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Chinese electric car company Nio launched its lower-cost brand Onvo on Wednesday, May 15, 2024, in Shanghai, China.

CNBC | Evelyn Cheng

HEFEI, China — There’s yet another Chinese electric car aiming to undercut Tesla, with a steeper discount.

Onvo, the lower-priced brand launched by premium electric car company Nio, announced its first car, the L60 SUV, would start as low as 149,900 Chinese yuan ($21,210) when buying battery services via a monthly subscription, starting at 599 yuan. That’s the equivalent to just over $1,000 a year for “renting” the battery.

A model with the battery and the car starts at 206,900 yuan. Deliveries are set to begin Sept. 28.

Nio shares briefly rose by more than 3.5% in U.S. trading Thursday after the Onvo L60 launch.

The L60’s new price is even less than what the company announced previously. When Nio launched the Onvo brand in May, the company said the L60 would start selling at 219,900 yuan versus Tesla’s Model Y at 249,900 yuan.

Nio CEO William Li told CNBC in an exclusive interview Thursday that he hoped to launch Onvo in Europe as soon as next year, but he did not have a specific timeframe to share.

He said the lower-priced brand would help the company better reach a global market, due to growing tariffs and other challenges for the premium Nio brand to reach its target overseas markets of Europe and the U.S.

As for whether Onvo would cannibalize the Nio-branded sales, Li said the two brands are aimed at very different price segments. He noted how Nio’s deliveries have improved since the company announced its plans for Onvo.

China’s electric car industry has become fiercely competitive over the last few years, with Nio and other companies vying for part of Tesla’s market share.

Geely-backed Zeekr is set to launch its first midsize electric SUV, the Zeekr 7X, in China on Sept. 20, starting at 239,900 yuan.

Xpeng in late August announced its mass market brand Mona would begin sales of its M03 electric coupe in China. The basic version starts at 119,800 yuan, with a driving range of 515 kilometers (320 miles) and some parking assist features.

A version of the Mona M03 with the more advanced “Max” driver assist features and a driving range of 580 kilometers will sell for 155,800 yuan.

China's EVs will start dominating markets, says MSA Capital's Harburg

In comparison, Tesla’s cheapest car — the Model 3 — costs 231,900 yuan in China, after a price cut in April.

Chinese electric car companies have gradually expanded overseas, often starting with Europe. However, the European Union is nearing the end of a process that would increase tariffs on imported Chinese-made battery electric cars starting in early November. The bloc began an investigation into the Chinese EV makers’ use of subsidies last year.

Nio cooperated with the EU’s probe but was not sampled, meaning its cars would be subject to a 20.8% duty, as of a July announcement from the European Commission. That’s higher than the 19.9% tariffs slated for Geely cars, and 17.4% for BYD’s.

In the fourth quarter, Nio plans to start deliveries in the United Arab Emirates, Li told investors on an earnings call on Sept. 5.

“Because of the tariff in Europe now, selling or exporting cars from China to Europe becomes more expensive,” Li said, according to a FactSet transcript.

“So we will focus on the existing five European markets that we have already started. We also know that to establish NIO such a premium brand in the European market will also take a longer time, and we are very patient with that.”

Test driving BYD, Nio and other Chinese EV rivals of Tesla

“But in the meantime, it doesn’t mean that we have stopped our activities there,” Li said. “Earlier this year, we have just opened our NIO house in Amsterdam, and we are still installing and deploying our power swap stations in Europe.”

He expects the L60 to reach 10,000 monthly deliveries in December, and 20,000 vehicle deliveries a month next year. He anticipates 15% vehicle margin on the new Onvo-branded cars.

The brand aims to have more than 200 stores in China by the end of this year, and already opened more than 100 as of early September.

Li said on the earnings call that Onvo and Firefly, an even lower-priced brand set to begin deliveries next year, would look to release vehicles for the international market.

— CNBC’s Sonia Heng contributed to this report.

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ChatGPT rejected more than 250,000 image generations of presidential candidates prior to Election Day

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ChatGPT rejected more than 250,000 image generations of presidential candidates prior to Election Day

In this photo illustration, the OpenAI logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen with a photo of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

Didem Mente | Anadolu | Getty Images

OpenAI estimates that ChatGPT rejected more than 250,000 requests to generate images of the 2024 U.S. presidential candidates in the lead up to Election Day, the company said in a blog on Friday.

The rejections included image-generation requests involving President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Vice President-elect JD Vance, OpenAI said.

The rise of generative artificial intelligence has led to concerns about how misinformation created using the technology could affect the numerous elections taking place around the world in 2024. 

The number of deepfakes has increased 900% year over year, according to data from Clarity, a machine learning firm. Some included videos that were created or paid for by Russians seeking to disrupt the U.S. elections, U.S. intelligence officials say.

In a 54-page October report, OpenAI said it had disrupted “more than 20 operations and deceptive networks from around the world that attempted to use our models.” The threats ranged from AI-generated website articles to social media posts by fake accounts, the company wrote. None of the election-related operations were able to attract “viral engagement,” the report noted.

In its Friday blog, OpenAI said it hadn’t seen any evidence that covert operations aiming to influence the outcome of the U.S. election using the company’s products were able to successfully go viral or build “sustained audiences.”

Lawmakers have been particularly concerned about misinformation in the age of generative AI, which took off in late 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT. Large language models are still new and routinely spit out inaccurate and unreliable information.

“Voters categorically should not look to AI chatbots for information about voting or the election — there are far too many concerns about accuracy and completeness,” Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, told CNBC last week.

WATCH: AI likely to be less regulated and more volatile under second Trump presidency

AI likely to be less regulated and more volatile under second Trump presidency

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Tesla hits $1 trillion market cap as stock rallies after Trump win

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Tesla hits  trillion market cap as stock rallies after Trump win

Elon Musk on stage before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, NY on Sunday, October 27, 2024. 

The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Shares of Tesla climbed more than 6% in midmorning trading Friday, pushing the electric vehicle maker’s market cap past $1 trillion.

The company’s stock has rallied about 27% this week after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election and investors have grown optimistic that the former leader’s return to the White House could benefit Tesla. Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, has been a key ally for Trump throughout his campaign, pouring at least $130 million into a pro-Trump campaign effort.

Tesla had a market cap of $807.1 billion through Tuesday’s close. Before this week’s rally, shares of the carmaker were up about 1% for the year. Tesla’s stock is now up about 27% year to date.

Tesla market cap

CNBC

Tesla rejoins a growing club of tech names that are now worth more than $1 trillion, including Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, AlphabetAmazon and Meta (though all but Meta are worth more than $2 trillion). Tesla’s market cap first crossed the $1 trillion mark in October 2021.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives has said that a potential Trump administration could spell less regulation for Tesla and other companies.

“Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched in the EV industry and this dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players (BYDNio, etc.) from flooding the U.S. market over the coming years,” Ives wrote in a note to clients this week.

Trump has said previously he may cut the federal $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit. Those credits have helped to drive sales of Tesla vehicles historically.

In its most recent earnings update, Tesla reported revenue of $25.18 billion and net income of $2.17 billion in the third quarter.

CEO Musk said on the earnings call that his “best guess” was that “vehicle growth” would reach 20% to 30% next year, due to “lower cost vehicles” and the “advent of autonomy.”

Tesla has been promising, and developing, driverless vehicle technology for more than a decade. Its key U.S. competitor, Alphabet-owned Waymo, has pulled ahead and is already operating commercial robotaxi services in several major cities.

On the third-quarter call, Musk said he would use his sway with a Trump-Vance administration to establish a “federal approval process for autonomous vehicles.” Currently, approvals happen at the state level, which the CEO sees as a regulatory hurdle Tesla will need to overcome once it finally offers more than partially automated driving systems.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the year Tesla’s market cap crossed $1 trillion for the first time. Tesla’s net income was $2.17 billion in the third quarter. An earlier version misstated the figure.

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Sony raises guidance on gaming strength, quarterly operating profit beats estimates

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Sony raises guidance on gaming strength, quarterly operating profit beats estimates

Sony’s PlayStation 5.

Thiago Prudencio | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Sony raised sales guidance for the full year Thursday and posted operating profit that smashed analyst expectations after a strong quarter for its gaming business.

Here’s how the company did in the September quarter, versus LSEG consensus estimates:

  • Revenue: 2.97 trillion Japanese yen ($19.4 billion), versus 3.03 trillion yen expected. That was up 9% and slightly below analyst expectations.
  • Operating profit: 445.1 billion yen ($2.91 billion), versus 336.07 billion yen expected. That’s up 73% year-over-year and beats expectations.

The Japanese tech giant revised its fiscal year 2025 revenue target up slightly to 12.7 trillion yen. It previously targeted 12.6 billion yen of sales. Sony also expects full-year operating profit of 1.3 trillion yen, in line with its previous forecast.

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That came as Sony saw strength in its game and network services division, which houses its popular PlayStation home console brand. Game and network services revenue at the company came in at 1 trillion yen, up 11% year-over-year.

Sony’s gaming division has held up well thanks to a shift to digital game purchases and the PlayStation Plus subscription service. However, hardware shipments have proven lackluster amid a weak console market beset by a lack of hyped up triple-A games.

Analysts expect things to improve next year for the gaming sector, though — not least thanks to the anticipated launch of a next-generation Nintendo Switch model and the release of Grand Theft Auto VI.

Sony said it sold 3.8 million PlayStation 5 units for the September quarter, down 22% year-over-year. Still, the firm saw a 28% jump in game software sales for the three-month period, to 612.3 million yen.

On Thursday, Sony launched its upgraded PlayStation 5 Pro console, touting a better graphics card allowing for faster gameplay rendering and new artificial intelligence capabilities to upscale graphics with sharper image clarity.

Analysts hope that the launch will boost interest in the PS5 with a souped-up piece of hardware ready for release of GTA VI, one of this decade’s most hotly anticipated games.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that operating income jumped 73% year-over-year in the September quarter.

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