sell

There are more than 900 retailers trying to sell you home electricity. And now Spain has begun the great purge

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Spain has a world record that is difficult to justify; it is the country with the most registered electricity suppliers. For years, the official list exceeded 900 companiesalthough more than half never had real activity. A “ghost market” that generated confusion, operational risks and an opacity inappropriate for a strategic sector. Now, for the first time, the Government has decided to put things in order. In the last twelve months, the first disqualifications have begun to cascade and everything indicates that the registry will undergo a massive purge. A total screening. The latest report from the CNMC confirmed what the sector intuited for a long time. Of a census of more than 900 marketers, only 416 companies had clients and purchased energy effectively. The rest—hundreds of societies—remained in a kind of permanent pause, registered but without activity. And the law is clear about this. Both the Royal Decree 1955/2000 as Law 24/2013 They allow the Ministry to withdraw the authorization of any marketing company that spends a year without operating or that fails to comply with its economic and technical obligations. According to information that El Periódico has had access tothe Ministry for the Ecological Transition has disabled some 40 marketing companies in the last year, the majority without clients or without energy purchases for more than twelve months. Cleaning is based on systematic application of article 74a legal mechanism that had been underused for years. A process that has come into action. The process is already observed in the Official State Gazette itself, where It was published in October the disqualification of Virtual Power Plant & Smart Energy SL for not presenting the required guarantees to the market operator. The resolution also ordered the automatic transfer of its clients to a Reference Marketer, in accordance with Law 24/2013. Similar cases also appear in CNMC files, as INF/DE/368/23where it was documented that a marketing company accumulated non-payments, insufficient guarantees and zero energy acquired to supply its clients. It worked only on paper. What does this mean for the market and the consumer? Although it may seem like a technical matter, the purge directly affects citizens. According to Rate and Electricitythe elimination of ghost marketers implies: less risk of a company going bankrupt overnight, more control over small operators without real solvency, more security and continuity of supply, since the regulations require customers to be automatically transferred to a Reference Marketer if their supplier fails. And, finally, a less opaque market with a lower risk of fraud. This is a systemic problem: some of these small firms accumulated non-payments to Red Eléctrica (REE) and the Iberian Market Operator (OMIE), generating costs that ended up absorbing the entire electrical system. Others promised unviable prices and, unable to buy energy on the daily market, simply disappeared. But, is it so easy to open a marketing company? Spain is the only European country where a prior administrative license is not required to operate as an electricity marketer. Opening a company of this type is relatively simple: it is enough to present to MITECO a communication of start of activity accompanied by a responsible declaration of compliance with the requirements, according to the official file of the Ministry itself. Before, yes, the interested party must accredit before REE and OMIE its technical and economic capacity: present financial guarantees, demonstrate that you will be able to buy energy on the market and have computer systems to communicate daily with the system operator. According to the consulting firm Audynforsystemthis accreditation is the true operational filter, but it has not prevented the proliferation of small local or merely registered marketers. How does debugging continue? The objective is not to reduce the number of marketing companies per se, but to eliminate: those that have never operated, those that do not meet guarantees, those that default on payments or generate risks to the system. According to Expansion416 marketing companies are still active, 335 have already been deregistered in recent years and 137 are under investigation for inactivity. The CNMC and MITECO will continue to apply article 74 of RD 1955/2000 to automatically disqualify those who have not been active for a year. Furthermore, recent resolutions show that who breaches guarantees or non-payments will be disqualified, with mandatory transfer of clients. THE message is unequivocal, there will be fewer marketers, but more reliable ones. It starts to get organized. For years, no one hit the brakes. Now, with defaults, regulatory tensions and an electrical system hit by unprecedented volatilities, the Government has decided to put things in order. The paradox is evident, while Europe tries to attract more competition, Spain has had to do just the opposite: reduce a hypertrophied market that never reflected real activity. Ongoing purging is not just administrative cleanup. It is an attempt to rebuild trust in a sector that needs stability to face the country’s great energy challenges: electrification, storage, digital networks and renewable transition. Image | freepik Xataka | 2026 has not yet started but it has already managed to produce the first bad news: the light goes up

try to sell it for 30 million

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Nikola Tesla has been one of the greatest inventors in all of historya figure who forever changed the world of science and technology. He promoted alternating current, X-rays, methods to harness and distribute light with fluorescent bulbs, he was the first to create FM radio, and he was even researching methods of wireless energy transmission. Half myth, half reality, another of the inventions he boasted about was the so-called “Death Ray“, a science fiction weapon to carry out attacks hundreds of kilometers away. Rivers of ink have flowed about this supposed invention, but what is not so well known is that he is negotiating with Great Britain to sell it to them for 30 million dollars. The United States also showed great interest in this invention, which Tesla claimed was successfully developed to end all wars as we knew them. We know this thanks to some documents declassified a few years agowhich also includes Tesla’s attempt to sell it to Great Britain. Shooting down planes 400 kilometers away During the 1920s several inventors claimed to have invented a “death ray” capable of destroying aircraft at great distances, but none of them were able to demonstrate its operation. In the early 1930s Tesla also claimed to have invented it under the name “Teleforce”and he claimed this achievement for the rest of his life. In fact, already in the 1910s he had talked about a weapon capable of end wars as they were known, and to make gunpowder obsolete. During the following years, he began to reveal inconclusive details of this invention, which were collected and idealized by the press of the time until an entire myth was created around it. Tesla allegedly developed his “Teleforce” electrostatic machine after studying the Van de Graaf generatorand according to what he said, he used a moving belt to accumulate large amounts of electrical charge inside a hollow sphere. This technology would allow electrical impulses to be launched capable of destroying anything, from ground infantry to ships or airplanes within a 400 kilometer radius. Days after his death in January 1943, US Intelligence seized two trucks full of his belongings from his home. The FBI would later deny having any of these documents, but in one of the documents declassified last year we can see a narrative of who did it and how. Tesla’s documents, notes and materials were of total importance, especially after the descriptions that had been made of that death ray in the press. For example, in some media was defined like a weapon 60 million voltsdeath and extermination 400 km away, capable of eliminating an army of a million men. The electrical wave that this beam emitted through the air would also be capable of detonating enemy explosives at great distances. Tesla defended its scientific value beyond the battlefield, insisting that it could be used to maintain world peace based on weapons power. In this declassified letter to John Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI, reference is made to a New York Times article about this Death Ray. “If based on proven facts, it should be of vital importance to our War Department as well as other nations now controlled by crazy dictators,” the letter says. It is also recommended to constantly monitor Tesla to prevent foreign forces from kidnapping and torturing him to obtain his secrets. Hoover responded to thank him for the information, assuring him that his proposal would be taken into consideration, although without clarifying whether it ended up being carried out or not. The attempted sale to the United Kingdom Many media have published about the FBI’s interest in Tesla’s invention, but hidden among the hundreds of documents there is another very interesting which speaks of an attempted sale by Tesla to the United Kingdom. This document mentions the “death ray” as a weapon to defend any country, no matter how small, also describing how the discovery of “fireballs” generated through electricity was. It talks about how Tesla discovered this phenomenon almost by chance during his experiments. in Colorado Springs during 1899and who continued to develop it later. It also explains how after tried to sell it to him to the United Kingdom government for thirty million dollars. The declassified document also says that, during the negotiations, Tesla had stated that someone had broken into his room and examined all his papers, although those thieves or spies had left empty-handed. The inventor claimed that there was no chance that his invention had been stolen because he simply had not written it down yet. It was all in his memory, and there it stayed until his death. The fact that the FBI took a large amount of material belonging to Tesla has fueled conspiracy theorists for decades, with dozens of theories about how the United States could have learned how to use the Death Ray. But today gunpowder is still what we use in wars, so it seems that if such a weapon really existed, Its secret died at the same time as its creatorwhich since it never manufactured it, nor did it patent it. In Xataka | Nikola Tesla already imagined drones in 1898, both for deliveries and for combat In Xataka | In 1982 Seiko created a watch for making calls and watching television. His only problem was arriving too early In Xataka | The microprocessor that advanced the Intel 4004 was not in a computer, but in a secret place: an F-14

While others sell us fireworks, she is rewriting science

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OpenAI does not seek to create an AGI. Make sure we don’t stop talking about her. It is the maximum exponent of the “productization” of AI. It and other rivals focus on offering flashy options that improve our productivity but don’t change the world. Which is precisely what some companies are trying to do, among which one stands out in particular: DeepMind. The AI ​​that helped science. For the past two years the tech industry has resembled a fireworks contest. Every few days or weeks a new model promises to write better emails, generate more realistic videos or have more and more human conversations. The cycle of novelty is often ephemeral —Studio Ghibli style images were a good example—but far from those “wow effects” there is a silent AI that does not seek to impress on social networks, but rather to help solve scientific problems that have been blocking new advances for decades. The Thinking Game. The recent documentary about DeepMind titled ‘The Thinking Game’ and available for free on YouTube precisely shows us that other side of AI. Although the tone is not exempt from that epic that we already experienced with the documentary ‘AlphaGo’, what it tells us serves as a reminder of this dichotomy that the industry experiences. While the AI ​​bubble inflates in search of immediate profitability, DeepMind seems to have maintained its original spirit. One that wants to use AI not to imitate the human being, but to – in this case – decipher the code of biology. From Pong to AlphaFold. This 84-minute documentary tells the story of DeepMind through the career of its co-founder, Demis Hassabis. This journey is fascinating and shows us how the startup began to develop AI models that taught themselves to play retro video games like Pong or Breakout (Arkanoid) to, little by little, evolve towards much more ambitious challenges. Specifically, being able to predict the structure of proteins through deep learning. AI can change science. The challenge DeepMind engineers faced seemed impossible. Predicting the structure of these proteins was often misleading and required enormous computing power, but with AlphaFold 1 (2018) and especially with AlphaFold 2 (2020) DeepMind achieved spectacular results. In 2021 the company published both the source code of the project and a database with the structure of more than 200 million proteins available for any laboratory or researcher. It was an absolute gift for the scientific world. Then AlphaFold 3 would arrivemore oriented towards drug development and with a somewhat more commercial point. A Nobel Prize-winning AI. Two of the 2024 Nobel Prize winners in chemistry work at DeepMind. These are Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper, who received the award for their contributions to the prediction of protein structure. That work with AlphaFold demonstrated that AI could indeed contribute to scientific advancement, and put DeepMind on the throne of that segment more than ever. A radically different approach. It is important to do pedagogy here. While LLMs (large language models like GPT-5) work by predicting the most likely next word in a sentence, “AI for science” predicts physical and chemical behaviors: while LLMs can hallucinate and lie like it’s nothing, scientific AI submits to the laws of physics. From observation to simulation. Traditionally, science advanced through observation, hypothesis and experiment, which was often slow and expensive. With AI, an intermediate phase is introduced, massive simulation, which acts as a catalyst for this process. Thanks to AI, it is possible to rule out millions of dead ends before the scientist sets foot in the laboratory. DeepMind has seen this so clearly that created Isomorphic Labsa business spin-off dedicated exclusively to using this technology to discover new drugs. DeepMind is not alone. Although the company co-founded by Demis Hassabis is the clear reference in this area, there are other examples that follow the same path: Microsoft– Achieved a striking milestone in collaboration with PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) by AI-screening 32 million potential inorganic materials and finding a new one capable of reducing the use of lithium in batteries by 70%. M.I.T.: The prestigious technical institute used deep learning models to discover halicinean antibiotic capable of eliminating bacteria resistant to all known treatments. NVIDIA: The firm not only imperially dominates the AI ​​chip market, but has built a “digital twin” of the Earth called Earth-2. Its AI models (FourCastNet) predict extreme weather events thousands of times faster and consuming much less than traditional supercomputers. The promise (a little) fulfilled. Almost since ChatGPT appeared, we were promised that AI would change the world. At the moment it has not done much, but what has been achieved by DeepMind and other companies in the field of science does seem to pose real revolutions. I recommend not missing the documentary: it is fantastic. In Xataka | What the AI ​​pioneers awarded today with the Nobel Prize say now about AI and its risks

Chinese electric car manufacturers opted to develop their own chips. He already plans to sell them to others.

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In 2024, Nio advertisement the world’s first 5nm chip for autonomous driving, being an important step towards technological independence from a Chinese manufacturer of such caliber. A year and a half after its announcement, the company is now beginning the external marketing of that chip, according to they count from Latepost. In this way, Nio is on the eve of transforming one of its most expensive investments into a potential source of income. Just like point The electric vehicle maker has already begun providing technology licenses to an automotive chip company. A multimillion-dollar project that seeks profitability. The development of Shenji NX9031 It has involved an investment of billions of yuan. William Li (Li Bin), CEO of Nio, revealed that the R&D expenditure on this chip was equivalent to the cost of building 1,000 battery exchange stations, which would place the investment above 140 million dollars. The project, started in 2021, has involved more than 600 professionals covering front and back design, verification and testing. What makes this chip special. Made with automotive-grade 5-nanometer technology, the Shenji NX9031 promises approximately four times the computing power of Nvidia’s Orin-X. Zhang Danyu, head of Nio’s chip division, pointed out in May that in some of their specifications they even surpass industry-standard chips and that their mass production began several months before Nvidia’s latest smart driving chip, the Thor-U. It is currently integrated into models such as the ET9, ES6 2025 and EC6. How much does a technology license cost?. According to share From Latepost, the value of these license agreements varies significantly depending on the type of authorization. An individual intellectual property license could be worth several million dollars, while a technical authorization at the system-on-chip (SoC) level could reach hundreds of millions of dollars. A new source of income. That the Nio chip begins to be marketed externally comes at a great time for the company, especially now that the manufacturer faces pressure significant from investors and has promised to become profitable in the fourth quarter. The company has intensified its efforts this year to reduce expenses and explore new sources of income. In March, Li Bin already advertisement publicly at the China EV 100 Forum that Nio chips and operating systems would be open to the industry. “If they want to buy the best chips, they can contact Nio,” he said then. What it means for the future of Nio. According to Li Bin, the chip provides a cost optimization of approximately 10,000 yuan ($1,400) per vehicle in the brand’s own models. Now, with the external license, Nio not only recovers part of its investment, but also positions itself as a technology provider for other manufacturers in the automotive sector. In Xataka | The longest straight road in the world is a mental challenge: 240 km without curves, in the middle of the desert and with truck traffic

China needs garbage to burn and it needs it so badly that people are digging it up to sell it to incinerators.

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Until a few years, China was the dumping ground of the world. Voluntarily. Since the 1980s, garbage imports have helped China supply raw materials for its industry. Today, the situation has changed and China continues to have a very intense relationship with waste management. But a very different one. What they have left over now is not garbage, but incinerators to burn it. And that has caused old landfills to begin to be unearthed. Many plants of the country They are burning garbage from 20 years ago today. The great Chinese love affair with garbage. In 2016, China imported 7,350,000 tons of plastic and Hong Kong another 2,850,000. In total, they imported almost 70% of all the plastic waste moved around the world that year. That’s not counting paper, scrap or textiles. China was, for more than two decades, the world’s dumping ground. And it wasn’t an accident. In the 1980s, faced with the shortage of certain raw materials, the Chinese Government decided to start importing certain especially useful waste (plastic, paper, mineral slag or textile waste). “The most notorious case was probably the importation of electronic waste that was dismantled and reprocessed in terrible environmental conditions,” Erik Baark explained to us. Everything has an end. However, by the late 2010s, the Chinese situation had changed. In those years alone, the total volume of urban solid waste generated in the Asian giant increased from 158 million tons to more than 249 million. Suddenly, the Government understood that it was running out of space. So he took several measures. And what did he do? On the one hand, got serious about environmental regulations. In the summer of 2017, more than 800 companies were prosecuted for not complying with recycling standards. And, a few months later, authorities arrested more than 259 people for the illegal importation of 303,000 tons of garbage. But it wasn’t enough. And they prohibited imports. That was what affected us the most: the 2017-2018 decision plunged to the international garbage market (and especially to Western recycling systems) in a crisis from which we have not yet emerged. However, it was not the only thing they did. As Baark explains“the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) explicitly supported the incineration of municipal solid waste, with the aim of increasing the proportion of waste treated by incineration from 20% to 35% at the national level.” However, China does not know how to do anything by halves. In less than five years, incineration power plants experienced a real boom (from 428 in 2019 to 1010 in 2023). The goal for 2025 — a daily incineration capacity of 800,000 tons — had already been exceeded in 2022. And shortly after, this energy production system came to “process” 80% of the country’s waste. Today they have literally run out of trash. As I said, in recent months, Chinese and international media have reported on waste incinerators for energy recovery in large cities that operate at low capacity due to a lack of raw materials. It is the story of how the impressive operational capacity of the Beijing government goes too far, yes. But the consequences are very curious: because the plants continue looking for waste to burn. In fact, to the extent that plants compete with each other: the price of garbage is rising. And that seems to be causing in many areas of the country “old” garbage is being dug up. A present that is ending. But no one is aware that this is something temporary. If Chinese waste continues to grow so little by little (10% in recent years), the incineration model is going to enter a crisis. First, for the most obvious thing, of course: it is not sustainable. but also because It is still an emergency resource and not a rational waste management policy. The most interesting thing for us is that this more than predictable crisis It will also change our world. Image | 烧不酥在上海 老的 In Xataka | The European waste industry has been lying to us for years: in 2018 everything blew up and we still haven’t recovered

The two largest travel agencies in Spain fight to sell trips to Disney. This is the business of children’s dreams

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Ávoris has lost the exclusivity it maintained in Spain to market trips to the Disney parks. El Corte Inglés Travel obtained authorization in May to distribute these packages through its Smytravel platform, breaking a monopoly that allowed its great rival to consolidate its leadership in the ranking of Spanish travel agencies. Now both giants compete directly for the same pie: the 500 independent agencies integrated into Traveltool and the thousands of Spanish families who ask about the price of a trip to Disney every year. Why is it important. Disney is not just another product: it is the star product of family tourism in Spain (and increasingly even for adults without children). Its parks received 142 million visitors in 2024, almost doubling its closest competitor, and Disneyland Paris is the loose leader. This trip is sold almost exclusively through physical agencies, generates high margins and attracts families who are especially willing to spend a lot of money to make their children’s dreams come true. Whoever controls Disney controls a substantial part of the family travel business. The background. The exclusivity of Ávoris has never pleased its competitors: For years, agencies that wanted to sell Disney had to resort to the group’s tour operators: LePlan and Touring Club. That made Ávoris the inevitable intermediary of a business with guaranteed demand. This privileged situation used to generate recurring complaints in the sector for what they considered unjustified favorable treatment. Yes, but. Ávoris has not sat idly by. It has launched improvements to the LePlan and Touring Club platforms with a new centralized page that offers training, inspirational content and tools to design personalized Disney experiences. The answer comes weeks after Tourmundial (the brand of El Corte Inglés) announce combined packages to Disneyland Paris with accommodation, transportation, tickets and complementary services. Between the lines. This trade war points to something deeper in Spanish society: the touristification of childhood. Going to Disney has become an almost obligatory milestone, a natural extension of the first communion as a rite of passage and as an experience that “must be lived.” Not taking your children to see Mickey and company can generate a feeling of social exclusion, as if the experience were an essential requirement for a complete childhood. So agencies don’t just sell trips, they sell the feeling of tranquility from meeting social expectations and the fulfillment of the child. In Xataka | The incredible story of the couple who lived at Disneyland for 15 years without the visitors realizing it Featured image | Capricorn song

How Amazon Has Been Filled With Supplements That Sell Imitation Science

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Just over 20 years ago, the stem cell research promised a revolution against disease and aging. These master cells, with the potential to become any tissue in the body, seemed the key to true regenerative medicine, something that It moved away from the complex reality that we have inside our body. Although there are different merchants who try to sell us stem cells as a true wonder. Distorted. Something we are accustomed to (unfortunately) is that where science hits the brakes, the market hits the accelerator. In the infinite Amazon showcase, next to the vitamins and the collagen supplementsa new family of miracle products has emerged: stem cell supplements. Of course, they cannot contain cells in a capsule or in a cream, but that does not promise them to stimulate or regenerate them. Something that for many is the most ideal. This is something that a group from the Health Law Institute of the University of Alberta (Canada) has decided to investigate. has put the magnifying glass on this emerging market. To do this, it analyzed 184 of these products from 133 different companies associated with Amazon.com and has been able to conclude that behind an apparent scientific rhetoric hides a deliberate strategy to avoid regulation and deceive the consumer. The trick. The study published in the journal Stem Cell Reports shows how the sellers of these supplements exploit a legal loophole that allows them to launch ambiguous health messages without the need to demonstrate their effectiveness. The labels carefully avoid terms such as ‘cure’ or ‘prevent’ diseases, something that legislation prohibits. Instead, they use harmless verbs like “support,” “promote,” or “maintain” brain health, energy, or healthy aging. This ambiguity is its main weapon. In the United States and Canada, regulations allow calls structure/function claimswhich are vague claims that link a product to overall well-being without requiring rigorous clinical testing. That loophole is where most of these supplements slip through. The data. They can be summarized in several points: More than 40% of products explicitly mentioned “science” or “scientific evidence” to support the features they promised. 35% included references to health professionals or scientists to reinforce legitimacy. 94% of the supplements made promises related to specific ailments by pointing out that they were anti-aging, strengthened immunity or increased the consumer’s energy. This type of marketing, which the authors call scienceploitation (exploitation of science), “gives the consumer the impression that there is broad scientific support, which contrasts with the current state of stem cell therapies,” the study warns. Regulation. The strategy works because regulation in North America barely requires testing for safety or efficiency before a supplement hits the market. In theory, public bodies can sanction misleading advertising, but their oversight capacity is minimal. In the United States alone, it is estimated that there are more than 100,000 supplements in circulation. In practice, you only have to add a phrase that is “this statement has not been evaluated by the FDA” for pseudoscience to become legal. In Canada, although a license from Health Canada is required, a 2021 audit found that the agency did “little” to prevent poor consumer information from being provided. The case in Spain. Although the study in question focuses on the United States and Canada, its conclusions can be extrapolated. In Spain, any statement about health must be authorized by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) or the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS). However, law enforcement on the internet is often very lax, and on Amazon.es you can find products with language very similar to that reported by researchers. Products on Amazon.es that promise anti-aging effects thanks to the stem cells they contain. The authors of the work, led by Alessandro R. Marcon and Timothy Caulfield, warn that this situation not only harms consumers’ pockets, but also erodes trust in science and real research on stem cells. Selling products without a scientific basis under the umbrella of biotechnology is, they conclude, a form of marketing that exploits the prestige gained by science to sell smoke. Images | Doodlart mmmCCC In Xataka | Amazon lost 25 billion with Echo because no one bought with it: now it punishes you with constant advertising for having bought it

China is building more electric cars than you can sell and that announces something dramatic: a manufacturers bleeding

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For years, China has cooked its assault on the electric car. As in other sectors, the country has put a cooked pot and has been done with all the ingredients. Little by little, it has been heating the water, browning the sauce and, with everything ready, the fire has risen. The time has come to get the dishes. And it doesn’t matter if someone stays along the way. A huge market. China is the largest electric car market. Not only that, by volume, it is the country in which more cars are bought if we add all kinds of technologies. His market is gigantic. To the point that In it, 23.5 million cars were sold In 2024. To get an idea, in the United States 16 million cars were sold and around 12 million cars. Why does an electric car have less autonomy than the announcing According to data from Carnewschinasales were slightly lower (22.9 million) but the International Energy Agency (IEA, for its acronym in English) and the specialized medium in the Chinese market agree that the barrier of more than 11 million vehicles of new energy sold (category in which plug -in and electric hybrids are included) was broken). Over low heat. Until last year, European manufacturers had been leaders in the Chinese market. Little by little, local manufacturers have gained ground … until Byd rolled Volkswagen. Among new energy vehicles, more than 60% of sales They are electric cars. And there, Chinese manufacturers have passed over Westerners. They have achieved it with a determined policy. European manufacturers were offered land and labor at balance prices. Of course, they had to associate with local manufacturers. These manufacturers have learned from the West and, in addition, They have received subsidies from the Chinese governmenteither with the creation of state companies (or partial participation in them), almost free land and facilities and soft loans. And, at the same time, the State has been taking strategic positions. China controls the supply chain of semiconductors But also the production of Rare earth and of batteries. All this has caused that the cost of producing in China for the Chinese market is much cheaper for its local producers, which has resulted in a better product at a better price than foreign competitors. Fearless. Once the State has been done with the ingredients and has put the cooker, it has not been afraid to climb the fire with the intention that their marks will eat the western ones in the country. The purchase subsidies have been focused on maintaining a constant sales yield of electric cars and new energy, where China has managed to get ahead. At the same time, a wave of nationalism well aimed from the State (for the interests of its manufacturers) has moved the purchase interests of consumers. They already see Western brands as a thing of the past. Companies that previously positioned themselves as a luxury product today are obsolete in a market that bets on a type of car without barriers. A car that is the object of mobility but is also karaoke or interactive center where to take a while surrounded by screens. Overcapacy. Or overproduction, so that we all understand each other. According to data from the Chinese Association of Automobile Manufacturers, In 2024 there were 31,282 million vehicles and 31,436 million were sold. Keep in mind that much of that production, obviously, was sent outside the borders. In fact, already in 2023 The country beat Japan as the largest car exporter in the world. The problem is that the formula has begun to give symptoms of exhaustion in this 2025. O, as little, of a certain stagnation. Last August, Byd confirmed that he had to redirect your sales prospects. The company I planned to produce 5.5 million of vehicles but its new objective is on the border of the 5 million. With 80% of its sales in China, which by the brake begins to give an idea of ​​the difficulty finding the market to absorb all the cars that are producing. An unexpected war. That difficulty in putting cars in the market has been the manufacturer himself in his meats. They explain in Reuters That in the Chinese city of Chengdu it is easy to find cars with discounts of 50%. Some of them, the Audi that are manufactured in collaboration with FAW, are sold with up to 60% discount. That war is dilapidating the margin of benefits of brands such as byd that have more muscle than rivals to lower prices and reduce stock. Because that is another of the obvious symptoms that point to a slowdown in the Chinese market. A few months ago, The concessionaires themselves asked that manufacturers stop sending cars because they were having problems selling them despite the attractive discount. In fact, The State itself has brought together manufacturers To deal with the topic of kilometers 0, which add up as a sale but then are forgotten in stores in the absence of a buyer. A private market. When China lived its previous price war, we already commented that it was a fire test for some companies. The problem of this wild competition is that manufacturers enter a downward price wheel where cars are ended up without taking out enough benefit to it. So, Tesla and Byd They were the ones that had the entire muscle to destroy the rivals. But, in addition, two peculiarities in the Chinese market must be taken into account. The first is that the launch rhythm is very high. That makes the companies themselves leave the cars they have launched just a few months or a year ago with their own innovations. This is the case of byd And the announcement that His eye of God would reach all his cars From now on. The client observes that the models and prices are renewed with each launch. Conclusion: delays the purchase, the stock accumulates and the cars are outdated. But, in addition, manufacturers … Read more

McDonald’s has a problem in Japan with the dolls of ‘One Piece’ and ‘Pokémon’ of the Happy Meal: they sell too much

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McDonald’s is running in Japan with a reception of such caliber for his Happy Meals that he is being forced to cancel promotions early. First with letters from ‘Pokémon‘And then with dolls from ‘One Piece’the traditional gifts of their children’s menus are being grass of collectors that are generating A crisis not only foodbut also of image. What happened. This last August McDonald’s He has been forced to cancel a promotion: They gave cards Pokémon with his Happy Meal, but franchise collectors were presented at restaurants to buy large amounts of menus, interested in the cards and with the intention of reselling them, as collected a company statement. Then they got rid of food, which led to a “massive food waste”, only three days after the start of the campaign, on August 11. Some solutions. To solve the problem, before the definitive cancellation of the promotion, McDonald’s established a maximum of purchases per person, but the collectors raffled the ban on tail several times. The hamburger chain also asked the country’s online sale platforms that they did not accept, or at least they will limit the Pokémon cards to carry the McDonald’s seal. None of that was enough and forced the chain to suspend the promotion in record time. One Piece, again. The phenomenon It was repeatedin a very short time, with ‘One Piece’. The popular anime series was going to be subject to the next promotion of Happy Meal, but seeing what happened with Pokémon, the chain has momentarily canceled the campaign, which would have started on August 29. McDonald’s is facing a dilemma: to make toys attractive enough to sell hamburgers, but not so much to generate problems. It is not the first time. Pokémon may seem almost isolated (after all, according to experts, We talk about the object collectable more expensive in the world. But it is not the first time that this happens to McDonalds, which has already been seen in similar situations on other occasions: the K-Pop group BTSFor example, launched a menu in 2021 in 50 different countries. In some as Indonesia there were problems of minor stocks and disturbances. In 2015, on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Independence of Singapore, McDonald’s launched some hello kitty dolls in limited edition, dressed in typical costumes of the country, which caused very long queues and existent problems. Finally, and leaving Asia, in the United States in 2022 McDonald’s announced a menu In collaboration with the urban clothing brand Cactus Plant Flea Marketwith four characters dressed in firm’s clothes. On the same day of the launch the menu was already exhausted. China is guilty (says Japan). There is another example of frustrated promotions that has a lot to do with it: in May of this year, McDonald’s canceled a Happy Meal promotion where they included dolls from the ‘Chikawa’ manga series. They disappeared in hours And the chain detected that it could be due to the posterior resale among collectors, in fact also observed that it was organized purchase networks. According to Some clients came to comment on social networksthey were Chinese resellers who used the orders via mobile to exceed the maximum of four orders per person that allowed McDonald’s. Many of the Happy Meals items later appeared, in effect, on China’s sale and collecting websites. Header | McDonald’s In Xataka | ‘Pokémon TGC Pocket’ is breaking it and rightly: Pokémon’s card game is thought to the millimeter

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