EV sales soar to 300k for one car brand as 500-mile range car is launched
Drivers are switching to EVs en masse following the release of an impressive model with a 518-mile range that gets from naught to 60 mph in just 3.23 seconds and boasts a top speed of 157 mph.
According to Motorfinity, approximately 44 per cent of UK drivers are considering switching to electric vehicles (EVs), but many have long been put off by their limited range. For example, the original Nissan Leaf, launched in 2011, can only drive around 100 miles before needing to be put on charge — its range even lower in colder temperatures.
But Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi is changing everything with its dramatic entry into the EV market, achieving a remarkable milestone with just its second ever model. Amazingly, the company received more than 200,000 pre-orders for its new YU7 electric SUV within just three minutes of its launch.
Xiaomi later announced on social media that this number had climbed to more than 289,000 within the first hour. And after 72 hours, Xiaomi's 351 retail stores across China reported up to 315,900 locked-in orders for the YU7. This surge in demand is a significant achievement for Xiaomi — outpacing the annual deliveries of many other EV manufacturers — as the company only started making EVs in 2024, when the SU7 sedan was launched.
The YU7, which is priced at roughly £25,790 (253,500 yuan), is positioned to compete directly with Tesla's Model Y — and it's almost four per cent cheaper than its American rival. Following the opening of pre-orders, Xiaomi's shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange surged to an all-time high, rising by a staggering eight per cent in early trading, before closing up 3.6 percent.
The YU7 may only be Xiaomi's second vehicle, but it has already demonstrated the company's ability to disrupt China's highly competitive EV market. BYD currently leads China's new energy vehicle market with a 29 per cent share and sales — just shy of one million cars from January to April. In contrast, Tesla holds just under five per cent of the market, while Xiaomi has quickly captured a 3.5 per cent share.
Xiaomi's shares have risen by more than 70 per cent so far this year, making it one of the top-performing companies on the Hong Kong stock exchange with a value of around £139 billion. The rapid growth of China's EV industry on the whole is also evident, with production of new energy vehicles — including EVs and hybrids — increasing by more than 46 per cent in the first four months of the year.
Meanwhile, sales of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars have declined by six percent, highlighting a dramatic shift toward domestic EV manufacturers. Foreign brands, once dominant in China, now hold just 31 per cent of the market across both EVs and traditional fuel-powered cars, underscoring the rise of domestic companies like Xiaomi.
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The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
Elon Musk's ‘America' party could focus on a few pivotal congressional seats
The new US political party that Elon Musk has boasted about bankrolling could initially focus on a handful of attainable House and Senate seats while striving to be the decisive vote on major issues amid the thin margins in Congress. Tesla and SpaceX's multibillionaire CEO mused about that approach on Friday in a post on X, the social media platform he owns, as he continued feuding with Donald Trump over the spending bill that the president has signed into law. On Saturday, without immediately elaborating, the former Trump adviser announced on X that he had created the so-called America party. 'One way to execute on this would be to laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts,' wrote Musk, who is the world's richest person and oversaw brutal cuts to the federal government after Trump's second presidency began in January. 'Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring they serve the true will of the people.' Musk did not specify any seats he may be eyeing. In another post on Friday, when the US celebrated the 249th anniversary of its declaration of independence from the UK, Musk published a poll asking his X followers whether he should advance on his previously stated idea of creating the America party to contend against both Republicans and Democrats. More than 65% of about 1.25m responses indicated 'yes' as of Saturday morning. 'Independence Day is the perfect time to ask if you want independence from the two-party (some would say uniparty) system!' Musk also wrote in text accompanying the poll, which he promoted several times throughout Friday. Musk on Saturday then posted on X: 'Today, the America party is formed to give you back your freedom.' He also wrote: 'By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party, and you shall have it! When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy.' One of the replies to Musk's announcement that he reposted showed a picture of a two-headed snake near the word 'uniparty' as well as the logos of the Democratic and Republican parties. 'End the Uniparty,' the reply said. Musk in turn responded to the reply with: 'Yes.' He also suggested the party would run during the 2026 midterms. New political parties do not have to formally register with the Federal Election Commission 'until they raise or spend money over certain thresholds in connection with a federal election'. Musk's posts on Friday and Saturday came after he spent $277m of his fortune supporting Trump's victorious 2024 presidential campaign. The Republican president rewarded Musk by appointing him to lead the unofficial 'department of government efficiency', or Doge, which abruptly and chaotically slashed various government jobs and programs while claiming it saved $190bn. But Doge's actions may also have cost taxpayers $135bn, according to an analysis by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan non-profit dedicated to studying the federal workforce. Musk left Doge at the end of May and more recently became incensed at Trump's support for a budget bill that would increase the US debt by $3.3tn. He threatened to financially support primary challenges against every member of Congress who supported Trump's spending bill – along with promising to 'form the America Party' if it passed. The House voted 218 to 214 in favor of the spending bill, with just two Republicans joining every Democrat in the chamber in unsuccessfully opposing it. In the Senate, JD Vance broke a 50-50 deadlock in favor of the bill, which Trump signed on Friday hours after Musk posted his America party-related poll. The Trump spending bill's voting breakdown illustrated how narrowly the winning side in Congress carries some of the most controversial matters. Trump has warned Musk – a native of South Africa and naturalized US citizen since 2002 – that directly opposing his agenda would be personally costly. The president, who has pursued mass deportations of immigrants recently, publicly discussed deporting Musk from the US as well as cutting government contracts for some of his companies. 'Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head to South Africa,' Trump posted on his own social media platform, Truth Social. The president also told a group of reporters in Florida: 'We might have to put Doge on Elon. Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible.'
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
If the US president threatens to take away freedoms, are we no longer free?
Threats of retribution from Donald Trump are hardly a novelty, but even by his standards, the US president's warnings of wrathful vengeance in recent days have represented a dramatic escalation. In the past week, Trump has threatened deportation, loss of US citizenship or arrest against, respectively, the world's richest person, the prospective future mayor of New York and Joe Biden's former homeland security secretary. The head-spinning catalogue of warnings may have been aimed at distracting from the increasing unpopularity, according to opinion surveys, of Trump's agenda, some analysts say. But they also served as further alarm bells for the state of US democracy five-and-a-half months into a presidency that has seen a relentless assault on constitutional norms, institutions and freedom of speech. On Tuesday, Trump turned his sights on none other than Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who, before a recent spectacular fallout, had been his closest ally in ramming through a radical agenda of upending and remaking the US government. But when the Tesla and SpaceX founder vowed to form a new party if Congress passed Trump's signature 'one big beautiful bill' into law, Trump swung into the retribution mode that is now familiar to his Democratic opponents. 'Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,' Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, menacing both the billions of dollars in federal subsidies received by Musk's companies, and – it seemed – his US citizenship, which the entrepreneur received in 2002 but which supporters like Steve Bannon have questioned. 'No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.' Trump twisted the knife further the following morning talking to reporters before boarding a flight to Florida. 'We might have to put Doge on Elon,' he said, referring to the unofficial 'department of government efficiency' that has gutted several government agencies and which Musk spearheaded before stepping back from his ad hoc role in late May. 'Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible.' Musk's many critics may have found sympathy hard to come by given his earlier job-slashing endeavors on Trump's behalf and the $275m he spent last year in helping to elect him. But the wider political implications are worrying, say US democracy campaigners. 'Trump is making clear that if he can do that to the world's richest man, he could certainly do it to you,' said Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy. 'It's important, if we believe in the rule of law, that we believe in it whether it is being weaponized against someone that we have sympathy for or someone that we have lost sympathy for.' Musk was not the only target of Trump's capricious vengeance. He also threatened to investigate the US citizenship of Zohran Mamdani, the Democrats' prospective candidate for mayor of New York who triumphed in a multicandidate primary election, and publicly called on officials to explore the possibility of arresting Alejandro Mayorkas, the former head of homeland security in the Biden administration. Both scenarios were raised during a highly stage-managed visit to 'Alligator Alcatraz', a forbidding new facility built to house undocumented people rounded up as part of Trump's flagship mass-deportation policy. After gleefully conjuring images of imprisoned immigrants being forced to flee from alligators and snakes presumed to reside in the neighbouring marshlands, Trump seized on obliging questions from friendly journalists working for rightwing fringe outlets that have been accredited by the administration for White House news events, often at the expense of established media. 'Why hasn't he been arrested yet?' asked Julio Rosas from Blaze Media, referring to Mayorkas, who was widely vilified – and subsequently impeached – by Republicans who blamed him for a record number of immigrant crossings at the southern US border. 'Was he given a pardon, Mayorkas?' Trump replied. On being told no, he continued: 'I'll take a look at that one because what he did is beyond incompetence … Somebody told Mayorkas to do that and he followed orders, but that doesn't necessarily hold him harmless.' Asked by Benny Johnson, a rightwing social media influencer, for his message to 'communist' Mamdani – a self-proclaimed democratic socialist – over his pledge not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) roundups of undocumented people if he is elected mayor, Trump said: 'Then we will have to arrest him. We don't need a communist in this country. I'm going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation.' He also falsely suggested that Mamdani, 33 – who became a naturalized US citizen in 2018 after emigrating from Uganda with his ethnic Indian parents when he was a child – was in the country 'illegally', an assertion stemming from a demand by a Republican representative for a justice department investigation into his citizenship application. The representative, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, alleged that Mamdani, who has vocally campaigned for Palestinian rights, gained it through 'willful misrepresentation or concealment of material support for terrorism'. The threat to Mamdani echoed a threat Trump's border 'czar' Tom Homan made to arrest Gavin Newsom, the California governor, last month amid a row over Trump's deployment of national guard forces in Los Angeles to confront demonstrators protesting against Ice's arrests of immigrants. Omar Noureldin, senior vice-president with Common Cause, a pro-democracy watchdog, said the animus against Mamdani, who is Muslim, was partly fueled by Islamophobia and racism. 'Part of the rhetoric we've heard around Mamdani, whether from the president or other political leaders, goes toward his religion, his national origin, race, ethnicity,' he said. 'Mamdani has called himself a democratic socialist. There are others, including Bernie Sanders, who call themselves that, but folks aren't questioning whether or not Bernie Sanders should be a citizen.' Retribution promised to be a theme of Trump's second presidency even before he returned to the Oval Office in January. On the campaign trail last year, he branded some political opponents – including Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, and Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives – as 'the enemy within'. Since his inauguration in January, he has made petty acts of revenge against both Democrats and Republicans who have crossed him. Biden; Kamala Harris, the former vice-president and last year's defeated Democratic presidential nominee; and Hillary Clinton, Trump's 2016 opponent, have all had their security clearances revoked. Secret Service protection details have been removed from Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who served in Trump's first administration, despite both being the subject of death threats from Iran because of the 2020 assassination of Qassem Suleimani, a senior Revolutionary Guards commander. Similar fates have befallen Anthony Fauci, the infectious diseases specialist who angered Trump over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as Biden's adult children, Hunter and Ashley. Trump has also targeted law firms whose lawyers previously acted against him, prompting some to strike deals that will see them perform pro bono services for the administration. For now, widely anticipated acts of retribution against figures like Gen Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff of the armed forces – whom Trump previously suggested deserved to be executed for 'treason' and who expressed fears of being recalled to active duty and then court-martialed – have not materialised. 'I [and] people in my world expected that Trump would come up with investigations of any number of people, whether they were involved in the Russia investigation way back when, or the election investigation, or the January 6 insurrection, but by and large he hasn't done that,' said one veteran Washington insider, who requested anonymity, citing his proximity to people previously identified as potential Trump targets. 'There are all kinds of lists floating around … with names of people that might be under investigation, but you'll never know you're under investigation until police turn up on your doorstep – and these people are just getting on with their lives.' Yet pro-democracy campaigners say Trump's latest threats should be taken seriously – especially after several recent detentions of several elected Democratic officials at protests near immigration jails or courts. In the most notorious episode, Alex Padilla, a senator from California, was forced to the floor and handcuffed after trying to question Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at a press conference. 'When the president of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, threatens to arrest you, that's as serious as it gets,' said Bassin, a former White House counsel in Barack Obama's administration. 'Whether the DoJ [Department of Justice] opens an investigation or seeks an indictment, either tomorrow, next year or never is beside the point. The threat itself is the attack on our freedoms, because it's designed to make us all fear that if any one of us opposes or even just criticises the president, we risk being prosecuted.' While some doubt the legal basis of Trump's threats to Musk, Mayorkas and Mamdani, Noureldin cautioned that they should be taken literally. 'Trump is verbose and grandiose, but I think he also backs up his promises with action,' he said. 'When the president of the United States says something, we have to take it as serious and literal. I wouldn't be surprised if at the justice department, there is a group of folks who are trying to figure out a way to [open prosecutions].' But the bigger danger was to the time-honored American notion of freedom, Bassin warned. 'One definition of freedom is that you are able to speak your mind, associate with who you want, lead the life that you choose to lead, and that so long as you conduct yourself in accordance with the law, the government will not retaliate against you or punish you for doing those things,' he said. 'When the president of the United States makes clear that actually that is not the case, that if you say things he doesn't like, you will be singled out, and the full force of the state could be brought down on your head, then you're no longer free. 'And if he's making clear that that's true for people who have the resources of Elon Musk or the political capital of a Mayorkas or a Mamdani, imagine what it means for people who lack those positions or resources.'
Times
9 hours ago
- Times
Musk announces America Party to fight Donald Trump
Elon Musk is escalating plans to create his own political party in response to the passage of President Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill. Musk, who once headed the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), has had a spectacular falling out with the president in recent months. In the feud between the two, Musk has now claimed to have formed a rival political party. 'By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!' he wrote on X. 'Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.' Musk created an X poll on Friday, the celebration of Independence Day in the US, claiming it was a fitting occasion to ask the American people if they wanted 'independence from the two-party system'. About 65 per cent of the 1.2 million who responded to the poll voted 'yes'. The Tesla chief executive had repeatedly pledged funding for a new party if the tax and spending cuts bill was passed. The Republican-led Congress passed the bill on Tuesday and Trump signed it into law as part of July 4 celebrations. The bill, which Trump has touted as a 'declaration of independence from a national decline', will expand the national debt by $3.3 trillion between 2025 and 2034, and increase the debt ceiling to $5 trillion. Musk, however, has heavily opposed the 'utterly insane and destructive' bill and its cuts to green energy tax funding, which could cost Tesla $1.2 billion, according to a JP Morgan & Chase estimate. After several posts from Musk criticising the bill, Trump told reporters this week that he would 'take a look' into the possibility of deporting Musk, who is a South African national and a naturalised US citizen. The president has also threatened to cut off billions of dollars in federal subsidies to his former close ally. It is unclear where Musk plans to register the party, but he said it should focus 'on just two or three Senate seats and eight to ten House districts'. 'Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people,' Musk posted on X.
