Good morning. US carmakers are struggling to sell electric vehicles because their products are inferior while the Chinese market powers ahead, according to one of the world’s biggest battery materials manufacturers.
Mathias Miedreich, chief executive of Umicore, said sales of Chinese electric cars were surging in contrast to the US because of better performance and affordability.
“They are simply good cars and people buy them,” he said in an interview, referring to Chinese vehicles. “The American ones [producers] seem to struggle to bring good electric vehicles [to market].”
The boss of Belgium’s Umicore, which counts BMW and China’s Envision AESC among its customers, added that US carmakers were also pulling back on factory expansion plans for electric vehicles because of weak demand.
Miedreich said it could be difficult for Ford and General Motors to attract future customers for EVs “because from a product point of view, the market has made their choices already”.
And the Chinese have “at the end of the day what the market needs”, he said. Read the full interview.
Here’s what I’m keeping tabs on today:
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Chinese politics: China’s political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference National Committee, begins its annual session in Beijing.
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Australia: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hosts a special summit in Melbourne with leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to commemorate 50 years of dialogue between Australia and Asean.
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Middle East: Today marks the 150th day of the Hamas-Israel conflict in Gaza.
Five more top stories
1. Pakistan’s parliament has backed Shehbaz Sharif as prime minister for the second time. In a vote of confidence yesterday, the country’s dynastic political parties joined forces to form a new government led by Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz amid angry protests from supporters of former premier Imran Khan, who say elections in February were rigged.
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Iran elections: Turnout in Iran’s parliamentary election fell to historic lows, according to preliminary results from a race that underscored how hardliners have consolidated power.
2. Opec+ members led by Saudi Arabia and Russia have extended the latest round of voluntary cuts to oil production for another three months. The measures add to a series of output cuts by Opec+ members since 2022 designed to support prices amid rising US production and tepid global demand. Here’s more on the decision.
3. Benjamin Netanyahu’s allies have lashed out at senior minister Benny Gantz for an upcoming visit to the White House, in a sign of growing strains within Israel’s war cabinet and in its relations with Washington. The Israeli embassy in Washington was ordered to boycott Gantz’s planned meetings with US officials, according to one person familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s allies accused Gantz of acting like a “Trojan horse” against Israeli interests.
4. Exclusive: The former Macquarie star commodities trader Nick O’Kane has agreed terms to join Mercuria as the Swiss trading house seeks to expand its gas and power business, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The 50-year-old Australian is to join in a senior leadership role to grow Mercuria’s gas and power activities, particularly in Asia.
5. French far-right leader Marine Le Pen vowed yesterday to wrest back powers from an “intrusive and authoritarian” bureaucracy in Brussels at a rally for the launch of her party’s European election campaign. Polls put her Rassemblement National party as the clear frontrunner ahead of president Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance.
News in-depth
When Russian authorities banned anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin from participating in this month’s presidential election, their message was clear: the Kremlin would no longer tolerate a competitive electoral landscape — even one in which Vladimir Putin’s victory was guaranteed. The FT’s Courtney Weaver reports that after two years of war in Ukraine and a brutal crackdown against any form of domestic dissent, the Russian leadership has dropped the pretence of its so-called “managed democracy”.
We’re also reading . . .
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The glass cliff: Women are deemed more likely to rise to the top when the job is risky and less appealing to men. Pilita Clark asks, why are women still being cast off the glass cliff?
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Trump’s trial calendar: The closer Donald Trump gets to the 2024 presidential election, the longer he will be spending in courtrooms and away from the campaign trail.
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Why pessimism is pointless: It may be fashionable to be a catastrophist but the consequences can be alarming, writes Jemima Kelly.
Chart of the day
Is time up for the luxury watch boom? The typically resilient sector is contending with a broader slowdown in luxury spending and the deflation of a pandemic-era boom that sent resale prices soaring.
Take a break from the news
Lynn Fung is the director of Hong Kong’s Liang Yi Museum, which hosts her father’s world-renowned collection of antique Ming and Qing furniture. Ahead of the 10th anniversary of its opening, Fung discusses running the museum — and why visitors are encouraged to sit on the furniture.
