Tag: Prices (Fares, Fees and Rates)

Falling Lithium Prices Are Making Electric Cars More Affordable

Chin@Strategy

Lithium, the common ingredient in almost all electric-car batteries, has become so precious that it is often called white gold. But something surprising has happened recently: The metal’s price has fallen, helping to make electric vehicles more affordable. Since January, the price of lithium has dropped by nearly 20 percent, according to Benchmark Minerals, even as sales of electric vehicles have soared. Cobalt, another important battery material, has fallen by more than half. Copper, essential to electric motors and batteries, has slipped by about 18 percent, even though U.S. mines…

Natural Gas Shortages Hit China as Temperatures Plunge

Chin@Strategy

For many people across China, a shortage of natural gas and alarmingly cold temperatures are making a difficult winter unbearable. For Li Yongqiang, they mean freezing nights without heat. “We dare not turn on the heat overnight — after using it for five or six hours, the gas stops again,” Mr. Li, a 45-year-old grocer, said by telephone from his home in northern China’s Hebei Province. “The gas shortage is really affecting our lives.” The lack of natural gas, which is used widely across China to heat homes and businesses,…

Chinese Unrest Over Lockdowns Upends Global Economic Outlook

Chin@Strategy

The swelling protests against severe pandemic restrictions in China — the world’s second-largest economy — are injecting a new element of uncertainty and instability into the global economy when nations are already struggling to manage the fallout from a war in Ukraine, an energy crisis and painful inflation. For years, China has served as the world’s factory and a vital engine of global growth, and turmoil there cannot help but ripple elsewhere. Analysts warn that more unrest could further slow the production and distribution of integrated circuits, machine parts, household…

Oil Prices Slide as Investors Worry Energy Demand Is Slowing

Chin@Strategy

HOUSTON — Saudi Arabia is slashing oil exports. U.S. crude oil in storage is dropping. Members of the European Union will soon sharply reduce how much fuel they buy from Russia. Those developments would normally send oil prices sharply higher. Yet oil prices have been sliding. The U.S. benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, fell to about $80 a barrel on Friday from more than $90 at the start of the month. The global supply of oil appears to be falling, but many oil traders think that demand is heading down even…

Tesla Cuts Prices in China in Sign of Slowing Demand

Chin@Strategy

Tesla on Monday cut prices for its cars in China, a sign of intensifying competition in the world’s largest car market that provoked a slump in the company’s shares. Tesla’s Chinese website was offering the Model 3 sedan on Monday for a starting price of 265,900 renminbi, or $36,600, including government subsidies, a 5 percent reduction. The Model Y sport utility vehicle was advertised at 288,900 renminbi, a 9 percent cut. Tesla shares fell more than 6 percent before recovering a little as the price cuts reinforced fears among investors…

Businesses Brace for Currency Chaos in Asia

Chin@Strategy

Tigun Wibisana and Sandra Kok, who own the SiTigun cafe on Penang Island in Malaysia, are facing an excruciating decision that could make or break their business of 14 years: Can they increase prices to cover rising expenses without driving customers into the arms of their bigger rivals? The cost of the coffee beans that the couple, who are married, buy is spiraling because they are traded globally in U.S. dollars, and the Malaysian ringgit has fallen to a 24-year low. Compound that with an inflationary spike in prices for…

Oil Prices Tumble to Their Lowest Level Since January

Chin@Strategy

The U.S. benchmark oil price tumbled below $80 a barrel on Friday for the first time since January as traders grew increasingly worried that much of the world was headed into a recession or was already in one. The steady fall in prices from more than $120 a barrel a few months ago could easily reverse if the European Union severely limits its purchases of Russian oil as it has threatened to do. But for now, the falling oil price has offered consumers some relief from inflation. Oil prices had…

India’s Electric Vehicle Push Is Riding on Mopeds and Rickshaws

Chin@Strategy

In the United States, luxury-car buyers are snapping up Teslas and other electric cars that cost more than $60,000, and even relatively cheap models cost more than $25,000. Here in India, those are all out of reach of the vast majority of families, whose median income is just $2,400. But an electric vehicle movement is taking place nonetheless, not on four wheels, but on two and three. Electric mopeds and three-wheeled rickshaw taxis that sell for as little as $1,000 are zipping along India’s congested urban thoroughfares, cheered on by…

Oil Prices Fall After Signs of Chinese Economic Slowdown

Chin@Strategy

Oil prices fell to their lowest level in months on Monday, after signs emerged that China’s economy is faltering. The price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil, the U.S. benchmark, dipped below $90 per barrel in afternoon trading, down more than 3 percent, its lowest level since February. The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell by a similar amount, to below $95 a barrel, the lowest since March. China’s economy, which has shown signs of a slowdown for months, sputtered even more in July according to data from…

Economic Headwinds Mount as Leaders Weigh Costs of Confronting Russia

Chin@Strategy

The interruption of wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia, which together account for 28 percent of global exports, along with supply chain disruptions, a severe drought in India that has caused it to ban shipments of grain and Covid-related lockdowns in China, are also causing food prices to spiral and increasing global hunger, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. The question for both American and European policymakers is how to corral leaping prices without sending their economies into recession. The Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates to tame…