On my route home from work is a big arterial road with a whole line of different car dealerships. There’s a Toyota yard, a Ford dealership, a Mazda and a Volkswagon. A series of uber-fancy ones selling everything from Audis to McLarens to Lamborghinis. And as I made my one home one night a couple of weeks ago, a new sign caught my eye.

What the hell is Zeekr? I wondered.

Actually, truth be told I already had a pretty good hunch and a quick Google that evening confirmed my suspicion.

Zeekr is the latest premium Chinese EV company to hit the New Zealand market.

You can add it to Geely and Farizon, EV brands owned by the same Chinese conglomerate. Add to those Xpeng, which has its first dealerships and sells a pretty smart-looking coupe SUV. Add to it Leapmotor, Dongfeng and old mate BYD, and if you’ve spent any time on the road in New Zealand of late, you’ve surely noticed we are in the midst of a bit of a revolution with Chinese Evs.

It’s not just us, of course. It’s everywhere.

Last year, China exported $115B worth of electric vehicles. That was a 43% increase on 2024. And they’re not only relying on a single export market for their sales. Chinese EV sales are booming almost everywhere. 66 countries last year spent more than $US 100m on Chinese EVs.

Why am I telling you this? Well I reckon there’s good reason to think that Donald Trump’s decision to scrap emissions standards and environmental regulations this week, is the equivalent of laying down your king and resigning the chess board. It might make combustion engine vehicles a bit cheaper for U.S consumers in the short term, but as the World slowly shifts to cleaner technology, it hands the Chinese EV makers an even greater advantage.

Where is the incentive for U.S carmakers to make good EVs? Where is the incentive to push consumers towards electric vehicles? There’s a reason Tesla has opposed scrapping the vehicle standards. And what will it mean for U.S carmakers trying to sell into markets where emissions standards are still in place?

China’s used some pretty extraordinary methods to propel its clean tech industries. They’ve subsidised and propped up EV makers in a way that foreign manufacturers say is anti-competitive and unfair. But look at BYD’s extraordinary vertical integration. They own mining rights. They revolutionised battery technology. They have purpose-built ships, designed to the perfect specifications to maximise the number of vehicles they can export. And look at the quality, the features, and price point of Chinese EVs. There is a reason they are poving so popular.

I don’t think for a moment that EVs are the solution to everything. But I do think that on balance they’ll play a huge part in domestic transport in the near future.

If you agree, then in my view Donald Trump and the United States has just thrown in the towel and more or less guaranteed that China will dominate that EV future.

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On the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Full Show Podcast for Saturday 14 February, 2026, New Zealand music legends Six60 join Jack in studio to discuss recording their 5th album in live one-takes and to give a very special performance.

Jack weighs up who the world leader in the manufacture of electric vehicles will be.

Francesca Rudkin dishes on the hotly anticipated film adaptation of the classic novel, Wuthering Heights.

Nici Wickes shares a recipe guaranteed to conjure a marriage proposal this Valentine's Day.

Get the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Full Show Podcast every Saturday on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Six60 have spent more than 15 years working on their craft.

With the heights they’ve reached you might forgive the band for taking some time to relax a little, but there is simply no stopping the boys Matiu, Marlon, Ji and Chris.

Six60 have released their 5th album, it's called Right Here Right Now. And what makes this album so special is that it’s all recorded live. Every track is a one-take wonder.

The boys joined Jack in the studio to discuss the process behind making their new album and give a special performance of one of their new tracks.

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My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney

Eden Fox, an artist on the brink of her big break, sets off for a run before her first exhibition. When she returns to the home she recently moved into, Spyglass, an enchanting old house in Hope Falls, nothing is as it should be. Her key doesn't fit.

Red Dawn Over China by Frank Dikotter

The history of modern China has long been portrayed as a tale of Communists fighting in the hills for freedom, gradually gaining popular support by taking land from the rich and giving it to the poor. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Red Dawn Over China reveals how unlikely the Party's victory actually was, had it not been for financial and military support from the Soviet Union.

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If I remember correctly, cicadas used to be quite a bit more common in the Auckland Summer Months. Yep they changed from year to year and occasionally almost completely quiet, but that was rare, to be frank.

In Christchurch they’ve been a lot less noisy – especially the past 4 years or so. But early 2026 it started with a few choruses and now the “clappers” are also occupying the sound-scape.

Male cicadas have so-called Timpany, which are little drum cavities on the underside of the bellies. They look a little bit like bent and shaped flaps.

The timpany are really good at amplifying the sounds they make to lure females closer and closer – Party time!

Females are known to aim for the noisiest male on the block. Egg-laying is happening from now on, at this time of the year.

When the female has a good number of fertilised eggs to get rid of, she climbs into a suitable host tree. Her Ovipositor is a pretty useful tool to lay eggs inside the wood of a branch; a dozen or two are laid in an elegant pattern in the bark, where the eggs develop into very small larvae; these will emerge late autumn or early winter.

Gardeners are often quite good at finding these herring-bone pattern because the damage in the twigs often causes weak-spots, leading to broken branches; Fruit growers are not keen on having many damaged branches in the orchard.

Life Cycle:

The eggs hatch in a few months and the tiny “nymphs” drop off the branch or twig in which they were born... drop to the ground and start digging. They create a tunnel and a cell around a tree root (or shrub root – or even grass roots) and suck the sweet phloem juices out of the root system – sugar is turned into protein and the body grows.

They shed their skin 4, 5, 6 times and a few years later (up to 5 or 6 years in the soil!) they climb to the top layers of the soil... waiting for a perfect time to emerge at night in late spring or summer

At night the nymphs come out of the soil, climb up a tree trunk and grasp the bark

Their skin splits and out comes a fully winged adult cicada; it pumps up its wings and is ready for some R&R... singing and dancing

Threats to larval cicadas:

When they are in the top layers of the soil late winter/early spring, they are in easy reach of the probing bills of kiwi.

Yep – cicada nymphs are the spring-time bulk food of Northland Brown Kiwi.

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The heart is a phenomenal muscle in the body that is often described as ‘natures quiet overachiever’. Small steady steps work to keep it healthy are important as heart disease is responsible for 33% of deaths in New Zealand. It’s our biggest killer.

Dr Bryan Betty joins Jack Tame to discuss what Kiwis can do to keep their heart healthy, and it doesn't take much.

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A smarter Siri? You'll be waiting a little longer..

Apple initially launched - or should that be teased? - the launch of Apple Intelligence in June, 2024. It was thought that March might be the month, but there have been further delays. Bloomberg is reporting it could be May before the start of the launch that is now though to be spread over several releases. iOS27 might see the bulk when it comes out in September. The issue is apparently that Siri doesn’t always properly process queries or can take too long to handle requests. The ability for Siri to access personal data - like text messages or emails, the key selling point of Apple Intelligence - are the most likely to slip.

Anthropic has raised a fresh round of funding

The new round has more than DOUBLED its value from September. They've got an additional $30 billion in cash, which takes their post-money valuation to $380 billion. It's the second largest private tech funding round on record second only to OpenAI. Anthropic's Super Bowl ad which mocked Open AI's plan to add ads to their free tiers pushed Claude into the App Store's top 10 apps. OpenAI in turn effectively said Anthropic is elitist and ads allow broad access to everyone.

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Small Town Scandal - (Neon) Tom Sainsbury brings his hit true-crime parody podcast to the screen. The beloved comedian plays a disgraced journalist-turned-true-crime podcast host investigating the death of his millionaire uncle in a town filled with eccentric suspects.

Queen of Chess - (Netflix) Hungarian chess prodigy Judit Polgár challenges champion Garry Kasparov and her controlling father over 15 years, breaking gender barriers to become the greatest female player ever.

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