According to Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume, European manufacturers have an advantage over Chinese EV makers. VW leader said that the Chinese offer their vehicles “at twice the price they pay in China” of that in Europe.
VW is not threatened by Chinese EV makers, CEO says
Although Blume did acknowledge that “The Chinese have learned how to build cars over the last few decades” at the IAA Mobility show in Munich, he believes VW still holds an edge.
“We have the vehicle know-how, we have the level of quality. And we have a brand legacy. The newcomers don’t have that. So we see ourselves as well positioned,” Blume stated, according to German newspaper Automobilwoche.
Despite the share of EVs shipped to Germany from China more than tripling (28.2% vs. 7.8% last year) in the first quarter of the year, Blume is standing by his word.
The VW Group and Porsche CEO said Chinese EV makers can build cars for around 20% less in China. However, they will “not be able to offer the level of costs they offer in China in Europe,” he explained.
Due to the high costs associated with adapting vehicles to European requirements and establishing a sales network, “We can see on the market that the Chinese offer their vehicles to us at twice the price they pay in China.”
SAIC-VW ID.3 electric car in China (Source: SAIC-VW)
Competition is still heating up
Blume admitted the new competition was still dialing up the heat in the auto industry. “Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to become better.”
Volkswagen will need to position itself better to maintain competitiveness. “We will have to work hard on the cost side,” Blume explained.
One of the biggest areas of focus is the battery, which is the primary cost of an EV. With its new unified cell, Volkswagen aims to reduce costs by 50%, enabling cheaper EVs.
Volkswagen ID 2all electric vehicle concept (Source: Volkswagen)
In March, Volkswagen teased its affordable ID 2all electric vehicle concept, starting under $27,000 (€25,000) with up to 279 miles range (450 km).
Blume also sees having ICE vehicles in its lineup as its transition to electric as an advantage over all-EV brands like NIO and BYD. He expects ICE sales to finance VW’s transition, whereas all-EV brands need to find alternative funding sources.
NIO ET5T designed for Europe (Source: NIO)
Electrek’s Take
The comments from Blume are interesting, given Volkswagen is outsourcing technology in China. VW revealed a $700 million investment in Chinese EV maker XPeng for a nearly 5% stake in July.
Furthermore, Audi and Chinese state-owned automaker SAIC Motor are collaborating to develop new electric models in the region. Outside of China, VW placed a large-scale order with Hyundai’s supplier, Hyundai Mobis, for Battery Systems Assemblies.
Blume is speaking about the European market, but those are bold comments for a company already outsourcing tech in the region.
Several new Chinese EV brands are expanding their presence in Europe, including BYD, NIO, and XPeng, to name a few.
Michael Shu, Managing Director of BYD Europe, presents the Seal and Seal U (Source: BYD)
BYD brought several EVs out at the IAA Mobility show in Munich, including the Han, SEAL, DOLPHIN, and upcoming SEAL U (D-segment SUV), arriving in the first half of next year. It will start at 42,990 euros ($46,100) in Germany.
Meanwhile, Volkswagen’s ID.5 is priced at 47,595 euros ($51,050), while the new flagship ID.7 will be in the mid-50,000 euro ($53,600) range.
BYD sold 2,492 vehicles in Europe through July, up from 1,170 last year. The Atto 3 accounted for 1,977 of those, according to info from Dataforce (via Automotive News Europe).
Michael Shu, managing director of BYD Europe, said,
We have made significant progress in entering new markets in Europe. Just twelve months ago, we introduced our brand to Europe and in less than a year, we created a presence for our brand in 15 European countries and opened over 140 stores. We are working in conjunction with the very best dealer partners to create a network that delivers premium customer services and retail experiences.
We’ll see how the story plays out over the next few months.
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Tesla has started to release its (Supervised) Full Self-Driving (FSD) v14 update, its first significant update in a year, to customers.
Here are the full release notes:
In late 2024, Tesla began rolling out FSD v13 to owners with the latest HW4 computers installed in their vehicles.
It has been the last significant update to Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” program despite CEO Elon Musk again claiming that the automaker was on the verge of solving “unsupervised self-driving.”
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Tesla’s excuse for not releasing any significant update for almost a year was that the team was instead working on its “Robotaxi” service in Austin, Texas.
FSD v14 has been described as Tesla using what it learned from the Robotaxi program and rolling it into software for its consumer vehicles.
Musk has been hyping the update for the last few months. He first said it would come in September, but he revealed that Tesla found a “bug”, which delayed the release to late Monday night.
Tesla HW4 owners are now starting to download the update.
Here are the full release notes for FSD v14:
Tesla FSD v14 release notes
Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, in a Parking Garage, or at the Curbside.
Added handling to pull over or yield for emergency vehicles (e.g. police cars, fire trucks, ambulances).
Added navigation and routing into the vision-based neural network for real-time handling of blocked roads and detours.
Added additional Speed Profile to further customize driving style preference.
Improved handling for static and dynamic gates.
Improved offsetting for road debris (e.g. tires, tree branches, boxes).
Improve handling of several scenarios, including unprotected turns, lane changes, vehicle cut-ins, and school buses.
Improved FSD’s ability to manage system faults and recover smoothly from degraded operation for enhanced reliability.
Added automatic narrow field washing to provide rapid and efficient front camera self-cleaning, and optimize aerodynamic wash at higher vehicle speeds.
Added alerting for residue build-up on the interior windshield that may impact front camera visibility. If affected, visit Service for cleaning!
Upcoming Improvements:
Overall smoothness and sentience
Parking spot selection and parking quality
Full Self-Driving (Supervised)
Under your supervision, Full Self-Driving (Supervised) can drive your Tesla almost anywhere. It will start from a parked position, make lane changes, select forks to follow your navigation route, navigate around other vehicles and objects, make left and right turns and park at your destination. You and anyone you authorize must use additional caution and remain attentive. It does not make your vehicle autonomous. Do not become complacent.
Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is enabled on your vehicle. To use the feature, press the Start Self-Driving button on the UI, or press the right scroll wheel button once. You can disable Full Self-Driving (Supervised) in Autopilot Settings.
UI Improvements
Start Self-Driving with a tap of the touchscreen from Park, or any time during your drive.
Adjust settings like the Speed Profile and Arrival Options directly from the Autopilot visualization on the center display.
Speed Profiles
FSD (Supervised) will now determine the appropriate speed based on a mix of driver profile, speed limit, and surrounding traffic.
Introduced new Speed Profile SLOTH, which comes with lower speeds & more conservative lane selection than CHILL.
Driver profile now has a stronger impact on behavior. The more assertive the profile, the higher the max speed.
Right scroll-wheel up/down now adjusts Speed Profile setting rather than your precise max speed offset selection in mph/kph.
Arrival Options
You can now select an arrival option such as Parking Lot, Street, Driveway, Parking Garage and Curbside for Robotaxi-style drop offs.
Your preferences for arrival options and preferred parking positions are persisted for each destination.
Our reasoning model will assess the suitable options for your destination and pick an intuitive default.
Brake Confirm
Brake Confirm for the Start Self-Driving button is now defaulted off. When disabled, Start Self-Driving will not require you to press and release the brake to confirm engagement.
You can enable Brake Confirm in Autopilot > Brake Confirm.
Electrek’s Take
This is exactly what we expected. Tesla is adding some of the features of Robotaxi, such as improved parking capabilities at your destination, and much-needed performance upgrades after a year of regression based on crowdsourced data.
As I previously stated, I expect at best a 2 to 3x improvement in miles between critical disengagement, which sounds great until you realize that that brings Tesla to a max 1,200 miles between critical disengagement and the automaker needs to be closer to 10,000 miles for a limited unsupervised ride-hailing service, and then 700,000 miles to be level 5 safer than humans as promised.
We will have to wait a few days, and ideally a few weeks, to gather enough data to gauge the significance of those improvements.
As usual, I like to point out that FSD would be truly impressive and likely a praised product if it were sold and marketed for what it is: a level 2 driver assistance system.
However, we have to compare it against what Tesla is selling and claims it will become: a level 4 fully autonomous driving system – something it is not.
FSD still requires driver attention at all times and can make very dumb and dangerous mistakes.
Furthermore, Tesla is clearly starting to reach the limits of HW4, even though it will likely need to ~10x performance from FSD v14. It means that, as Tesla already admitted with HW3, the automaker has sold “Full Self-Driving” on cars that don’t have the hardware to make it a reality.
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Zero Motorcycles, one of the world’s leading Western electric motorcycle manufacturers, announced that it is relocating its global headquarters from California to the Netherlands. The move marks a major strategic shift for the company as it doubles down on Europe, which has long been its largest market for electric two-wheelers, despite the American company’s US base of operations.
According to Zero, the transition will bring key global functions together in a new European hub while maintaining its California location as the company’s long-term “Innovation Center” for R&D and engineering. The move allows the company to keep a toehold in the states while transferring its main operations to Europe.
The electric motorcycle maker says its US location will still support a team working on Zero’s powertrains and next-generation models, maintaining the company’s technological roots in the US as leadership and global operations move overseas.
“Zero has led the electric motorcycle category for nearly two decades,” said CEO Sam Paschel. “With Europe setting the pace for EV adoption, moving key headquarters functions into the Netherlands allows us to respond faster to customer needs and strengthen our global operations. This is about focus, discipline, and ensuring we lead the transformation of the powersports industry.”
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The decision follows a period of what Zero says is rapid expansion for the company in Europe, where the electric motorcycle maker has reported strong growth in both retail and fleet segments. With the Netherlands serving as a central hub, Zero aims to increase agility, streamline operations, and enhance collaboration with suppliers and distributors across the continent.
The move follows a pattern for Zero, which has seen an increasing reliance on overseas operations, from production to marketing and sales. While Zero originally touted its US-based manufacturing, its components and production have increasingly relied on Asian manufacturing, and recent partnerships have seen its most affordable models being produced nearly entirely by its Asian partners for marketing and sale by Zero.
But despite the global shift, Paschel emphasized that Zero remains committed to the US market. The company plans to continue working closely with its American dealers and investing in local sales and service infrastructure.
To support the transition, Zero’s primary shareholder has committed $50 million in new funding, which the company says will accelerate its transformation and reinforce its leadership in the electric motorcycle sector.
“Our brand, our technology, and our global reach give us unmatched credibility and capabilities,” Paschel added. “Tightly coordinating our global headquarters functions in Europe ensures we remain the clear leader in electric motorcycles and sets the stage for the most exciting chapter in the company’s history.”
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US President Donald Trump, left, and Doug Burgum, US secretary of the interior, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Oct. 6, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Shares of U.S.-listed minerals explorer Trilogy Metals jumped as much as 205% in premarket trade on Tuesday, shortly after the White House said it would take a 10% stake in the Canadian company.
The stock was seen trading 183% higher in premarket deals at 9:54 a.m. London time (4:54 a.m. ET).
The White House on Monday announced a partnership with Trilogy Metals as part of a push to unlock domestic supplies of copper and other critical minerals in the Ambler mining district in Alaska.
The partnership included a $35.6 million investment, which makes the U.S. government a 10% shareholder in Trilogy Metals.
Trilogy Metals welcomed Trump’s decision to grant permits to enable the development of critical minerals in Alaska, saying the Ambler mining district is “home to some of the world’s richest known copper-dominant polymetallic deposits.”
The company said in a statement that Trump’s order, which reverses the Biden administration’s rejection of the Ambler Road project, “reflects a renewed federal commitment to responsible resource development in Alaska and highlights the Ambler Road as critical infrastructure under federal policy.”
It added that the move would help to secure domestic supply chains for minerals including copper, cobalt, zinc and lead, highlighting the importance of these resources in energy infrastructure, defense technologies and manufacturing.