The Belt 
Tariffs did not stop Chinese cars. New trade restrictions are arriving anyway. In the first three quarters of 2026 China exported 1.83 million vehicles to the European Union, up 87 per cent year on year and already above the whole of 2025, according to Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association. The … Read more
“I paid RMB 400,000 for this car and its driver assistance is worse than a domestic model costing a fraction of that.” That is the experience reported by hundreds of European owners of Chinese cars. Soon after delivery, the assistance system began to misbehave, at times braking hard for obstacles that were not there. The … Read more
Fourteen members of the European Parliament have formally asked the European Commission to assess whether BYD’s cars pose a security threat to the European Union, and to consider restrictions that would include excluding the company from public procurement. The written question was submitted on 4 November. It was led by Francois Kalfon, a French MEP, … Read more
Musk answered a question about Tesla opening Optimus pre-orders in December with a single word on X. The word was No. What followed was a short lesson in how consumer expectations and industrial reality are still years apart in humanoid robots. How the story started The San Francisco Standard published a report citing anonymous sources … Read more
China’s embodied AI money has gone almost entirely into factories, warehouses and logistics lines, where tasks are standard and payback is measurable. The home has been discussed for years and cracked by almost nobody. A 65 centimetre plush robot launched in Beijing in late October is an attempt to reframe that problem rather than solve … Read more
A Shenzhen listed company that most investors know as a supplier of phone and display components is redirecting more than a billion yuan into robots. Hongfuhan Technology filed to build a dedicated robot precision metal components base, and the filing is a cleaner signal of where Chinese component money is going than any funding round. … Read more
A production car has passed 500 km/h for the first time, and it was Chinese. The Yangwang U9 Xtreme recorded 503.17 km/h on a public road challenge in Abu Dhabi on 6 November, a run verified by the FIA and certified by Guinness World Records in two categories: fastest one-way speed for a production car, … Read more
A photograph posted on X on 19 October, captioned “got the HRT gang back together”, connected three of the most consequential young companies in AI and crypto finance. The three men in it had spent three weeks competing against each other as undergraduates. Ten interns, three weeks, one network In January 2016, Alexandr Wang was … Read more
Three announcements in seven days, from three different companies, all pointed the same way. The fight in physical AI has moved off model intelligence and onto the infrastructure that lets a machine learn, simulate and then act. Seven days, three moves On 21 October at GTC Berlin, Nvidia expanded its Isaac open robotics platform with … Read more
Sorting and warehousing in China are more than 80 per cent automated. Loading a truck is under 20 per cent. That gap, known in the industry as the last twenty metres, is where a new round of robot money is going. A small round with an unusual structure Anhui Qingtian Intelligent closed a Pre-A round … Read more