they want that to be kind of a full-time role now, just experimenting, seeing what they can play with. Bringing new stuff out of Claude. MCP was actually another example they gave of the type of thing that could come out of this lab.
David Pierce 9:32 ↗
It's a really interesting thing to put next to what you were just saying about Anthropic's reputation as being the company that is more thoughtful and more deliberate and more sort of in control of its own product system, right? Like this kind of thing at OpenAI where they're just like, 'we're taking our best product maker and putting them into a place where they're just going to make a bunch of stuff and see what happens' would make a lot more sense at OpenAI with ChatGPT. Here, I think it's a really interesting reputational move because even Dario and Daniela Amodei have been saying like, 'we want to be responsible but also we have to move really, really, really, really fast because all of this stuff is happening.' And like it is true that MCP and Claude Code and this kind of stuff is coming out of Anthropic sort of organically and they seem to be trying to put some structure around how do we build all this stuff that is working really fast. Like they even said Cowork is, I think, completely built with Claude. Like it's clear that Anthropic has this sense of like, 'we've built something cool and we need to accelerate it like crazy.' How to do that without ruining this sort of reputational advantage you've built over OpenAI strikes me as a big challenge.
Hayden Field 10:40 ↗
I agree and I think that's why I'm kind of getting... I think that they're in danger of kind of the desperation that comes from just having FOMO in the space and going too quickly. You can see that even with the funding announcements they made in the past year. You know, Dario saying, 'hey look, we're going to have to now accept this type of funding. We're going to have to accept this type of funding. I know it's controversial but we have to stay competitive.' So, you know, I mean, I think right now they have the reputation of being the adults in the room. I don't think that's always warranted. I don't think any company is doing way better than another honestly here. But they do have that reputation and they're doing, you know, clearly people think they're doing everything more intentionally, a little more safely. They are investing more compute in safety it seems like, than their competitors. But yeah, I mean, I think they do have a danger of losing that reputation if they throw too many pancakes at the wall. So, we'll see what happens with labs. But I do think, you know, it's smart to be like, you know, kind of taking these types of projects out of just engineers' free time and making them their full-time job. So, you know, it's a balance.
David Pierce 11:40 ↗
Totally. So, okay. Again, fun reputational segue. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health. A headline that made me cringe with my whole body from head to toe. Big deal, medium deal, small deal?
Hayden Field 11:54 ↗
Big deal, I think. And the other companies that have followed, you know, Anthropic did something of the sort. X started encouraging people to upload their health records into Grok. I heard there's just a lot going on there. But yeah, I think it's a big deal because I mean data privacy of it all, you know, I say that it's a lot safer that it's a walled garden, that it's separate from the rest of ChatGPT, that, you know, there are specific safeguards in place. They wouldn't really get into what they are, but they said there are more than typical ChatGPT. You know, but once again, I mean, can...
David Pierce 12:30 ↗
Can I just say that that thing that you just said does not give me comfort. They said there are more, but they won't tell us what they are, but they say they're better than ChatGPT is not enough to get me comfortable with the idea of encouraging my... of uploading my medical records to ChatGPT.
Hayden Field 12:47 ↗
Yeah. And the fact like, I mean, the memory is separate, you know, there's a lot going on there. I personally wouldn't upload mine is all I'd say. I mean, I do see, I see in theory why people would want to. Obviously, the medical system is a mess. Like, you know, there's so many doctors that don't take the full picture into account. I just got blood tests last week and I was like, 'Huh, I would love if someone could tell me like how my iron has done over time because I'm like notoriously up and down on my iron levels. Who knows?' But I'm not going to be uploading it into ChatGPT, I have to say. I mean, yeah, I was not sold on the privacy measures from the briefing I got. And there's just, I feel like this is a huge can of worms. I mean, you know, medical records are one of the most sensitive types of data you can give anyone and you have to handle them with care and they say that, you know, they're doing that. But I just, I'm not sold yet.
David Pierce 13:38 ↗
Yeah. I'm curious how you think about all of this philosophically because it feels like a particularly high-stakes microcosm of a lot of questions around AI right now because like I remember there's this really beautiful Rest of World story several months ago about a woman who was trying to grapple with her mom's kind of ongoing obsession with talking to ChatGPT about her health and this came with like very real upsides like having... she felt like instead of having to make like a multiple day trip to go see a doctor who didn't know her and didn't really have time and she felt like just sort of a cog in a wheel that this person was going through being like, 'Ah, you're fine' and kicking them out. She's like, 'Oh, I have something that will listen to me all the time and talks to me and goes back and forth with me and is actually engaged with my health.' And it's like I sort of appreciate that, but then it's like you have this thing that is not accurate, is not medically trained, is not a person that is like, I don't know. To me, it is like it so perfectly elucidates all of the upsides and downsides of having these chatbots as like characters in our lives when you point it at healthcare.
Hayden Field 14:45 ↗
I totally agree because we've seen the like overvalidation and sycophancy that these chatbots can have. So, I mean, imagine that effect on someone with health anxiety or just someone without health anxiety that can easily go there. Like, you know, you start saying, 'Oh, well, are you sure there's no problems with my chart or my tests? You know, there's got to be... I, you know, I'm feeling fatigued. Like, look again, there must be something there.' It's probably going to say, 'Oh, you're right. You know what? There is something here. I'm worried about X, Y, and Z.' I mean, I just think about... I have a lot of friends with health anxiety that like spent so much time on WebMD and I'm just thinking about how much worse it would have been for them if they had had a tool like this. And I asked OpenAI about this because this is a big problem. I mean, you know, worsening health anxiety, getting people in a spiral, and they said, 'Look, you know, we're trying to present the information in a caring tone without, you know, having a lot of fear-based vibes in the response.' But I mean I wasn't really sold on that either. The other thing that I thought was really interesting here is that obviously mental health is a part of health and OpenAI has been like lambasted for how it's treated people's mental health spirals who are speaking with ChatGPT. People have committed suicide and, you know, it's deepened a lot of spirals. And I asked them about this too and they said, 'Well, of course mental health is part of health and we expect this to be part of the picture here.' They want people to talk to, you know, ChatGPT Health about their mental health and they said, you know, they had done more to try to help with that, you know, implemented more types of safeguards. But I mean it's so soon after all of these problems that we've been discussing for the past year. I just can't see how they would have, you know, fixed a lot of those issues in so short a time.
David Pierce 16:31 ↗
Yeah, and there's something to the idea of giving it a name that just makes me feel icky, right? Because it's one thing to treat this stuff as kind of the non-intended behavior of these systems, right? And that's how a lot of these companies have talked about it. Like, no, you shouldn't use it for these things, even though we recognize that people do, right? Like these things are not therapists. You shouldn't treat it as such. Gives you some leeway to be like, well, we can't help that some people are going to do it anyway. We tell you not to. But if you're going to have a thing called ChatGPT Health that is specifically built toward this use case, it just is going to feel different to people. You've made this feel like an official valid use of this tool in a way that I just have a hard time seeing that we're prepared for. Like I don't know that there's any evidence that we as the users or these platforms know how this is supposed to work yet. And it's crazy because one of the big headline things they announced here was that it's not intended for diagnosis or treatment.
Hayden Field 17:32 ↗
It's called ChatGPT Health. Like you can't do that, right?
David Pierce 17:36 ↗
I think it's like one of those like kind of disclaimers that you just put on something just so you don't get sued. It's like all the stuff that where they're like on CNBC they're like, 'this is not investment advice' and they're like, 'buy Nvidia.' It's like, well, what is this if it's not investment advice?
Hayden Field 17:50 ↗
Yeah. I'm like, who's not going to use this for diagnosis? Obviously, yeah, they would probably go to a doctor and be like, 'Okay, are you, you know, is this legit?' It also reminds me of like, it's the reason I don't have my memory turned on in ChatGPT and I often use it like logged out and I don't give it a name. It's because I think we have a tendency to rely on these things and trust them the more we talk to them. It's just human nature. It's like the reason we name our stuffed animals, the reason we name our cars, like we love to anthropomorphize things. And so if you name your ChatGPT again, like if I have friends that love to do this, like if you want to do it and you feel like you can handle it, great. I can't. Like I have to like have a barrier because, you know, I like using these tools. I do use them, but I think there's a danger to like the type of trust that you inevitably build with something when you kind of give it an identity in your brain, you know.
David Pierce 18:44 ↗
Yeah, totally. Okay. So, a couple more of these and then I'm gonna just leave and feel bad about myself for a while. The next thing is I called this in my notes the buy button onslaught. We got these sort of dueling announcements. Like you said, everybody just kind of does the same thing within three days of each other. Like everybody is just having the same idea all at the same time. And the big ones here were that Microsoft is going to put buy buttons for things directly into Copilot. And Google is going to put buy buttons in Gemini and in AI search results. I have a pretty strong feeling about this one, but I'm curious for you. Big deal, medium deal, small deal?
Hayden Field 19:26 ↗
I think, you know, it's going to be a big deal for e-commerce. I think that affiliate links is a huge way that anyone makes money. It's how influencers make money. It's how a lot of media outlets make money. You know, and all these AI companies need money desperately. It's all they can talk about. They need compute. They need money. So, and they also want to deliver on investor promises. So, I mean, this is one way to do that. They get, you know, a slice of the pie when they recommend something. You can buy something right then and there. Why wouldn't you? It's why Amazon is so popular. So, yeah. I mean, probably a big deal, honestly. It's kind of going to change the landscape and once again take earnings from other people and companies that have been using that as a big money maker and kind of redirect them towards AI companies.
David Pierce 20:11 ↗
Okay. Okay. So, I think you landed in the right place there, which is good because I actually think this is a big deal, at least in theory, right? Like, is it possible this won't work at all and it'll go away? Maybe. But I do think we've been waiting for ads to show up in these things. We've been waiting for more ways for them to monetize rather than just trying to get everybody to pay 20 bucks a month. And the idea that this might do it feels right to me for all the reasons you just said, right? These things are good at shopping. It's the thing I use Gemini and ChatGPT for weirdly that just like became a thing that I just go to shop for. Like I needed light bulbs for a chandelier we just bought. And rather than like Google every imaginable kind of light bulb, I uploaded a picture of the light bulb it used in the instructions diagram and was like, 'What is this and where do I buy it?' And it did it in one shot. It found me the light bulb it needed. Like that's a great use of AI. And if they can figure out how to take money out of that transaction, they're going to make a lot of money. This is going to be hugely complicated for retailers, for anyone who sells anything. Maybe huge mess, but like if I'm an AI company, this is the cleanest, simplest way to make money. And if they can make it work, it actually feels like a big deal.
Hayden Field 21:26 ↗
I agree with you. It's like it's really changing the landscape. My other thought on the buy button thing actually is that I think this is going to be a really interesting UI reckoning because the idea of just shoving a bunch of buy buttons into the chat experience isn't going to work, right? Like we're at this place now where we're already at the edges of text UI where maybe it can just be a bunch of paragraphs and bullet points. If you're going to do buy buttons, you need a thing that is graphical, right? Like you need a thing that looks a lot more like shopping than chat. And this, I think, is going to push all of these companies to figure out like, okay, how do we actually show this stuff to you in more sort of properly tuned ways than just treating everything like a messaging system?
David Pierce 22:13 ↗
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's going to be like, you know, how there's like the big push towards multimodal, voice, etc. And now I think we're going to see a little bit more of a push towards just display and graphics because, you know, I asked it to show me photos of a range of things the other day and it was like, 'Oh, I can't display those.' So yeah, and I was just like dresses or something, something normal. So yeah, I think that we're definitely going to see some expansion there.
Okay, two more and to avoid ending on the bleakest one on the list here, let's just talk about the Grok scandal a little bit here. This is a bigger one than we can do in full here, but the Grok deepfake imagery problem. I want to talk about it in this particular sense because I think it matters in this particular sense. Like is this thing in a big picture way a big deal, a medium deal or a small deal?
Hayden Field 23:06 ↗
Great question. Yeah, definitely a huge deal. I would say bigger than big because, you know, a lot of people like to say, 'Oh, well, Photoshop, you know, other tools, anyone can do this. Why is it such a big deal that Grok is doing this?' Well, it's because it's doing it publicly. It's doing it and we're in a direct thread with the person being deepfaked and anyone can see it and you can do it for not only just public figures and celebrities but anyone that you disagree with. So I think that it's a huge deal. I also think the fact that it was happening to children, minors, I mean, basically across the board, it's a huge bad thing. But the fact that the company didn't do much about it at all until a ton of countries started talking about or banning X also told me a lot. I think a ton of countries started investigating. Nothing really happened. Ton of countries said, 'Oh, we're probably going to ban it.' Nothing really happened. A couple countries did say they're going to ban it. Okay, now it looks like xAI is starting to make some changes. So, I think it was also kind of an interesting example of how much power people have. You know, a lot of times we feel like we don't have any say in what these platforms do, but we do as a collective. So, I think that was kind of a good example of that and that's also part of why it's a big deal. Not only the fact it was happening and how bad it was, but also the response and what actually ended up making a shift.
David Pierce 24:37 ↗
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way of looking at it. And I think that that sort of pace of response that you talk about has been really interesting to watch because I agree with you that my immediate reaction was like obviously this is reprehensible and awful, right? Like this shouldn't be happening. This shouldn't be allowed to happen. Liz Lopatto wrote a great piece for us about the ways in which like Tim Cook and Sam are culpable in this and I agree with all of it. It did seem for a while like nothing would change and nothing would come of it, right? And there's a lot of that right now particularly when Elon Musk is involved. But there was a sense that like this platform is already so sort of off the rails and bizarre and it's run by this person who has sort of proven himself untouchable over and over and over again that maybe nothing will happen. But it does feel like some combination of the mounting political pressure and the just obvious horrors of it, particularly as it relates to children, it does seem like there are real consequences and that things are going to have to change as a result of those real consequences. Like the nihilist in me says it'll be a lot of yelling that ultimately doesn't really go anywhere. But like you said, there are starting to be like in the UK, this stuff has already started to change because the UK has made and followed through on threats about the platform as a result.
Hayden Field 25:56 ↗
Definitely. And I mean, the Take It Down Act that finishes going into effect in May, I think will also have some authority here because right now it's already not allowed, but platforms don't have to really fully figure out how to take these things down until May. So, I think we'll see more changes in the next six months. But yeah, I mean, I think the global response to this has been really interesting and moved the needle a little bit. I think the fact that, yeah, like popular celebrities back when they were minors are seeing this happen and, you know, like there's just honestly a bipartisan issue is like child safety. So, I think that's kind of why this has happened so quickly because on both sides of the aisle, everyone agrees we shouldn't have deepfakes of children, especially, you know, undressed ones. I think everyone can agree on that honestly.
David Pierce 26:48 ↗
Yeah, if anything, you can get too much policy done by saying we have to protect the children. It is one of the few things that everybody agrees on, which is good. All right, last one. Gmail AI inbox. This is a thing we haven't really talked about on this show, but it is like a surface billions of people use all the time and Google is like rewriting a lot of people's email inboxes with AI. Big deal, medium deal, small deal?
Hayden Field 27:18 ↗
Okay, I don't know how this is like in the full big picture context, but to me it's a big deal.
David Pierce 27:23 ↗
Okay.
Hayden Field 27:23 ↗
I think email is the worst. Honestly, if I'm like being honest about like the big picture, probably a medium deal. But I think email is like the... it's the bane of my existence. It's the worst thing in the world. I truly believe that one of the best uses of AI could be actually fixing email and just keeping track of the actual threads you're responding to. It's probably because we're journalists, you know? It's like I get like 300 emails a day. I give everyone my number because I'm like, 'Please text me because I may have missed it in the flood.' I think, you know, I would love to have a list. Yeah. What they're suggesting I think is going to be great. I know other people use certain like AI-powered email clients that, you know, help them a lot, but I think Google's large influence and just the fact that it's like such a ubiquitous tool, Gmail, them doing something to kind of help move the needle here is going to be at least a medium deal for most people but a big deal for me.
David Pierce 28:15 ↗
Yeah, I sort of land in the same place. I think medium deal is probably the right answer at the end of this because we wrote a couple of stories. Jay Peters covered this and tried it out for us and the comments on his stories were very funny from a bunch of people who were like, 'What are you, 72 years old? You still use email?' And then a bunch of other people who were like, 'I have 150,000 unread emails, and what I need is Google to be like, here are the two that matter.' And I don't know what you're like as an emailer, but I used to be a really religious inbox zero person. I would go through every email. If I had five things in my inbox, it would stress me out. And I was like very intense about making sure I was caught up on email. And somewhere like two or three years ago, that just collapsed on me. And now I have... I can just look at this right now. I have 361 emails in my inbox, which does still make me feel sort of itchy to say. Two-thirds of these I probably don't need to see and will never see again, but a third of them I should probably reply to. And so the idea of having something that is like a supercharged version of like the Gmail nudges where it'll just pull a thing up being like, 'You should reply to this. You got it five days ago. Do you care?' That could be very valuable. That said, I think email just as a thing everybody does all day is a kind of rapidly dying idea. In part it's Gmail's fault. Like its filters are bad. We all get too much spam. I think email is just like... it's a surface everyone interacts with but is less and less important to how people sort of do their lives and communications that I feel like the idea of this even a few years ago would have been monumentally huge and now it feels like it's smaller only because email is smaller.
Hayden Field 29:57 ↗
Agreed. Yeah. Also the search sucks too, I have to say. But yeah, I mean, I think you don't even want to see my inbox. I can't even tell you the number. You will face-proof it. Get it right now. Go to your inbox. How many do you have?
David Pierce 30:09 ↗
Okay. My personal one, 313, but that's like I know what they all are. It's like I'm just leaving some unread because, you know.
Hayden Field 30:17 ↗
Sure.
My work one, I only open the emails that I actually need to see. So I should... I need to mark all the rest as read, but it's like there's so many that I really just open the ones I need to see and I don't look at the rest.
David Pierce 30:33 ↗
Say the number.
Hayden Field 30:34 ↗
Think you're going to faint.
David Pierce 30:35 ↗
Say the number.
Hayden Field 30:36 ↗
12,000. No.
David Pierce 30:40 ↗
Oh god.
Hayden Field 30:41 ↗
12,000. Listen, I used to be like you, though. I'm not kidding. I used to be a psycho about being in inbox zero. I could not leave the day with even one email in my inbox. But my most viral tweet of my life was me saying basically, you can choose between as a journalist having a life, staying on top of email, and writing like good stories. And I truly believe I've chosen having a life and writing good stories, but I can't stay on top of my email. I do click the ones I need to click, but I'm like, I can't just like mark all the rest as read. It's just too crazy. So, yeah, I'm at 12,000 for the foreseeable future. At least our emails delete every 90 days.
David Pierce 31:15 ↗
Once you get this feature and use it, I need you to come back on and talk about it because everybody gave Jay a bunch of crap. Jay is a person who's like an inbox zero person. He's very organized and very on top of things. And everybody's like, 'This is not for you. You don't need this feature. People with 12,000 emails in their inbox need this feature.' So, once you get to try it, I sincerely... I think you and I should both test this, see if it matters, and then we're going to come back on and litigate the future of email. It's going to be great.
Hayden Field 31:38 ↗
I can't wait. It's going to change my life.
David Pierce 31:41 ↗
Yeah. Until then, we will leave it at medium deal and we will see how it goes.
All right, Hayden, thank you for doing this. Again, there's a lot of AI stuff coming, so you will be back a lot for the rest of our lives, but thank you for catching up with me. This was great.
Hayden Field 31:55 ↗
It's a pleasure. See you soon.

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APA

Pierce, D. (2026, January 20). How BYD beat Tesla | The Vergecast [Interview transcript]. The Verge. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3001401/

MLA

David Pierce. "How BYD beat Tesla | The Vergecast." The Verge, 20 Jan. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3001401/.

BibTeX
@misc{pierce2026_3001401,
  author       = {David Pierce},
  title        = {How BYD beat Tesla | The Vergecast},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, The Verge. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {jan},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3001401/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}