Twitter and Tesla’s interests at odds in Elon Musk’s quiet China visit

Followers of Elon Musk didn’t know what to expect from his trip to China. Would he speak about Tesla, a company with a large market and manufacturing footprint there? Or SpaceX, with its symbiotic relationship with the American state? Or even Twitter, the social network he bought because “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy”? The one thing no one expected: silence. Musk sent his last tweet late on Monday night. The uncharacteristic hiatus was broken only on Thursday morning when he returned to the US and wrote…

Chinese owner of Lotus Technology to list a stake in US via blank cheque firm

The Chinese owner of Lotus is to list a stake in a division of the luxury sports car group in the US as part of deal with a firm backed by the world’s richest man. China’s Geely said on Tuesday that it plans to merge electric carmaker Lotus Technology – an offshoot of the Norfolk-based sports car brand – with a special purpose acquisition vehicle (Spac) founded by L Catterton, which is backed by LVMH and its billionaire founder, Bernard Arnault. The Nasdaq listing is expected to value the business…

Britain’s electric dreams will never come true while China has a materials advantage | John Naughton

In his book Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future, Saul Griffith, an American inventor, entrepreneur and engineer, sets out a plan for decarbonising the US: electrify everything. From now on, every time people replace a vehicle or renovate a building or buy an appliance, they should be buying electric. Every new roof must have solar panels, all new housing must be energy efficient and shouldn’t contain a gas cooker. All that’s required to make this happen is a collective national effort comparable to the mobilisation of the…