New energy vehicles for export at Lianyungang Port, Jiangsu Province, China, on April 25, 2024.
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Electric vehicle sales have risen sharply this year, led by growth in China and a strong demand for hybrid vehicles in particular, according to a report from Counterpoint Research.
The report, released Monday, showed that sales of EV units globally, including fully battery-powered vehicles (BEVs) and hybrids, were up 18% in the first three months of 2024 compared with the same period last year.
Sales of hybrid vehicles, which have both electric motors and combustion engines, vastly outpaced those of full battery-powered alternatives, rising 46% year over year. BEV sales rose 7%.
“The cheaper upfront cost of [hybrids] when compared to [battery EVs] and the availability of a fuel tank that eliminates range anxiety were among the main reasons for high [hybrid] demand,” Counterpoint research analyst Abhik Mukherjee said in the report.
The data follows recent reports that suggest hybrid adoption is now outpacing that of fully electric vehicles amid concerns about weak resale values of the former and the possibility of current BEV technology becoming obsolete soon.
“Buying mid-priced [hybrids] is a more logical choice for consumers since their prices are comparable to or lower than most of [battery electric vehicles],” the report said.
China extends lead
Chinese companies have been a huge beneficiary of the rise in demand for electric vehicles, especially firms that sell both BEVs as well as hybrids.
According to Counterpoint, EV sales in China jumped 28% in the first quarter of 2023, amid an ongoing price war that has pushed down costs for consumers.
The country’s largest EV maker, BYD, saw sales of hybrid vehicles increase by 7% in the first three months of this year, accounting for nearly one-third of the global hybrid market, followed by Geely Holdings and Li Auto.
Sales of EVs in the United States were second highest globally,followed by Europe. But, while overall EV sales in the U.S. rose 2%, those of battery electric vehicles declined by 3% in the quarter.
Tesla, the leading U.S. EV maker, which only produces BEVs, saw a 9% year-on-year decline in sales in the first quarter. It was still in the top position globally in BEV sales in Q1 2024, commanding a 19% market share. BYD and Volkswagen had a 15% and 6% share, respectively.
Among the top three BEV makers only BYD recorded growth, with sales jumping 13%, while Tesla and Volkswagen’s sales declined 9% and 4% respectively, the report said.
BYD’s strong performance comes as the company aggressively expands globally. According to the report, the company exported almost 100,000 EVs last quarter, a 152% year-on-year growth, driven primarily by shipments to Southeast Asia.
Liz Lee, associate director at Counterpoint, said BYD’s remarkable exports highlight the growing global demand for EVs, including hybrids, with the market “poised for significant growth.”
“[Y]et signs of a slowdown also loom and the annual growth may dip below 20%,” she added, noting that companies such as Tesla face declining interest in BEVs.
A Gallup poll in April found that less than half of U.S. adults — 44% — said they were seriously considering or might consider buying an EV, down from 55% in 2023. Meanwhile, the proportion of those not looking to buy an EV rose to 48% from 41%.
Other headwinds to the market could include an increase in protectionist measures in 2024, with both the EU and the U.S. reportedly set to enforce new tariffs on EV imports from China.
Elon Musk looks on as U.S. President Donald Trump meets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 21, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
The Elon Musk-owned social media platform X experienced a brief outage on Saturday morning, with tens of thousands of users reportedly unable to use the site.
About 25,000 users reported issues with the platform, according to the analytics platform Downdetector, which gathers data from users to monitor issues with various platforms.
Roughly 21,000 users reported issues just after 8:30 a.m. ET, per the analytics platform.
The issues appeared to be largely resolved by around 9:55 a.m., when about 2,000 users were reporting issues with the platform.
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X did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Additional information on the outage was not available.
Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla, acquired X, formerly known as Twitter in 2022.
The site has had a number of widespread outages since the acquisition.
Artificial intelligence robot looking at futuristic digital data display.
Yuichiro Chino | Moment | Getty Images
Businesses are turning to artificial intelligence tools to help them navigate real-world turbulence in global trade.
Several tech firms told CNBC say they’re deploying the nascent technology to visualize businesses’ global supply chains — from the materials that are used to form products, to where those goods are being shipped from — and understand how they’re affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.
Last week, Salesforce said it had developed a new import specialist AI agent that can “instantly process changes for all 20,000 product categories in the U.S. customs system and then take action on them” as needed, to help navigate changes to tariff systems.
Engineers at the U.S. software giant used the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, a 4,400-page document of tariffs on goods imported to the U.S., to inform answers generated by the agent.
“The sheer pace and complexity of global tariff changes make it nearly impossible for most businesses to keep up manually,” Eric Loeb, executive vice president of government affairs at Salesforce, told CNBC. “In the past, companies might have relied on small teams of in-house experts to keep pace.”
Firms say that AI systems are enabling them to take decisions on adjustments to their global supply chains much faster.
Andrew Bell, chief product officer of supply chain management software firm Kinaxis, said that manufacturers and distributors looking to inform their response to tariffs are using his firm’s machine learning technology to assess their products and the materials that go into them, as well as external signals like news articles and macroeconomic data.
“With that information, we can start doing some of those simulations of, here is a particular part that is in your build material that has a significant tariff. If you switched to using this other part instead, what would the impact be overall?” Bell told CNBC.
‘AI’s moment to shine’
Trump’s tariffs list — which covers dozens of countries — has forced companies to rethink their supply chains and pricing, with the likes of Walmart and Nikealready raising prices on some products. The U.S. imported about $3.3 trillion of goods in 2024, according to census data.
Uncertainty from the U.S. tariff measures “actually probably presents AI’s moment to shine,” Zack Kass, a futurist and former head of OpenAI’s go-to-market strategy, told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy last month.
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“If you wonder how hard things could get without AI vis-a-vis automation, and what would happen in a world where you can’t just employ a bunch of people overnight, AI presents this alternative proposal,” he added.
Nagendra Bandaru, managing partner and global head of technology services at Indian IT giant Wipro, said clients are using the company’s agentic AI solutions “to pivot supplier strategies, adjust trade lanes, and manage duty exposure dynamically as policy landscapes evolve.”
Wipro says it uses a range of AI systems — both proprietary and supplied by third parties — from large language models to traditional machine learning and computer vision techniques to inspect physical assets in cross-border transit.
‘Not a silver bullet’
While it preferred to keep company names confidential, Wipro said that firms using its AI products to navigate Trump’s tariffs range from a Fortune 500 electronics manufacturer with factories in Asia to an automotive parts supplier exporting to Europe and North America.
“AI is a powerful enabler — but not a silver bullet,” Bandaru told CNBC. “It doesn’t replace trade policy strategy, it enhances it by transforming global trade from a reactive challenge into a proactive, data-driven advantage.”
AI was already a key investment priority for global firms prior to Trump’s sweeping tariff announcements on April. Nearly three-quarters of business leaders ranked AI and generative AI in their top three technologies for investment in 2025, according to a report by Capgemini published in January.
“There are a number of ways AI can assist companies dealing with the tariffs and resulting uncertainty. But any AI solution’s success will be predicated on the quality of the data it has access to,” Ajay Agarwal, partner at Bain Capital Ventures, told CNBC.
The venture capitalist said that one of his portfolio companies, FourKites, uses supply chain network data with AI to help firms understand the logistics impacts of adjusting suppliers due to tariffs.
“They are working with a number of Fortune 500 companies to leverage their agents for freight and ocean to provide this level of visibility and intelligence,” Agarwal said.
“Switching suppliers may reduce tariffs costs, but might increase lead times and transportation costs,” he added. “In addition, the volatility of the tariffs [has] severely impacted the rates and capacity available in both the ocean and the domestic freight networks.”
A Zoox autonomous robotaxi in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon‘s Zoox robotaxi unit issued a voluntary recall of its software for the second time in a month following a recent crash in San Francisco.
On May 8, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi was turning at low speed when it was struck by an electric scooter rider after braking to yield at an intersection. The person on the scooter declined medical attention after sustaining minor injuries as a result of the collision, Zoox said.
“The Zoox vehicle was stopped at the time of contact,” the company said in a blog post. “The e-scooterist fell to the ground directly next to the vehicle. The robotaxi then began to move and stopped after completing the turn, but did not make further contact with the e-scooterist.”
Zoox said it submitted a voluntary software recall report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday.
A Zoox spokesperson said the notice should be published on the NHTSA website early next week. The recall affected 270 vehicles, the spokesperson said.
The NHTSA said in a statement it had received the recall notice and that the agency “advises road users to be cautious in the vicinity of vehicles because drivers may incorrectly predict the travel path of a cyclist or scooter rider or come to an unexpected stop.”
If an autonomous vehicle continues to move after contact with any nearby vulnerable road user, it risks causing harm or further harm. In the AV industry, General Motors-backed Cruise exited the robotaxi business after a collision in which one of its vehicles injured a pedestrian who had been struck by a human-driven car and was then rolled over by the Cruise AV.
Zoox’s May incident comes roughly two weeks after the company announced a separate voluntary software recall following a recent Las Vegas crash. In that incident, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi collided with a passenger vehicle, resulting in minor damage to both vehicles.
The company issued a software recall for 270 of its robotaxis in order to address a defect with its automated driving system that could cause it to inaccurately predict the movement of another car, increasing the “risk of a crash.”
Amazon acquired Zoox in 2020 for more than $1 billion, announcing at the time that the deal would help bring the self-driving technology company’s “vision for autonomous ride-hailing to reality.”
While Zoox is in a testing and development stage with its AVs on public roads in the U.S., Alphabet’s Waymo is already operating commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, and is ramping up in Atlanta.
Teslais promising it will launch its long-delayed robotaxis in Austin next month, and, if all goes well, plans to expand after that to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Antonio, Texas.