Chinese

Chinese AI models boasted of being good, pretty and cheap. There are only two of those three things

by

It is not as well known as its rivals, but Zhipu AI (z.ai) has become one of the most promising Chinese AI startups. It is responsible for the family of open GLM models that have always offered a solvent and, above all, very cheap alternative. That, unfortunately, is no longer so true, but we are witnessing a change in strategy both between it and its competitors in the Asian giant. Chinese AI models are no longer such a bargain. GLM-5.1 is better… Z.ai announced yesterday the launch of its shiny new AI model, GLM-5.1. I did it with my chest out because we are facing a promising evolution of this LLM (744B parameters, 40B assets with Mixture of Experts architecture) that certainly surpasses its predecessors but that in some metrics even seems to be above GPT-5.4, Claude Opus 4.6 or Gemini 3.1. Agentic tasks and those that require autonomy for long periods work better than ever, but if you want to benefit from these improvements, you have to check out: the price of the model is now at least 8% more expensive than previous versions. …but also more expensive. According to prices managed by OpenRouter, the well-known platform that serves as a “distributor” of multiple free and commercial models, the prices of the new Z.ai model have risen significantly. Thus, GLM-5.1 costs between 8 and 17% more than GLM-5 Turbo, also recently launched. It is the second time that the Chinese company has raised prices for its users in 2026, and that is a worrying sign. The excuse, of course, is the same as always. We are in high demand. When Z.ai launched GLM-5 at the beginning of February, it took the opportunity to raise the prices of its plans for programmers between 30 and 60%while the API rose between 67% and 100% (doubling). Its shares on the stock market perked up significantly after the launch and the price increase – logical, investors saw that income was probably going to increase thanks to these increases – but the company indicated that demand was very high and that its models had to reflect that circumstance. From the three B’s to just two. The Chinese open models had been demonstrating remarkable quality and a fantastic price/performance ratio for months. They were good, pretty and cheap, but Zhipu AI has just been the latest to end up raising prices. Most of its competitors have been doing it too: Moonshot AI (Kimi), MiniMax and StepFun did it already in 2025, but Alibaba, ByteDance, Tencent and Baidu have also adopted increasingly ambitious pricing strategies. as indicated on TrendForce. OpenClaw as a trigger. Much of the blame for this great demand lies with AI agents like OpenClaw, which has become viral but has a problem: it consumes tokens at an extraordinary rate. A conversation with ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini has a cost, but the use of tokens in “chat mode” is much lower than that carried out by AI agents, who do not stop “thinking” and analyzing different possibilities and chaining processes to resolve our requests. The Chinese models have become a good alternative if one wants to save because using Claude Opus 4.6 was very expensive —and now, prohibited—, but these models are slowly becoming high-end AI models. At least, for price. I already know how this story ends. What we are experiencing with AI models we already saw with smartphones. Chinese manufacturers broke the market with bargain phones that offered high-end features for mid-range or low-range prices, but then they evolved and over the years most manufacturers have ended up focusing on the super-high ranges and at most have launched “cheap” sub-brands. Xiaomi has done it with Redmi and POCO, for example, and now we are seeing something similar with Chinese AI startups, which gained popularity with good, pretty and cheap models, but are now beginning to transition to that new batch of capable but no longer so affordable models. First they catch you, then they squeeze you. What we are seeing with the Chinese AI models we were also seeing with the models of companies like OpenAI or Anthropic. Both they and their competitors release increasingly better but also increasingly more expensive models, and that means that those tokens that these companies sell us are becoming more and more precious: the quotas for the ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro plans, for example, seem to be running out. faster than beforeand the users they take time complaining about it. On Reddit They have a “megathread” dedicated precisely to that, but here we have bad news: this doesn’t look like it will go down, but rather more. In Xataka | Anthropic has shut down OpenClaw for a reason: it’s building the “walled garden” that Nintendo perfected

DeepSeek promised them happiness as the great Chinese AI. I didn’t count on a small detail: Kimi

by

Just a year ago, DeepSeek was one of the biggest scares that Silicon Valley had received dwarves. A Chinese model trained with a fraction of OpenAI’s budget equal to GPT-4 in benchmarks. Upon its arrival the message seemed clear: Western dominance of AI had its days numbered. Today, the story stands, but not thanks to DeepSeek. The DeepSeek case. DeepSeek carries months late for its V4 and, to date, has already lost three of the authors of R1, the model that catapulted them to success. The monthly downloads fell 72% in the second quarter of the year, seeing how Doubao (ByteDanec) snatched the lead. With missed dates, usage errors due to cyber attacksand the difficulty of split from NVIDIA To bet almost entirely on Huawei’s Ascend chips, Chinese alternatives like Kimi have been gaining ground. Meanwhile, on the other side of China. Moonshot AI was not born surrounded by noise like DeepSeek. It was founded in March 2023 by three former colleagues from Tsinghua University: Yang Zhilin—PhD from Carnegie Mellon, former Google Brain and Meta AI—, along with Zhou Xinyu and Wu Yuxin. There were no visible or media faces behind it, only product. That product is Kimi, and in early January 2026 the company launched it in its K2.5 version. In code and video benchmarks managed to surpass GPT-5 and Gemini Pro 3with the key to Chinese AI: its API costs between 4 and 17 times less than OpenAI’s. Those responsible for Moonshot explained how Kimi was almost at Claude’s level in software development testing, encouraging the race for open models. The money arrived. The commercial results are what really attract attention. In less than 20 days Following the launch of K2.5, Kimi’s cumulative revenue exceeded everything billed during 2025. API’s international revenue increased fourfold since November of the previous year. The consequence in valuation has been dizzying: 4.3 billion dollars in December 2025, 10 billion in February 2026, 18 billion in March. Three months, valuation multiplied by four. Kimi has thus become the fastest decacorn in Chinese business history. The Chinese maelstrom. DeepSeek was born a year ago as the great revolution that questioned the closed model of Silicon Valley. It only took a few months for Moonshot to steal the limelight and manage to be on par with – or even above – giants like Google and OpenAI in the most used models in the world. In favor of DeepSeek, it should be noted that its objective is different: it does not follow the typical startup pattern with pressure for immediate monetization and it is a gigantic AI laboratory that can afford not to win in the short term. In Xataka | DeepSeek API: what it is, what it is for, prices and how you can get one to use in your projects

I thought Chinese cars were going to be the new Android. They are actually the new iPhone

by

For a few years, the nightmare of European manufacturers has had a specific name: the Android scenario. That Google, or Apple, or Amazon, would turn the car into interchangeable hardware. that the value will migrate to third-party software and they will be reduced to outdated manufacturerslike PC manufacturers in the nineties. That fear has kept them on guard, looking towards Silicon Valley, investing a lot of money in their own connectivity and infotainment systems, trying not to be left out. They’ve been guarding the wrong door. The movement that is happening is not the equivalent of Android. It’s exactly the opposite, at least where it hurts the most: BYD makes its own batteries, your own operating systemand operates its own charging network. Xiaomi does practically the same with HyperOS. The logic is not to create a platform where others monetize but to control every centimeter of the experiencewithout intermediaries. That has a name that we all recognize, and it is not Google. It’s Apple’s. The paradox is that the Android scenario that Europeans feared so much is happening, but it is not being carried out by the big American technology companies, they are building it themselves: European generalists have become what they feared most, without anyone from outside having to impose it on them. What makes the Chinese movement so different is what is noticeable inside the car. Denza, YangWang, Luxeed, Exeed either Xpeng They are brands that three years ago almost no one in Europe even knew about, but that Today they are manufacturing cars with interiors with an attention to detail that is very reminiscent of what happened with the iPhone in 2007.. It wasn’t that the iPhone did more things than the competition (at the time, in fact, it did considerably less than a Nokia). It was that every interaction was thought out, every transition animated, every small gesture had coherence. Rivals had cool features, but Apple had experience that no one matched. Today, sitting in a mid-range or high-end Chinese car and sitting in a German car of the same price is not so much about comparing specifications as it is about comparing philosophies. And the Germans, who are seeing it, are reacting: the new iX3he CLAeither the newly announced i3 They are serious efforts to recover that coherence of experience. But reacting is not the same as taking the initiative. The problem facing the European industry is not that it does not know how to make cars, there is more to it. The thing is that for many years the margin has been captured by those who mastered mechanical engineering, and they learned to optimize exactly that. What they did not learn is that in the 21st century the margin is captured by whoever controls the entire experience: the software, the data, the services, the ecosystem. When they wanted to learn it, they looked at Silicon Valley because there was the model they knew. Until four days ago, no one looked towards Shenzhen, where someone had spent years building something more like Apple than Google: vertical, closed, cohesive, with a speed of iteration that Westerners simply do not have and they already admit it. Nokia also had very good engineers. In Xataka | At 110 km/h and driving every other day: Europe already has its recommendations for the latest oil crisis Featured image | BYD

is ceasing to be the ‘Chinese Samsung’ to be something more similar to ‘the Chinese Apple with a car’

by

Xiaomi’s 2025 has been a record in several aspects, but also the certification of something that we had been seeing coming for a long time: the end of the Xiaomi that we knew. And it gives way to a new, much more interesting Xiaomi. Why is it important. For years, Xiaomi was the company that made the margins of Apple and Samsung a war to fight. His promise was, above all, the price. Now, for the first time in its history, the smartphone segment has decreased by 2.8% in revenue while the electric car and AI segment has grown by 224%. The company that built its identity on bargain He has started talking about something else. The panoramic. Total revenue in 2025 exceeded 450 billion yuan (about 57.7 billion euros), 25% more than the previous year and the first time that the company has surpassed the 400 billion barrier. Adjusted net profit reached 39.2 billion yuan (about 4.95 billion euros), an all-time high. But the real headline is in the composition of that revenue: a year ago, the smartphone and IoT device business represented 91% of the total. It has now fallen to 76.8%. Fourteen percentage points in a single year is too abrupt a drop not to assume that we are facing a different scenario. Between the lines. The segment that Xiaomi calls “smart electric vehicle, AI and other new initiatives” has achieved its first year with positive operating profit: 900 million yuan (about 114 million euros). The figure seems modest, but in reality it hides an intentionally opaque financial architecture. That same segment has increased its operating expenses by 87.7% year-on-year, to 24.8 billion yuan. Included are the costs of the car, but also the billion-parameter MiMo language modela robotics program, the development of own chips and the AI ​​agent platform Xiaomi miclaw. That is to say: the profits from the car are financing the company’s AI bet. And in 2026 that balance could be broken: Xiaomi has committed 16,000 million yuan (about 2,020 million euros) only in AI and “embodied intelligence” this year, part of a three-year plan of 60,000 million. The contrast. While the car moves forward, the phone moves backwards. The gross margin of the smartphone segment has fallen from 12.6% in 2024 to 10.9% in 2025, and in the fourth quarter it plummeted to 8.3%. The reason is the memory crisis: the demand for AI data centers has generated a bullish supercycle in DRAM and NAND prices which is swallowing the profitability of any mobile manufacturer. In the end, the same AI boom that Xiaomi is trying to capitalize on is what is eroding its core business. The company that financed its expansion based on tight margins in mobile phones now discovers that those margins are unsustainable precisely because of the trend it wants to lead. For years, the label that best defined Xiaomi was “the Chinese Samsung”: a company with a very wide range of products, presence in all price segments and a business model built on volume. Now the accounts point in another direction. The growing weight of the ecosystem of services on a base of premium hardware, the car as an aspirational extension of the brand and the own AI models integrated into all devices draw something more similar to Apple: a closed ecosystem where the hardware is the gateway and the services are the margin. The CEO of Ford already drew this parallel. With the difference that Xiaomi also makes the car. Apple doesn’t do that. The context. This shift has not come overnight. We have been seeing for years how Xiaomi patiently built its premium jump, first with Leica cameras, then with a SU7 that aimed directly at Tesla and Porsche. What the 2025 results confirm is that this repositioning is no longer a declaration of future intentions: it is the present financial reality of the company. One detail: 60% of buyers of the SU7 They are iPhone users, a sign that Xiaomi is capturing the consumer who pays for ecosystems, not specifications. The big question. Can a single company simultaneously maintain an under-pressure smartphone business, scale an electric car operation with some fiscal uncertainty, and fund an AI program with indefinite to delayed returns? The 754 million monthly active users and the 1,080 million connected IoT devices that Xiaomi has are an argument for optimism, but maintaining three demanding fronts at the same time, with the business that finances them under siege, is the great challenge that Xiaomi has ahead of it for this new stage. In Xataka | Leica is teaching Xiaomi everything it knows: when the student no longer needs the teacher, the agreement will have fulfilled its function Featured image | Xiaomi

The demand for AI memories is suffocating mobile manufacturers. The largest Chinese chip producer is going to take advantage of it

by

SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp) is the largest Chinese semiconductor manufacturer with a global market share of about 5%. This company is the best asset that Xi Jinping’s Government currently has to sustain China’s technological development. Hua Hong Semiconductor and SMES (Semiconductor Manufacturing Electronics Shaoxing) are also two very important chip manufacturers, but the true spearhead of this gigantic Asian country in this industry is SMIC. This company is partially public and has, as expected, the support of the Chinese Government. In fact, The Administration is investing a lot of money in their chip manufacturers. SMIC and the other Chinese chip producers do not have extreme ultraviolet photolithography (UVE), which are the most sophisticated that exist, but they do have the Twinscan NXT:2000i deep ultraviolet (UVP) equipment manufactured by the Dutch company ASML. These machines have not been designed to develop integrated circuits comparable to the most advanced ones currently manufactured by TSMC, Intel or Samsung, which is why the competitiveness of Chinese semiconductor manufacturers has suffered. Even so, SMIC has a plan to continue growing despite the impact that US sanctions are having on its business. And, according to SCMPis going to launch it now to take advantage of the bad times that manufacturers of smartphones and other consumer electronics devices are having. In March 2026. The memory supercycle for AI has put mobile phones on the ropes The DRAM memory industry is facing a profound structural transformation. The three largest chip manufacturers of memory on the planet, the South Korean companies SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, and the American Micron Technology, They have reallocated about 70% of its production lines to high-bandwidth memories (HBM) to satisfy the currently insatiable demand of data centers specialized in artificial intelligence (AI). The current situation has triggered the birth of a supercycle in the memory market This situation has triggered the birth of a supercycle in the memory market, which is, simply, a presumably prolonged period of time during which the demand for a certain product far exceeds the offer. This scenario causes prices to skyrocket. In fact, that is what is currently happening with memory chips. And the big losers at the moment are the manufacturers of smartphones and other consumer electronics devices. This circumstance is precisely what SMIC wants to take advantage of to grow. And it plans to do so by trying to capture the entire low- and mid-range chip market that is being neglected. SK Hynix, Micron Technology and Samsung are focusing on the production of HBM integrated circuits because they leave them with a much higher profit margin than other memory technologies. SMIC cannot manufacture chips using cutting-edge photolithography beyond 7nmbut you don’t need them. Its current integration technologies are sufficient to manufacture the microcontrollers and memory chips demanded by mobile phone manufacturers. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | SCMP In Xataka | We can forget about AI without hallucinations for now. NVIDIA CEO explains why

Canada now allows Chinese cars to be sold and the US believes they have opened the door to the wolf

by

Canada is about to become the gateway of chinese manufacturers of electric cars to North America. BYD, Geely and Chery They have been preparing their landing for months in the country, and from Washington they are watching with great suspicion. What has happened? In January, Mark Carney’s Government closed a trade agreement with China that reduced tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 100% to 6.1%, in exchange for Beijing lowering tariffs on Canadian agricultural products such as rapeseed or lobsters. The agreement allows the entry of up to 49,000 Chinese electric cars per year, with the possibility of scaling up to 70,000 in five years. March 1, Ottawa opened the application process of import permits. Tensions. This decision comes amid trade tensions with the United States under the Trump administration, which has imposed tariffs on both Canada and China. “We take the world as it is, not as we would like it to be,” counted at that time Carney, with the intention of diversifying its alliances. Who arrives and how. According to the DSMA advisory firm, which is mediating between Chinese manufacturers and Canadian dealers, three brands lead the race: BYD, Geely and Chery. The three are working in parallel on the approval of vehicles, the construction of distribution networks and agreements with local financial partners. Jason Zhao, director of Asian market development at DSMA, estimates that the first cars could arrive at the end of 2026. It would look like this: BYD wants to open 20 dealerships in a year, starting in the Toronto area and then expanding to Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary, according to explained to The Globe and Mail Farid Ahmad, CEO of Dealer Solutions Mergers & Acquisitions. The brand is also studying the possibility of building its own production plant in the country, although, according to declared to Bloomberg a few weeks ago its executive vice president Stella Li, “no decision has been made yet.” Geely expects to soon receive certification from Canadian authorities for its vehicles, according to confirmed to Bloomberg Andy An, CEO of Zhejiang Geely Holding. The company already has some presence in North America through Volvo and Polestar, but Zeekr would be its first Chinese brand to reach the Canadian market. Cherry is hiring in Canada and has already registered several of its brands, including Omoda, Jaecoo and Exeed. In statements collected According to Automotive News Canada, the company stated that it is “evaluating avenues for future development, including alliances with local players,” although without confirming dates. The problem of times. Just because there is a trade agreement does not mean that the cars will arrive tomorrow. Stephen Beatty, industry consultant and former executive at Toyota Canada, counted to Automotive News Canada that, if starting from scratch, the homologation process can take “a year or more.” And the brands best positioned to be the first through the door are Tesla (which had already prepared its Shanghai factory to export to Canada in 2023) and Volvo and Polestar, which already operate in the Canadian market under a Chinese umbrella. Washington’s reaction. Jamieson Greer, United States Trade Representative, qualified the agreement “problematic” and warned that Canada might regret it. The issue raises concern in Washington, since if Chinese manufacturers manage to establish themselves in Canada, the US market (the great long-term objective) will be much closer. “The obvious end goal is all of North America,” counted Tu Le, managing director of Sino Auto Insights, in the middle. Between the lines. The United States maintains very high tariffs on Chinese cars and a ban on connectivity technology for Chinese-made vehicles, which has blocked any mass entry into its market. Canada, by opening its door, not only irritates Washington because of the direct commercial impact (about 49,000 cars are barely 3% of the Canadian market), but for what it represents: a precedent and a bridgehead. BYD, in fact, has already publicly ruled out trying to enter the US in the short term. Stella Li, speaking to Bloomberg, described the American market as a “complicated environment” and said that the brand is focused on other markets where it can replicate its successful model in Brazil. And now what. According to DSMA, large dealer groups in Canada they are divided: Half are actively looking to close an agreement with a Chinese brand, the other half are waiting to see how the situation evolves. The medium and small ones, on the other hand, are “all” interested, according to Zhao. Longer term, both DSMA and Sino Auto Insights estimate that between 15 and 20 Chinese manufacturers will end up operating in Canada. Cover image | Tom Carnegie and BYD In Xataka | What happens if you are in a self-driving taxi and someone wants to get into the car and attack you? Waymo’s response is not encouraging

Yuanjie is the unknown Chinese photonics technology company whose shares have risen 780%. The surprise is who is behind it: Huawei

by

Yuanjie Semiconductor Technology It probably doesn’t sound familiar to you. And it’s completely normal. Until very recently, this Chinese company barely had visibility outside its domestic market, and even within it it played in the background compared to other giants in the sector. However, something has changed radically in the last year. Your actions They have risen nearly 780%a leap that has not only caught the attention of investors, but has placed its founder, Zhang Xingang, in the billionaires’ club. And there is a detail that adds another layer to the story: Huawei would be behind the company. So you may be wondering what exactly this company does. The key is not so much in Yuanjie itself as in the terrain on which he plays. Yuanjie makes laser chips that are used to transmit data in the form of light inside artificial intelligence-oriented data centers, a field that fits within the broader boom in photonics. It may sound technical, but the idea is quite direct: move more information, faster and with less consumption. As explained by PhotonDeltathis type of technology allows the use of photons to transmit and process information, in addition to integrating several photonic and optoelectronic functions in a single chip, with clear advantages over traditional electronics in high-demand environments. A movement that targets Huawei The other key point appears when you look at who is behind. Forbes presents to Yuanjie as a company backed by Huaweia connection that adds another dimension to their recent growth. From there, details are scarce. It has not been publicly explained how this relationship takes shape or what role each party plays, but there are a series of interesting data that are worth analyzing carefully. Now, if we go down one more level in the documents, the relationship becomes somewhat clearer. Huawei’s presence in Yuanjie would have materialized through Hubble Investment, an investment firm controlled by the Chinese group. As collected by Sina Finance Its entry occurred in September 2020 through a double formula: purchase of existing shares and subscription to a capital increase. With this operation, Hubble controlled 4.36% of Yuanjie, a percentage that later remained at 3.27% after the IPO. If we analyze the jump we can say that it is not only explained by the trend of the sector, but also by recent decisions. Yuanjie announced in February an investment of 1,251 million yuan, about 181 million dollarsto build a new production base in Xixian New Area, in the Chinese province of Shaanxi, where it also has its headquarters. Shortly after, in March, communicated his intention to explore an independent listing in Hong Kong. Two years earlier, in addition, the company had announced an investment of 50 million dollars in the United States to strengthen its international presence. Yuanjie’s journey is also best understood by looking at its founder. Zhang Xingang trained in the United States, where he obtained a doctorate in materials science at the University of Southern California and worked in companies linked to fiber optics. His time at Luminent and, later, at Source Photonics, placed him at the heart of this type of technology before returning to China. There he founded Yuanjie in 2013, with an initial focus more linked to the competitive Chinese telecommunications market, and in 2022 he took it to the STAR market in Shanghai, a platform designed for technology companies. To better understand this case, it is also worth looking at the moment that Huawei is going through. After the sanctions imposed by the United States in 2019the company was forced to reconfigure much of its business, especially in key areas such as semiconductors and software. Far from disappearing, it has gone rebuilding his position relying on its own development, from its Kirin chips to HarmonyOSand has regained weight in its domestic market. This context helps to understand why any movement linked to strategic technologies once again attracts attention to the Chinese company. In this framework, Yuanjie’s relationship with Huawei, as reported by Forbes, fits as one more possible piece within this process of technological reinforcement. There are no public details that allow us to talk about a defined strategy in the field of photonics or the specific role played by each party. But there is an underlying idea that is difficult to ignore: in the midst of a race to expand the infrastructure of artificial intelligence, technologies capable of moving data more quickly and efficiently are gaining weight. Images | Huawei | Yuanjie In Xataka | The looming bottleneck in AI is neither RAM nor gas: it’s that TSMC’s N3 node is absolutely saturated

All about Lepas, the new Chery Group brand that arrives in Spain with Chinese cars designed specifically for Europe

by

Spain is experiencing a flood of Chinese brands in the automobile market. Manufacturers from this country have considered that Spain is a perfect country for their entry into the European market. Their reasons: key ports to unload cars and a customer who values ​​the quality/price/equipment ratio above brand loyalty. This is candy for Chinese companies. These brands have the challenge of winning over the customer with new models whose added value is, as a general rule, a very attractive price compared to the offer of Western vehicles, always with the same size, equipment and/or technology. With all this in mind, the Chery Group has started in Spain with Omoda and Jaecooin addition to Ebro Although it is a brand with Spanish capital, it uses the models that arrive in kits to Barcelona to build its own cars in our country. To these companies is now added Lepas. Chery will have a third own brand in Spain as a first step in an expansion that should continue throughout Europe soon. The objective is to put on the market a car that begins to target the premium market. This is your plan. What is Lepas and where does it come from? Lepas will be the third brand of the Chery Group to arrive in our country and is the youngest company of the automobile conglomerate since it was created in 2024. It must be taken into account that Chery already sells the Omoda and Jaecoo brands in China but also Jetour, iCar or Exeed. The name, they point out, is the mixture of “Leopard” and “Passion” and aims to position itself as an alternative company created specifically for Europe. It must be taken into account that Chery Group was founded in 1997 and has been exporting cars outside of China for more than 20 years. Its main market, until its arrival in Europe, was South America, but the objective is to continue expanding its borders in the coming years. With this roadmap in mind, Lepas will position itself as a brand designed by and for Europe. Its cars will be Chinese but the brand assures that it is about “responding to new customer profiles in different markets”, so the differentiation with Omoda and Jaecoo should be evident in the next launches. Omoda is, right now, the most youthful brand in Chery’s catalog. The conglomerate has positioned this company as an attractive bet for the most urban client, with a striking aesthetic and somewhat more aggressive or sporty shapes. Jaecoo is committed to the more rural market, with more or less mild offroad ambitions and a somewhat more country aesthetic. Lepas will occupy a slightly more refined position. The shapes of their cars, we assume seeing their first launch, will be softer and less aggressive. Everything indicates that Chery wants to have in Lepas an alternative with a slightly more premium character than its two previous brands. We are not talking about fighting with Audi or Mercedes but we are talking about playing in a league superior to the general league, halfway between both worlds. Lepas L8 Lepas L8, his first car For now, the Lepas landing comes with the Lepas L8. This car is an SUV 4.68 meters long, 1.87 meters wide and 1.69 meters high with a clear family vocation thanks to a trunk capacity of 507 liters. As a plug-in hybrid, it promises a range of up to 1,300 kilometers following a scheme that is common in other models of the group: 1.5 TGDI engine with dedicated DHT hybrid transmission and offers 205 kW (279 HP) of power and 365 Nm of torque. The promised electric range is up to 100 kilometers supported by an 18.4 kWh battery. Interior of the Lepas L8 The car is built on a multi-energy platform that allows plug-in hybrid versions to be put on the market, like this case, and completely electric or extended-range electric options. The latter is a type of car that works the vast majority of the time as an electric car and has a small gasoline tank to generate electricity and support electrical technology in case of emergency. The interior of this Lepas L8 has a steering wheel similar to that of the Omoda 9 so we found soft plastics and attractive design of the steering wheel, with only two horizontal spokes. It has wireless charging for your mobile phone and a large vertical screen. It is a differentiation from the Omoda options, whose screen is horizontal. Some functions with physical buttons are also maintained, although the air conditioning is carried out on the screen. The company points out that the car will arrive with more than 20 ADAS driving assistance systems, including adaptive cruise control, parking assistant (with remote parking) or “540º panoramic camera.” In the future In addition to this Lepas L8, the company’s roadmap involves continuing to send cars to our market. We are talking about the Lepas L4 and L6. At the moment, we know very little about these two cars. Yes we have confirmed that the Lepas L4 is an urban SUVof about 4.30 meters that will help the company to lower the price of entry to the brand. We are not clear, however, what the technology will be and if it will be based on exclusively electric specifications or will add options with combustion engines. The little progress that the brand has made is that the car is already being manufactured in Wuhu, where the Chery Group headquarters is located. As for the Lepas L6 we find ourselves in the same situation but this time we are talking about a compact SUV. We will know the details throughout the year. If we talk about its launch. The company’s roadmap involves putting the first cars on the market at the end of this first half of 2026. Therefore, all the details of the Lepas L8 and the first contacts should arrive shortly before the summer. In the coming months we should know all the … Read more

It is the promise of a Chinese startup that aims to revolutionize the sector

by

There is a whole world in this synthetic fuels. And it is no wonder, since whoever can develop a renewable fuel, without harming the environment and with elements that we have in abundance, has won heaven. And in this regard, there is a Shanghai startup that promises to have taken a significant step. And if his claims hold up, it could change the rules of the game. We tell you the details. Context. China imports more than 70% of the crude oil it consumes, and a considerable proportion comes from the Middle East. If you have been paying attention to this region of the planet in recent weeks, you will have seen that the thing is not very there. And at a time when conflicts in the Persian Gulf generate volatility in the markets and threaten energy supply chains, Beijing has been looking for alternatives to conventional fossil fuels for years. It is in this scenario where Carbonology emerges. What exactly has he announced. Just like share SCMP, the company, co-founded in 2024 by a former Tesla vice president, claims to have developed a process to convert carbon dioxide (extracted from air and water) into synthetic fuel using solar and wind energy. The products it claims to be able to manufacture include gasoline, diesel, aviation kerosene and naphtha, all of them at competitive prices with those on the market. The company also reportedly announced that it is preparing a deployment to produce its product on a large scale in China. How this technology works. The process the startup describes is based on direct air capture, known in the industry as DAC (Direct Air Capture). This technique consists of extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere and combining it with hydrogen, in turn obtained through electrolysis of water using renewable energies, to synthesize liquid hydrocarbons. The result is fuels that are practically identical to those derived from petroleum, but whose carbon cycle is closed: the CO₂ they emit when burned is the same as that captured to manufacture them. It is really not a new process, as it has been developed for years in laboratories around the world and There are pilot projects underwaysuch as the Haru Oni ​​plant, in southern Chile, promoted by companies such as Siemens and Porsche. What is still unclear. The bad thing is that Carbonology’s claims lack details. According to the mediuma company spokesperson confirmed the information but declined to offer more information on the matter. As SCMP shares, the company has a registered capital of just over 14 million yuan (about $2 million) and completed a first round of financing last year. In January it opened a 300 million yuan R&D center in Shanghai, along with a synthetic kerosene production line. In any case, the company recognized that its future commercial operations will probably have to be located near large solar and wind energy facilities in western China, since it is a process with high energy demand. A problem that persists. Synthetic fuels produced from renewables remain expensive. The medium refers to paper published in January 2025 in the journal Energy Conversion and Management, where some of the obstacles to its commercialization were identified, including high capital intensity, low energy efficiency in the conversion and absence of infrastructure and regulatory frameworks that allow its large-scale deployment. About Repsol. In Spain, the main company that has promoted renewable fuels in its gas stations has been Repsol, although the concept in this case is different. Repsol comes from a process that reuses used cooking oilremains of agricultural processes and forestry waste to develop its Nexa fuel, which is already sold in hundreds of gas stations in the country. However, the company is also studying the DAC technique to produce synthetic fuels. It does this through a cutting-edge project in the Port of Bilbao (Petronor). At the moment what they have is a demonstration plant, so we will have to wait to see if it has an outlet. for the car. That a Chinese startup barely a year old claims to have solved the cost problem that has blocked the entire industry is, at the very least, interesting, but there is a lack of data to support it. DAC technology exists and is maturing, but most of the CO₂ captured so far is stored underground, not converted into fuel. That the announcement was made under these circumstances is curious, to say the least. So we will have to wait to see if this project ends up materializing and fulfills what it promises. Cover image | ADIGUN AMPA In Xataka | 115 million barrels released and a fear on the horizon: that gasoline in Spain will go to €2/liter

Japan has taken a look at the data after the disappearance of thousands of Chinese tourists and it has been said that it is not so bad

by

In the recent tourist chronicle of Japan there is a date marked in red. November 7, 2025. That day the prime minister Sanae Takaichi opened the box of thunder announce that Tokyo would not hesitate to deploy its troops in case China invaded Taiwan. The statement fell like a bucket of cold water on Beijing, which further made clear its discomfort at the diplomatic level, asked its citizens to avoid traveling to the country of the rising sun. Taking into account the enormous weight of Chinese visitors in Japanese hotels, that it sounded like a catastrophea punch in the gut for its thriving tourism industry. Well not so much. The latest data of the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) show that this is not the case. It is true that the country receives fewer (much fewer) Chinese visitors than a year ago, but the gap they have left in the hotels has not taken long to be filled by clients from other nations, especially from Asia. A percentage: 6.4%. February has been a good month for the Japanese tourism industry. At least as far as the arrival of travelers is concerned. He last balance from JNTO shows that throughout the month the flow of visitors grew by 6.4% compared to the same period in 2025. From 3.26 million it went to 3.47. The accumulated of the first two months of 2026 is also positive. Japanese tourism now totals around 7.1 million visitors, 0.3% more than last year. Said like that it doesn’t seem like a big deal. The weakness of the yen and its enormous popularity in networks, added to the recovery of the international tourism market after the pandemic stop, have turned Japan into everything a tourist phenomenon. One on a roll and accustomed to record numbers. In 2025, without going any further, the country will receive 42.7 million of foreign visitors, a historical mark that places the nation above 40 million for the first time in its history. So… Why is it news that it rose 6.4% in February? Why does that percentage matter? Countries February 2026 Evolution (%) Accumulated 2026 Evolution (%) TOTAL 3,466,700 +6.4 7,064,200 +0.3 South Korea 1,086,400 +28.2 2,262,400 +24.7 China 396,400 -45.2 781,700 -54.1 Taiwan 693,600 +36.7 1,388,100 +26.1 Hong Kong 233,900 +19.6 433,900 -1.2 Thailand 117,000 +0.2 232,100 +8.7 Singapore 51,300 +21.4 99,800 +13.4 Malaysia 59,700 -8.0 132,200 -5.5 Indonesia 51,200 +8.9 125,200 +13.6 Philippines 71,700 +7.5 150,900 +8.7 Vietnam 61,000 -17.4 113,800 -8.4 The answer: China. What is surprising is not that Japan continues to receive more tourists. The surprising thing is that it does so despite how much the Chinese market, one of its pillars, has become very complicated. We mentioned it before. Takaichi’s statements in November in which he implied that Japan would not sit idly by if Beijing forced its way into Taiwan caused an earthquake that jumped from diplomacy to the economy and from this directly to tourism. As part of their response to punish Takaichi, in mid-November the Chinese authorities they advised its citizens not to travel to Japan. They were even canceled dozens of flights and they refunded plane tickets. From politics to hotels. It didn’t take long for the boycott to be noticed in Japanese hotels. If the flow of Chinese tourists grew at 22.8% in October 2025, the following month (after Takaichi’s speech) that percentage had deflated to 3%. In December it went directly into the red, with a drop in 45.3% which was expanded to -60.7% in January. In February (latest JNTO data available) the balance again marked another puncture of the 45.2%confirming the trend. The percentage is better understood when talking about people: between January and February Japan received 921,700 fewer Chinese than in the same period in 2025. And the alarms went off. The problem is not only the drop in visitors, which is already alarming in itself. If the Japanese sector began to worry, it is because China represents a strategic market. And doubly so. To begin with, it is because of its weight. Along with South Korea, the Asian giant is the main fishing ground for visitors to Japan. In 2025 it added 9.1 million tourists21% of the total. Only South Korea mobilized more. And the data only reflects mainland China. Travelers from Hong Kong (another big market) go separately. The other reason why the Asian giant is so important for Japanese businesses is the profile of its tourists. Not only do many travelers leave China, those who pack their bags to spend their vacations in other countries also do so with full wallets. JNTO itself calculate that last year Chinese tourists spent about 25% more than other travelers during their stays in Japan, something that is especially noticeable in shopping centers. After Takaichi’s words about Taiwan (and the diplomatic storm between Tokyo and Beijing) there were businesses in the sector that they recalculated their forecasts billing, assuming double-digit drops in its earnings estimate. In the absence of Chinese… Other markets are good, which is what the JNTO statistics reflect. Despite the initial fear that Beijing’s boycott would hit Japanese tourism, slowing its unstoppable growth streak, Japan has managed to rebalance the sector. After experiencing a overall flow drop of visitors of 4.9% in January, last month that percentage was corrected and the industry grew again. In total in February they visited Japan about 3.5 million of tourists. How is it possible? This increase actually has little mystery. The JNTO tables show that the 45.2% drop in the influx of Chinese tourists has been offset by an increase in visitors from other nations. The flow of South Koreans shot up, for example, by 28.2%, that of visitors from Hong Kong by 19.6%, that of Singaporeans by 21.4% and Indian tourists by 22.7%. Ironically (or not) one of the markets that has grown the most is Taiwan. Throughout February, 693,600 tourists from the Asian island visited Japan, 36.7% more than in 2025. This is relevant data because Taiwan … Read more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.