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RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA – JULY 19: (—-EDITORIAL USE ONLY â MANDATORY CREDIT – ” ROYAL COURT OF SAUDI ARABIA / HANDOUT” – NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS – DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS—-) Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (L) meets with Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman (2nd L) within his visit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on July 19, 2021. (Photo by Royal Court of Saudi Arabia/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The unexpected rift between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates within OPEC in early July came as a shock to many in the Gulf region and those watching from abroad. 

The dispute over oil production levels temporarily froze the group’s ability to lay out their plans for the markets, sending crude prices upward. But it wasn’t the first appearance of tension between the Arab neighbors and longtime close allies, and likely will not be the last, experts who’ve long been watching the region say. 

“What is happening here is these are the two biggest economies in the region, in the Arab world,” Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political science professor in the UAE, told CNBC. “And as Saudi Arabia wants to reform its economy, privatize, etc, there is bound to be competition between them.”

“Competition between the two biggest Arab economies is, I think, just starting,” Abdulla said. “And it is bound to intensify in the days to come.” 

Conflicting interests

The strategic alignment between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, both of which have become increasingly active on the world stage, is evident in many areas. And it’s often associated with what is said to be a close relationship — some have even called it a “bromance” — between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his Emirati counterpart Mohammed bin Zayed. 

But conflicting interests have cropped up in recent months that preceded the OPEC rift. In February, Saudi Arabia announced that its government would cease doing business with any international companies whose regional headquarters were not based within the kingdom by 2024. The move was widely seen as targeting Dubai, the Middle East’s current headquarters hub. 

Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan (L to R) attend a signing ceremony for the agreements on “normalization of relations” reached between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain at the White House in Washington.
The White House | Shealah Craighead | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The UAE last year announced a normalization deal with Israel, becoming the first Gulf country to do so, while Saudi Arabia has so far publicly refused to do the same. Saudi Arabia meanwhile has been working on a tentative rapprochement with rival Sunni power Turkey, with which the UAE has significant tensions as Ankara supports an Islamist ideology that Emirati leaders see as a threat. 

And the two Gulf powers had some diverging interests in the war in Yemen, despite being on the same side, with the Saudis supporting an Islamist party distrusted by the UAE and Abu Dhabi supporting separatist tribes that did not align with Riyadh’s goals. The UAE drew down its military activity in Yemen in 2019, while Riyadh remains embroiled in the conflict.

“It has been a common assumption that the UAE and Saudi Arabia have effectively indistinguishable worldviews and interests — that the UAE is sort of an appendage or dependency of Saudi Arabia,” Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, wrote in a blog post in July. “That has never been the case.”

Economic consequences

In early July, Saudi Arabia upped the ante by ending preferential tariffs for goods made in free zones or affiliated with Israeli manufacturers, also seen as a direct shot at the UAE, which is the free zone hub of the region. The move was followed by waves of patriotic Saudis launching a campaign via Twitter to boycott Emirati goods. 

This came despite the fact that the UAE is Saudi Arabia’s second-largest trading partner after China by import value. 

“The idea once was to create a GCC market, but now there’s the realization that the priorities of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are very different,” Amir Khan, senior economist at Saudi National Bank, told Reuters in July. “This regulation is putting flesh on the bone of these political divergences,” Khan said.

So, where do things go from here?

An OPEC deal was reached in mid-July, and the Saudi and Emirati energy ministers praised each other and the work of the group of oil producers. Still, economic competition — at a time where returns for oil-producing nations are extremely volatile — isn’t set to go away anytime soon. 

“We’re coming out of this pandemic where every country in the world needs to figure out a way to economically recover,” Tobias Borck, a research fellow specializing in Gulf affairs at the Royal United Services Institute in London, told CNBC. “But for the Gulf monarchies, especially for Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, that is compounded by the fact that they are also under pressure to figure out a way to transform their economies and get away from relying on oil.”

“In that environment, quite frankly, everyone is going to look after number one,” Borck continued. “And for all the genuine friendship and continued pragmatic alignment, when it comes to economic matters, at some point that friendship ends and it becomes about looking after yourself.” 

A ‘collision course’

For the Emirati professor Abdulla, “rivalry is too strong of a term” to describe what’s going on between the two countries.

“It could be a controlled, managed, friendly competition,” he told CNBC. “Or it could get out of hand, and we will see it intensify in the months and years to come. We are still in the first five minutes of the competition. We don’t know how it is going to evolve — and it might have some impact on the political issues that bind the two countries together, some political spillover.”

“There are clearly multiple areas where they are on a collision course in the economic sphere,” Borck said. “You’ve now sort of put your position out, and at the moment, those positions are on a collision course. Whether they’re going to remain so? We’ll see.”

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Tesla starts using ‘Supervised Full Self-Driving’ language

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Tesla starts using 'Supervised Full Self-Driving' language

Tesla and Elon Musk have started using the term “Supervised Full Self-Driving” when discussing their self-driving efforts.

What does it mean?

Tesla, and especially its CEO Elon Musk, has used controversial language when discussing its self-driving effort.

It started with calling and selling something called the “Full Self-Driving Capability” package all the way back in 2016. The automaker promised it would eventually enable level 5 self-driving capability through software updates.

Now, it has yet to happen, and Tesla has evolved its language around the promise over the years.

Musk previously often used the term “robotaxi” and said that “Tesla would enable 1 million robotaxis by the end of the year”. This was in reference to bringing full self-driving capability to Tesla’s existing fleet of over 1 million vehicles, now over 5 million, through a software update.

That also never happened.

Musk then started using the term “feature complete,” which refers to Tesla FSD Beta taking over all driving tasks. However, it still requires the driver’s attention and readiness to take control at all times.

Under SAE’s ADAS system ranking, this is called a level 2 autonomous system, and Tesla has clearly promised a level 4 or even 5 system in which driver attention is not required. That’s where we are now.

In the last year or two, Tesla, and especially Musk, as he is Tesla’s main spokesperson, have stopped referencing robotaxi or at least in reference to turning Tesla’s existing fleet into robotaxis. Instead, Musk used the term in reference to an upcoming new Tesla vehicle specifically designed to be a robotaxi.

When it comes to turning FSD Beta into a true self-driving system, Tesla and Musk have been much more vague.

Lately, they have focused on using the language of “Supervised” Full Self-Driving. Musk recently referenced it in an email sent to Tesla employees, and Tesla used the same term in recent social media posts.

It’s a reference to drivers having to “supervise” the system. In the previously mentioned email sent to Tesla employees, Musk proudly said that “supervised Full Self-Driving” actually works.

Electrek’s Take

“Supervised Full Self-Driving” indeed works, but you have to ask yourself if the supervised part is what makes it work. The answer is obvious.

I feel like I am repeating myself, but the only thing of value that Tesla can communicate on that front now is actual data about driver intervention and FSD disengagement in order to show a rate of improvement leading toward the “march of 9s”.

The “march of 9s” is what people in the autonomous vehicle industry refer to achieving a 99.9999x percent level of safety.

Right now, when it comes to Tesla’s FSD Beta, we don’t seem to be marching yet. There’s no clear path to it becoming an unsupervised system.

Now, I know that some people hold hope in the fact that Tesla recently launched FSD Beta v12, with end-to-end neural net, and that Tesla is reportedly not “compute constrained” anymore – meaning that FSD Beta could be trained faster and therefore, improve faster.

I still have some hope on that front, but I really want some real data. I can’t with the anecdotal experiences anymore, the continuously evolving language, and the moving goal post.

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Watch out Tesla, smartphone builder Xiaomi’s SU7 EV offers 434 mile range for under $30k

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Watch out Tesla, smartphone builder Xiaomi's SU7 EV offers 434 mile range for under k

Apple may have bailed on its plans to build its own EV, but a Chinese competitor has completed the feat, and on paper, it has the makings to be one helluva first entry into the segment. Today, Xiaomi officially launched its first-ever EV, the SU7 – decked out with advanced battery tech, lightning-fast charging, and a mouth-watering range – all for starting MSRPs that will turn some heads. Oh, the smartphone manufacturer released a new phone model to match the new EV as well.

Although Xiaomi is making its case as a true competitor out of the gate in EVs, it has long been established as a trusted brand in China, manufacturing electronics based on an Internet of Things (IoT) platform, including smartphones, apps, laptops, home appliances, and scooters.

After seeing a decline in consumer electronics sales in the last decade, Xiaomi started turning its sights elsewhere, brainstorming how it could adapt its tech-savvy manufacturing expertise toward new lucrative ventures. It landed on EVs – a booming yet saturated market in China.

By 2021, Xiaomi Automobile was incorporated in China, and in two short years, the company was boasting faster-than-expected progress. By November 2023, we caught our first glimpse of Xiaomi’s first EV model – the SU7. A month later, the electronics company had officially unveiled the SU7 as a challenger to Porsche and who else but Tesla.

In February, Xiaomi shared plans to launch the new SU7 EV in Q2 of this year with hopes of capitalizing on its existing army of 20 million smartphone users. Today, the EV has publicly emerged to much acclaim, garnering an impressive amount of pre-orders in China in a very short window.

  • Xiaomi EV
  • Xiaomi EV
  • Xiaomi EV

Xiaomi’s first-ever SU7 EV looks like affordable home run

Xiaomi held a live launch event for the SU7 EV in China today, posted in its entirety to its Weibo page. There’s a lot of exciting stuff to unfold here, so let’s dig in.

The SU7 arrives at a length, width, and height of 4,997 mm, 1,963 mm, 1,440/1,455 mm, respectively, with a wheelbase of 3,000 mm. Its size is comparable to the Tesla Model 3 (a clear competitor), albeit longer and slightly narrower. More on that in a minute.

Xiaomi shared that the SU7 EV will be sold in three different variants: Standard, Pro, and Max, as well as a limited-run Founders Edition of 5,000 units, of which Xiaomi states were the first built. The Standard and Pro trims sit atop a 400V platform, while the Max variant features an 800V platform, confirming speculation from leaked images we reported back in July 2023. Here’s how the trims vary on the spec sheet:

Xiaomi SU7 Trim Standard Pro Max
Architecture 400V 400V 800V
Powertrain RWD RWD AWD
Battery 73.6 kWh
BYD Blade
94.3 kWh
CATL Shenxing
101 kWh
CATL Qilin
CLTC Range 700km (435 miles) 830km (516 miles) 800km (497 miles)
Power 299 hp (220 kW) 299 hp (220 kW) 673 hp (495 kW)
Torque 400 Nm 400 Nm 838 Nm
0-100km/h Acceleration
(0-62mph)
5.28 seconds 5.70 seconds 2.78 seconds
Top Speed 210 km/h
(130.5 mph)
210 km/h
(130.5 mph)
265 km/h (165 mph)
Fast Charge Time
(10-80%)
25 minutes 30 minutes 19 minutes
15-minute DC charge 350km (218 miles) 350km (218 miles) 510km (317 miles)

In addition to impressive specs, the new Xiaomi SU7 EV is decked out with advanced technology, including a head-up display, Pilot Pro ADAS with vision (Pilot Max with vision and LiDAR on the top two trims), a mini fridge add-on, and a Dolby Atmos sound system (Max trim).

What’s most enticing, however, is that future Xiaomi SU7 customers will get the above perks for some ultra-competitive pricing overseas:

Xiaomi SU7 Trim Standard Pro Max
Starting MSRP RMB 215,900
($29,875)
RMB 245,900
($34,000)
RMB 299,900
($41,500)

Remember that mention of the Tesla Model 3? It’s important to point out that Xiaomi is clearly gunning for the American automaker with the launch of the SU7 EV. For example, the Pro version of the SU7 costs the same as the entry-level Model 3 in China, with significantly better specs. In fact, Xiaomi founder, chairman, and CEO Lei Jun pulled no punches during the live launch event earlier today:

Many people ask me who the Xiaomi SU7 is built for. My answer is, isn’t it time for Tesla Model 3 users to upgrade?

In collaboration with today’s EV event, Xiaomi also launched a new line of smartphones that work with the SU7, complete in colors to match the vehicle’s exteriors (seen above). The hype has been real so far as Xiaomi opened up its books, reporting over 50,000 firm orders in just 27 minutes.

Xiaomi says initial deliveries of the Standard and Pro trims of the SU7 EV will begin in China in April, followed by orders for the Max in late April. Trust we will do everything we can to get a look at this new impressive EV up close soon.

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BYD says EVs have entered the ‘knockout round’ with next-gen tech rolling out

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BYD says EVs have entered the 'knockout round' with next-gen tech rolling out

Global EV leader BYD believes new energy vehicles, including EVs and PHEVs, have entered the “knockout round” with gas-powered cars. BYD plans to more than double its overseas sales this year, as it aims for one million in 2025.

Let the “liberation battle” begin

After declaring a “liberation battle” against gas-powered cars earlier this year, BYD, or Build Your Dreams, is putting pressure on overseas rivals.

During an investor meeting on Wednesday, BYD’s CEO, Wang Chaunfu, said it will launch its next-gen hybrid tech offering over 1,200 miles (2,000 km) range. We reported earlier this month that BYD looks to crush gas-powered car sales with its newest platform.

Most BYD vehicles are based on its e-Platform 3.0, an advanced 8-in-1 electric powertrain with integrated Blade batteries.

By building nearly all vehicle components, including batteries, in-house, BYD has a major advantage over rivals. BYD can offer low-cost EVs, like the new Seagull, starting under $10,000 (69,800 yuan) and still make a profit.

Its next-gen DM-i system will enable an even more range at a lower cost. According to a new Yicai report (translated), Chaunfu said BYD will launch its next-gen DM-i platform in May.

BYD-knockout-round
BYD Seagull (Dolphin Mini) testing (Source: BYD)

BYD believes EVs, PHEVs entered the “knockout round”

Chaunfu added that he believes EVs and PHEVs have “entered the knockout round” and that the next two years will be critical for automakers to scale, reduce costs, and introduce new tech.

As new electric cars roll out in China, BYD sees joint venture brands (overseas automakers) market share falling from 40% to 10%. The 30% offers room for Chinese brands to grow.

BYD-new-EV-platform
BYD Dolphin EV Honor Edition (Source: BYD)

BYD is using an “overseas + localization” strategy to expand the brand. For example, BYD is building a plant in Hungary that will “be Europe, for Europe.” BYD’s European leader said the plant will “be closer to customers, offering faster deliveries, and people will trust us more.”

Chaunfu said BYD aims to sell 500,000 vehicles overseas this year, more than double the 240,000 handed over last year. By 2025, BYD sees overseas sales reaching 1 million.

BYD-Atto-3-Japan

BYD’s first vehicle transport ship, the BYD Explorer No. 1, landed in Germany last month as the automaker expands its overseas footprint.

Meanwhile, after launching in Japan last year, BYD already accounted for 20% of Japan’s EV imports in January, a market dominated by Toyota.

The automaker launched a “liberation battle” with drastic price cuts and new lower-priced models earlier this year.

BYD says its main competition is gas-powered vehicles and joint venture brands. Several of its most popular EVs, including the Dolphin and Seagull, were updated with lower prices. Its cheapest EV, the Seagull, starts at just $9,700.

Electrek’s Take

BYD has already sent shockwaves throughout the industry with the new Seagull EV starting under $10,000.

Ford’s CEO Jim Farley called the Seagull “pretty damn good,” as he warned rivals. Farley said at the Wolfe Research Conference last month that if automakers fail to keep up with the Chinese, like BYD, “20% to 30% of your revenue is at risk.” In response, Ford is shifting from larger to smaller, more affordable EVs.

How will automakers react to a new platform that will cut costs even further? With new tech and models rolling out, BYD expects to steal even more market share from gas vehicles over the next few years.

Although many pit BYD and Tesla against each other because they are the leading EV makers, BYD sees Tesla as a respected industry partner. Its main target is gas-powered vehicles.

BYD is best known for its affordable EVs, such as the Dolphin, Atto 3, and Seagull, but it’s expanding into new segments, including mid-size SUVs and luxury models.

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