Tariffs are ruining Volvo's plans to sell new EVs in the US.
The Swedish automaker said it will take a one-off, non-cash impairment charge of 11.4 billion Swedish kronor ($1.19 billion) in the second quarter related to two plug-in models: the EX90 and ES90. That means Volvo is basically reducing the value of the EVs on its balance sheet. The reason is because Donald Trump's tariffs are making it impossible for Volvo to make a profit on these models. The EX60 is still on track, apparently.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
21 minutes ago
- Associated Press
America's only rare earth producer gets a boost from Apple and Pentagon agreements
MP Materials, which runs the only American rare earths mine, announced a new $500 million agreement with tech giant Apple on Tuesday to produce more of the powerful magnets used in iPhones as well as other high-tech products like electric vehicles. This news comes on the heels of last week's announcement that the U.S. Defense Department agreed to invest $400 million in shares of the Las Vegas-based company. That will make the government the largest shareholder in MP Materials and help increase magnet production. Despite their name, the 17 rare earth elements aren't actually rare, but it's hard to find them in a high enough concentration to make a mine worth the investment. They are important ingredients in everything from smartphones and submarines to EVs and fighter jets, and it's those military applications that have made rare earths a key concern in ongoing U.S. trade talks. That's because China dominates the market and imposed new limits on exports after President Donald Trump announced his widespread tariffs. When shipments dried up, the two sides sat down in London. The agreement with Apple will allow MP Materials to further expand its new factory in Texas to use recycled materials to produce the magnets that make iPhones vibrate. The company expects to start producing magnets for GM's electric vehicles later this year and this agreement will let it start producing magnets for Apple in 2027. The Apple agreement represents a tenth of the company's pledge to invest $500 billion domestically during the Trump administration. And although the deal will provide a significant boost for MP Materials, the agreement with the Defense Department may be even more meaningful. Neha Mukherjee, a rare earths analyst with Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, said in a research note that the Pentagon's 10-year promise to guarantee a minimum price for the key elements of neodymium and praseodymium will guarantee stable revenue for MP Minerals and protect it from potential price cuts by Chinese producers that are subsidized by their government. 'This is the kind of long-term commitment needed to reshape global rare earth supply chains,' Mukherjee said. Trump has made it a priority to try to reduce American reliance on China for rare earths. His administration is both helping MP Materials and trying to encourage the development of new mines that would take years to come to fruition. China has agreed to issue some permits for rare earth exports but not for military uses, and much uncertainty remains about their supply. The fear is that the trade war between the world's two biggest economies could lead to a critical shortage of rare earth elements that could disrupt production of a variety of products. MP Materials can't satisfy all of the U.S. demand from its Mountain Pass mine in California's Mojave Desert. The deals by MP Materials come as Beijing and Washington have agreed to walk back on their non-tariff measures: China is to grant export permits for rare earth magnets to the U.S., and the U.S. is easing export controls on chip design software and jet engines. The truce is intended to ease tensions and prevent any catastrophic fall-off in bilateral relations, but is unlikely to address fundamental differences as both governments take steps to reduce dependency on each other. ___ Associated Press reporters David Klepper and Didi Tang contributed to this report from Washington D.C. Michael Liedtke contributed from San Francisco.
Motor Trend
23 minutes ago
- Motor Trend
Future and Past Collide—Confusingly, Excitingly—at the World's Best Car Meet
Uncertainty is everywhere in the automotive industry. On-again off-again tariffs, flat sales, the looming threat of Chinese automakers, and yes, electrification all present hurdles. Uncertainty on the latter—frequently conflated with automotive technological progress by enthusiasts—was top of mind for me at the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed. A ride-along over the weekend with Travis Pastrana in a 2025 Subaru WRX ARA24 and with Max McCrae in his uncle Colin's 1990 Subaru Legacy RS at the festival's Forest Rally Stage and watching the Festival's signature timed shootout has me thinking a bit differently about the march of progress. The 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed showcased automotive progress with Chinese EVs, rallying with Travis Pastrana in a Subaru WRX, and debates on electrification's impact. The event also highlighted new car debuts and significant Chinese automaker presence, reflecting industry shifts. This summary was generated by AI using content from this MotorTrend article Read Next Pastrana, to most Americans, needs little introduction. Some know him for his Hall of Fame motocross career, a fearless freestyle motocross X Games champ, stuntman from Nitro Circus, or as a NASCAR racer. But rallying and rallycross, now that he's retired from competitive motocross due to a frightfully long list of injuries (including, as he was quick to point out, a broken urethra), has long seemed to be his second love. Pastrana recently rejoined Subaru Motorsports USA where he's competing in the American Rally Association. At Goodwood, he took me for a ride in Subaru's Open 4WD WRX ARA24 car. These cars are heavily modified from stock WRXs, featuring restricted 2.0-liter turbocharged flat-4s good for 320 hp and 380 lb-ft of torque, running through a six-speed sequential transmission and mechanical differential to all four wheels. At each corner the stock suspension is swapped for new springs and dampers with a foot of travel and 15-inch wheels on gravel rally tires. Short of the hybridized million-dollar tube frame rally cars now running in the World Rally Championship, the open class WRX ARA car is about as bleeding edge as you can get in the rally world. The WRX ARA's runs—and those of the Toyota and Hyundai WRC teams— wouldn't be officially counted on the Forest Rally Stage, but the fact that the festival was posting times was enough to bring out the full competitor in Pastrana and the rest of the Subaru team as they sought to post the fastest time in one of their laps. Slower and wider than the Rally1 WRC cars (not to mention cheaper, too), the WRX ARA24 would have its work cut out for it. Our run was, in a word, quick. I have no idea of the time of our particular run, but Pastrana and the team would go on to post the second-quickest time on the course of the weekend at 2.33.2, just a couple seconds behind a Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 (which the Subaru team was quick to point out cut the Gymkhana barrel out of its unofficial run). The car felt phenomenally fun from the passenger seat, seemingly reacting instantaneously to Pastrana's steering, braking, and throttle inputs, while the rally suspension soaked up the ruts, berms, and jumps on the course as softly as a dune runner might. Watching an elite athlete such as Pastrana work up close was equally fascinating, as he wielded the WRX like Shohei Ohtani does a baseball bat, or Connor McDavid does a hockey stick—using their tools' strengths to improve their individual performances and knowing when they might need to make up for any weaknesses in their equipment. While not yet quite as accomplished as his father Alister, grandfather Jimmy, or uncle Colin, Max McCrae has already set out to make a name of his own in the WRC's Group Rally2, where he runs a Citroen C3 Rally2. He was at Goodwood, however, helping honor the legacy of his uncle. That's where the Legacy RS comes in. In many ways both Colin McCrae's and Subaru's rally journeys began with this car, which was piloted to a second place finish in the 1992 Rally Sweden by Colin. Subaru would soon replace the Legacy with the Impreza, marking a direct lineage to Pastrana's WRX. On paper, it should prove a match for the modern ARA car. Simpler, and lighter than its modern descendant, it's powered by a 2.0-liter turbocharged flat-4 with 290 hp and 289 lb-ft of torque. But some of its other mechanicals are simpler, both in terms of how they operate and how they're manufactured. The Legacy lacks a modern anti-lag system and puts its power down through a five-speed dogbox manual transmission. Its all-wheel drive system also features permanently locked differentials that make low speed maneuvering difficult, and a hydraulic handbrake without the responsiveness of a modern unit. Despite the, uh, legacy of this particular Legacy, McCrae didn't take it easy on the car during our ride along with him. To be honest, I didn't get the sense that he could if he wanted to maximize its performance because nothing seemed to happen instantly or easily in the Legacy RS. On straights McCrae needed to manage the body's balance as the car skipped down the stage, gearshifts in a shift pattern the motorsports world has long moved past, and brakes without the feel or stopping power of their modern counterparts. In corners, McCrae had to balance the hydraulic hand brake, diffs, and also keep the engine in the sweet spot of its powerband where he could minimize lag. McCrae had to work twice as hard to get every last bit of performance out of that Legacy, which leaves less room for the driver to actually focus on driving and maximizing their own performance. Progress rears its head again during the Festival of Speed's headlining timed shoot out on Sunday afternoon, where competitors vie to post the quickest time up the 1.16-mile, nine-turn hillclimb. Last year the Subaru Project Midnight WRX, a highly modified WRX ARA rally car, built, like the rally car by Subaru Motorsports USA technical partner Vermont Sports Cars, with 670 hp designed to dominate on this single event and driven by Scott Speed came in second to a quad-motor electric Ford Supervan. This year, the team, facing a 2,000-plus horsepower quad-motor Ford F-150 Lightning Supertruck, expected the same results despite some changes based on Speed's feedback from last year. As Vermont Sports Cars technical director Yannis Loison told us, 'With [an] internal combustion engine only we'll never reach what [Ford has] with the EV. If we really want to compete against them, to try to beat them, we need a combo with [an] internal combustion engine and something electric.' Unfortunately for the Subaru Motorsports USA team, Loison proved prophetic. Despite improving by 1.04 seconds to 45.03 versus last year, the Ford truck still beat the souped-up Subaru, finishing in 43.22 seconds. And that's through no fault of Speed. Like Pastrana earlier in the WRX ARA car, in-car footage of Speed showed him methodically wringing every last ounce of performance out of Project Midnight, shaving grass on corners where he could, and narrowly skirting the unforgiving walls near the top of the climb on the unforgiving course. But the Supertruck, driven by Romain Dumas, made up for any disadvantage it might have in its weight with power, simply eliminating any straight in a blink while still somehow managing to carry high speeds through corners. In a lot of ways what the driving loving public and motorsports is going through in trying to figure out how much—if at all—to embrace electrification mimics what other sports have gone through as technology progressed. Professional baseball, when faced with introducing home run–friendly aluminum or composite bats, opted to preserve the tradition of wood bats instead. That makes it much more difficult for pros to hit home runs, and as an indirect result the league has tweaked the game's rules to improve offense. Professional hockey, meanwhile, allowed the introduction of aluminum and eventually composite sticks in the '90s. The long term result is a game that's faster, and more offensive, thanks to players who've since learned how to maximize the whippier, more responsive sticks and improve their own games. I'm not advocating one way or the other, but at some point we're going to have to decide collectively as driving enthusiasts whether we want to embrace the excitement and promise of new technologies or preserve the past in stasis. Other items from the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed The auto show is alive and well: Big international auto shows have been shrinking in significance for about a decade now, with COVID nearly decimating them entirely. The Goodwood Festival of Speed perhaps shows a way forwards for the future. The infield of the festival featured stands from the likes of BMW, Ford, Honda, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lotus, MG, Renault, and more, where folks could hop in and out of cars back-to-back. In between, they could enjoy hillclimb runs, festival food and drinks, live music, shopping, and kid play areas. Some automakers even took the opportunity to debut new cars, such as the 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 6 N and Ioniq 6 N Performance, Honda Super EV concept (a little Kei-sized city EV), and the Porsche Cayenne Electric, and run them up the hill for the public. Where else can you see a new car debut and hit the road in the same day? Goodwood, that's where. Hot commodities: When it comes to the infield auto show–like section of Goodwood, we think the three individually most popular vehicles were the Ioniq 6 N, the Renault 5 E-Tech, and the Renault's sporty cousin, the Alpine A290. Hyundai's large display featured both new Ioniq 6 N iterations front-and-center and there was never a time we walked by where they weren't surrounded by throngs of people. Even the tech talk Hyundai did on the cars seemed well-attended. The Renault and Alpine, meanwhile, are stylish Volkswagen Golf–sized EVs that look stellar in person. Well-proportioned outside, inside they featured high quality body-colored textile seats and accent stitching, and even an optional baguette holder on the Renault version. The Renault 5 E-Tech has 40 and 52 kWh battery packs and up to 150 hp from a single front-mounted motor with up to 249 miles of range on the generous WTLP cycle. The sportier Alpine A290 keeps that 52 kWh pack and ups power to 217 hp in its hottest configuration, dropping to 236 miles. The Renault starts at around $30,000, while the Alpine nearer $46,000, though both notably include British VAT. Foreign journalists we've spoken to adore driving both cars. The Chinese are coming, the Chinese are coming! With the United Kingdom officially out of the European Union, its own automotive industry in distress, and the Chinese looking for more markets for their EVs, BYD, Chery, Geely, SAIC, Xiaomi, and Xpeng had a sizeable footprint at Goodwood. SAIC, which owns MG, has had a growing presence on UK roads for years and its booth, headlined by a bumblebee-yellow Cyberster, was packed all weekend. Ditto Lotus' (owned by Geely), with the Electre and Emiya, swamped. Even brands without a British legacy had the public's attention. Xiaomi and XPeng ran cars up the hill (MG did, too). BYD's Denza luxury brand's booth had a DJ and electric violinist playing all weekend and featured a steady line of folks who wanted to sit inside the luxury D9 van. Chery also had a clever way to get folks into their cars. It provided a fleet of Jaecoo and Omoda SUVs—both from two new export-only brands—to shuttle folks to and from parking lots and around the sprawling grounds. We asked one driver, an older gentleman driving an Omoda 5 compact PHEV SUV, about his perception of Chinese EVs. He responded, 'That's the question, isn't it? My friends and I have been talking a lot about that, and we've come to the conclusion that they're perfectly alright.' According to the BBC, one in 10 new cars sold in the UK thus far this year are Chinese. MG and Polestar represent the bulk of those sales.
CNET
25 minutes ago
- CNET
Your OnePlus 13 Will Get a Dedicated AI 'Mind Space' in Update Rolling Out Now
It's a non-negotiable right now that every phone-maker out there must have a plan for integrating AI into its devices. OnePlus is a little late to the party, but it's arrived nonetheless. Back in May, the company announced plans for bringing its own vision of personalized AI to OnePlus phones, and from this week, it's rolling out to the OnePlus 13 and 13R. At a launch event in London earlier this year I not only got to see the first AI features to land on OnePlus phones in action, but also learn about what the company's future plans are for bringing more complex and sophisticated AI features to its phones down the road. With all Android phone-makers increasingly making use of best-in-class Qualcomm chips and relying on Google's Gemini AI, having a strong AI strategy is one way they can set themselves apart from rivals. I was impressed with how far OnePlus seems to be thinking ahead and not rushing into going ham on AI. Its initial AI rollout will likely capture people's attention, even if its ideas aren't entirely original. The OnePlus 13's upcoming "Mind Space." Katie Collins/CNET OnePlus' statement AI tool is called Plus Mind, which can save, suggest, store and search based on what's currently on your phone screen, ultimately depositing the details in an app OnePlus is calling "Mind Space." Plus Mind can be activated at any time, either by a dedicated button (if your phone has one) or by a swipe-up gesture. If it spots details of an event or reservation, it will propose creating a calendar entry. Mind Space is a place to "organize your fragmented memories," said Arthur Lam, the company's director of OxygenOS and AI strategy. This is a hub where all of your most important content will live. AI search will allow you to find what you need without the information overload you may be used to, or it will automatically translate content into another language to make it accessible and searchable. Plus Mind will debut with the upcoming launch of the OnePlus 13S, a phone designed specifically for the Asian market, which comes with a dedicated AI button (the "Plus Key," as OnePlus is calling it) on the side of the phone. That means for those of us in the US and Europe, we'll have to wait a little longer to enjoy OnePlus' vision for AI ourselves. It will eventually be rolling out to the OnePlus 13 as an over-the-air update later this year, although the company is yet to confirm exactly when. The Plus Key on the OnePlus 13S. Katie Collins/CNET Plus Mind and Mind Space: My first impressions On the OnePlus 13, which shipped before the addition of the Plus Key, you instead have to use a three-fingered swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen to activate the AI features. When I tested this in person, it was hit or miss as to whether I could get it to work. There's definitely a knack to it -- you need to start from a couple of centimeters above the lower rim -- and there's a high chance of accidentally displacing what's on the screen. It's clear that OnePlus designed Plus Mind to be used with a dedicated button, and no doubt all future OnePlus phones will feature a Plus Key of their own. It is a shame in retrospect, though, that the key is missing from its most widely available 2025 flagship phone. After using Plus Mind to save a variety of content, I had mixed opinions on how useful it was. The process of capturing and creating events out of details displayed on screen was seamless, and I found that I was able to use natural language within Mind Space to pull up the details of these events after the fact. But when saving articles I thought were interesting, Mind Space wasn't able to provide a summary of the entirety of what I'd been reading -- only of the specific text that was on screen at the time I activated Plus Mind. OnePlus' natural language search within Mind Space worked well for me. Katie Collins/CNET I also struggled to organise the content into collections within Mind Space. This is a manual process, rather than a situation in which the AI takes over to categorize everything you've saved. This feels a little like a missed opportunity. Like other Android phone makers, OnePlus has the benefit of tapping into the best of Google's Gemini phone tools, while also choosing what additional features it wants to bring to its phones to make them stand apart from its competitors. That said, its initial foray into AI with Mind Space is bound to draw comparisons to what Nothing is doing with Essential Space -- its own dedicated hub for saving content, snippets, links and reminders. What's next for OnePlus AI? Plus Mind and Mind Space are just the first part of OnePlus' three-stage AI strategy. Next up is integrating a large language model into Plus Mind, allowing your phone to understand your habits to create a "persona" it uses to understand you. "It will help you understand yourself," said Lam, and could even help you discover something "surprising" or "enlightening" about yourself. Stage 3 is when OnePlus plans to go full AI agent, turning into a personal assistant that can know everything about you. But the company's not quite there just yet. In the meantime it has a few other ideas in the pipeline. Coming first to India (again, not the EU or the US), are AI VoiceScribe, which will provide you with a quick summary after your call on WhatsApp, Snapchat or Telegram, and AI Call Assistant, which provides you with in-call translation in both text and voice. On the more playful side, OnePlus is introducing two AI photo tools. The first, AI Best Face 2.0, will allow you to correct the faces of up 20 people in a group photo so that everyone is looking their best (if they have their eyes closed, for example, or what OnePlus describes as a "suboptimal expression"). AI Reframe, meanwhile, will analyze your carelessly shot holiday snaps and suggest creative cropping and framing to make it look like you weren't three cocktails deep when you shot them. These photo features will be come to OnePlus phones this summer, but for the major OnePlus AI tool rollout, you might have to wait a little longer.
