Day: March 26, 2024

China’s ‘battery king’ dismisses solid-state EV commercialisation as years away

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The much-vaunted solid-state battery for electric cars is still years away from commercialisation with “a lot of showstoppers” blocking its development, said the head of the Chinese company that dominates the industry. In an interview with the Financial Times, Robin Zeng, founder and chief executive of CATL, said the much-hyped technology did not work well enough, lacked durability and still had safety problems. Industry experts believe solid-state batteries, which avoid…

China’s anxious jobseekers face reality as career aspirations vanish, youth unemployment pressure remains

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Zhang is among the countless young Chinese jobseekers grappling with disillusionment within the grim employment market, where the adjusted youth-unemployment rate for the 16-24 age group excluding students reached 15.3 per cent in February, up from 14.6 per cent in January. While the government has been rolling out rounds of supportive measures to bolster the employment that is deemed key to maintaining social stability and boosting consumption confidence, China is still faced with growing unemployment pressure amid a set of economic headwinds. The ongoing downturn in the property market, slumping…

Vietnamese Automaker VinFast to Start Selling EVs in Thailand

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Bangkok —  Vietnamese automaker VinFast announced Tuesday that it plans to sell its electric vehicles in Thailand and said it had tied up with auto dealers to open showrooms in the country. VinFast, which only began exporting its EVs last year, faces stiff competition in Thailand from Chinese automakers like BYD. Tesla also recently entered the fray. All were displaying their latest models at the Bangkok International Motor Show. The Thai EV market is small but growing fast, buoyed by incentives and subsidies from the government. The country of more…

TikTok owner ByteDance accelerates generative AI efforts with increased talent acquisition, release of new tools

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Beijing-based ByteDance’s website listed more than 320 GenAI-related job openings as of Tuesday, up from 307 vacancies posted a month earlier, according to a search conducted by the South China Morning Post. A specific search for jobs in the development of large language models (LLMs) – the technology used to train ChatGPT and similar GenAI services – returned 130 available positions, compared to 107 found in February. The tech unicorn’s so-called Flow department has already poached AI talent from Baidu’s Ernie Bot development team and Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud unit,…

Chinese-made EVs set to take 25% of European market this year

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Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Electric vehicles myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. A quarter of electric vehicles sold in the EU this year will be made in China, as the country’s new entrants continue to take sales from local rivals, according to analysis from policy group Transport & Environment.  About 19.5 per cent of battery cars sold in the bloc last year were manufactured in China, according to the company’s research, owing to rising European sales of Chinese-owned brands such as MG…

US Aims to Tap Domestic Lithium Supply Without Chinese Products

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washington —  Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a record conditional loan of $2.26 billion to tap the largest known lithium reserves in North America. The loan is an important step in an effort by the U.S. government to reduce reliance on China for the metal used to make batteries. Analysts, however, say that it may be too late to move away from reliance on China completely when it comes to metal processing and the production of batteries. The DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) says the funds,…

Sign says Phnom Penh land dispute is settled – but residents disagree

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A long-running land dispute in Cambodia’s capital of Phnom Penh took another twist Tuesday when authorities posted a big sign saying that evicted residents have agreed to move to another location – even though most residents said that wasn’t true. The dispute began nearly five years ago when former Prime Minister Hun Sen gave residential land near Tamok Lake to developers who plan to build a high-rise building.  Ever since, authorities have been trying to evict about 200 families from their homes in the Samrong Tbong community in the capital’s…

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai denounces China for filing WTO complaint over EV subsidies

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The US criticised China’s decision to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization over “discriminatory” subsidies for electric vehicles (EVs) on Tuesday, charging that the real unfair trader was the People’s Republic of China. “We are carefully reviewing the consultation request,” US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a statement. “Meanwhile, the PRC continues to use unfair, non-market policies and practices to undermine fair competition and pursue the dominance of the PRC’s manufacturers, both in the PRC and in global markets.” The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately…

Critics Slam Apple CEO Tim Cook for Laudatory Remarks in China

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Washington —  Tim Cook, CEO of the American technology giant Apple, is facing criticism at home over laudatory remarks he made about China during a recent visit to try to boost sagging iPhone sales in the lucrative market. Cook was in Shanghai for the opening of China’s largest Apple retail store on Friday and met with Chinese political and business people. He praised China for being “so vibrant and so dynamic,” in remarks widely quoted by state media and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying. The new Apple store took seven…

China’s patent figures reveal it’s closing the gap on US quantum dominance

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The United States and China have pursued different strategies to develop quantum technology – China has focused on using quantum science to secure communications, while the US has sought to develop advanced computing capabilities. But the latest patent data released by China’s intellectual property office suggests Beijing may be shifting its approach in a field the US has long held a lead in. Quantum computing, in which quantum science is harnessed to solve complex problems significantly faster than classical computers, accounted for 56.5 per cent of China’s total domestic patent…