Psst—don’t tell Apple, but it looks like there are good opportunities for phone makers in the automotive sector.
China’s Xiaomi, which alongside Apple and Samsung is among the world’s big three smartphone firms, just announced its Q2 results, showing that its first electric vehicle is something of a hit. It launched the SU7 at the end of March to considerable consumer excitement, and delivered 27,307 of the sedans in the subsequent quarter.
That brought in 6.4 billion yuan ($898 million) in revenue, helping Xiaomi to surpass analysts’ estimates, Reuters reports. A rebounding smartphone market also helped, of course, with Xiaomi’s Chinese handset shipments rising 16.5% year on year.
Xiaomi’s auto unit is still unprofitable—the company invested unusually large amounts in the SU7’s creation, and aggressive pricing meant it lost around $9,200 on each $29,900 EV it shipped. But such losses are common in the EV sector. Xiaomi claims to have enough cash to deal with five years’ worth of Chinese EV price wars, and profitability should increase in the near term as production ramps up.
“Our [EV business] size remains relatively small and car manufacturing is a typical economies-of-scale manufacturing industry,” company president Lu Weibing said in a press conference, according to the South China Morning Post. Lu said he was “confident” Xiaomi would hit its goal of shipping 120,000 cars by the end of the year.
For context, China’s BYD sold 426,039 EVs in Q2 and Tesla sold around 411,000. Xiaomi has a way to go, but then again it hasn’t even started selling its EVs outside China yet. Once it’s built out more production capacity, Xiaomi also intends to start making electric SUVs around late 2025, which would represent a major expansion of its EV efforts.
Speaking of Tesla, Elon Musk’s outfit has had to issue a rare physical recall (as opposed to the kind that just requires a remote software fix) for one of its cars.
According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a trim on the roof of the Model X SUV can come off, which could create a road hazard. That means 9,136 of the vehicles need to go in; Tesla will test how well the roof trim is fixed on and reattach if needed, Reuters reports.
More news below.
David Meyer
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NEWSWORTHY
Google class action revived. A federal appeals court has reversed the 2022 dismissal of a class action privacy lawsuit against Google, The Verge reports. The suit is about Google allegedly collecting Chrome user information such as bookmarks, passwords, and open tabs even if the user hasn’t enabled synchronization between their devices. A judge had agreed that Google adequately disclosed what it was doing in its privacy policy, but the appellate court ruled that the judge should have considered whether users actually understood what they were signing up to.
Breslow may return to Bolt. Former Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow is proposing a return to the payments firm—not to be confused with the European e-scooter giant Bolt—The Information reports. Breslow relinquished the role at the start of 2022 after a Twitter tirade accusing rival Stripe and Y Combinator of being “mob bosses.” Bolt’s business has suffered in the intervening period, and Breslow is reportedly claiming to have an overseas investor lined up who can put up big cash, though existing shareholders would be forced out if they don’t stump up more cash themselves.
U.K. accepts Meta promise. The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority has formally accepted a promise by Meta not to use Marketplace advertisers’ data to improve that platform without their permission. The antitrust authority had been investigating Meta since 2021 to see whether it had an unfair advantage in online classified ads, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, the CMA has abandoned probes into Apple and Google’s app distribution monopoly, as new tech antitrust legislation is set to come into force soon.
SIGNIFICANT FIGURES
Over 100,000
—The number of paid robo-taxi rides that Waymo now serves each week in L.A., San Francisco, and Phoenix. As TechCrunch notes, this is double the figure the Alphabet property was touting just two months ago.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
A new web crawler launched by Meta last month is quietly scraping the internet for AI training data, by Kali Hays
Federal judge derails FTC’s sweeping ban on non-compete agreements, by the Associated Press
Inside Elon Musk’s 23 active lawsuits, by Seamus Webster
Elon Musk’s Twitter deal may be the worst leveraged buyout deal for banks since Lehman, raising risks to Tesla, by Christiaan Hetzner
Atlassian’s billionaire cofounder wants to send renewable power from Australia to Singapore via a 2,600 mile-long undersea cable, by Lionel Lim
The EU wants no corner of the digital sphere left untouched, warning X and AI could be next, by AFP
The AI election nightmare is just beginning. Here’s how it could get worse, by Sharon Goldman
BEFORE YOU GO
Disney backs down. Disney is no longer trying to use a man’s signing of its Disney+ terms as an argument for the dismissal of his wrongful death lawsuit against the company, after his wife ate food at a Disney-owned restaurant that triggered her allergies and killed her, The Verge reports. Following widespread outrage over the legal ploy, Disney said it would waive its contractual right to arbitration and no longer try to stop the case going to court, due to the case’s “unique circumstances.”