This Chinese Automaker's Next Hypercar Reportedly Packs a Mind-Boggling 3019 Horsepower
According to Car News China, the fillings with the MIIT feature an upcoming Yangwang U9 Track Edition model, which adopts a four-motor powertrain in place of the standard car's dual-motor setup. The agency filing states that each wheel will feature a 555-kW motor, the report says, which work together to produce 3019 hp.
The special edition model is expected to utilize the same 80-kWh lithium iron phosphate battery pack as other U9s, which means it is backed by 500-kW DC fast-charging capabilities that allow owners to go from 30% to 80% charged in just 10 minutes. The report also states that the car has a listed top speed of 'just' 217 mph, likely due to the revised aerodynamics. The MIIT listing also reportedly makes note of an optional extended aero package, which should provide maximum downforce for the track.
The report also says that the car will utilize BYD's DiSus-X intelligent body control system, which is the same fancy suspension setup that allows the car to drive on just three wheels; the Chinese government documents also reportedly state that the car will feature a curb weight of just under 5470 pounds That's about a hundred pounds more than a Lucid Air Sapphire in a car with more than double the horsepower. There's no way this thing isn't absolutely terrifying, and I, for one, can't wait to see exactly what it can do.
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
AI experts return from China stunned: The U.S. grid is so weak, the race may already be over
'Everywhere we went, people treated energy availability as a given,' Rui Ma wrote on X after returning from a recent tour of China's AI hubs. For American AI researchers, that's almost unimaginable. In the U.S., surging AI demand is colliding with a fragile power grid, the kind of extreme bottleneck that Goldman Sachs warns could severely choke the industry's growth. In China, Ma continued, it's considered a 'solved problem.' Ma, a renowned expert in Chinese technology and founder of the media company Tech Buzz China, took her team on the road to get a firsthand look at the country's AI advancements. She told Fortune that while she isn't an energy expert, she attended enough meetings and talked to enough insiders to come away with a conclusion that should send chills down the spine of Silicon Valley: in China, building enough power for data centers is no longer up for debate. 'This is a stark contrast to the U.S., where AI growth is increasingly tied to debates over data center power consumption and grid limitations,' she wrote on X. The stakes are difficult to overstate. Data center building is the foundation of AI advancement, and spending on new centers now displaces consumer spending in terms of impact to U.S. GDP—that's concerning since consumer spending is generally two-thirds of the pie. McKinsey projects that between 2025 and 2030, companies worldwide will need to invest $6.7 trillion into new data center capacity to keep up with AI's strain. In a recent research note, Stifel Nicolaus warned of a looming correction to the S&P 500, since it forecasts this data-center capex boom to be a one-off build-out of infrastructure, while consumer spending is clearly on the wane. However, the clear limiting factor to the U.S.'s data center infrastructure development, according to a Deloitte industry survey, is stress on the power grid. Cities' power grids are so weak that some companies are just building their own power plants rather than relying on existing grids. The public is growing increasingly frustrated over increasing energy bills – in Ohio, the electricity bill for a typical household has increased at least $15 this summer from the data centers – while energy companies prepare for a sea-change of surging demand. Goldman Sachs frames the crisis simply: 'AI's insatiable power demand is outpacing the grid's decade-long development cycles, creating a critical bottleneck.' Meanwhile, David Fishman, a Chinese electricity expert who has spent years tracking their energy development, told Fortune that in China, electricity isn't even a question. On average, China adds more electricity demand than the entire annual consumption of Germany, every single year. Whole rural provinces are blanketed in rooftop solar, with one province matching the entirety of India's electricity supply. 'U.S. policymakers should be hoping China stays a competitor and not an aggressor,' Fishman said. 'Because right now they can't compete effectively on the energy infrastructure front.' China has an oversupply of electricty China's quiet electricity dominance, Fishman explained, is the result of decades of deliberate overbuilding and investment in every layer of the power sector, from generation to transmission to next-generation nuclear. The country's reserve margin has never dipped below 80%–100% nationwide, meaning it has consistently maintained at least twice the capacity it needs, Fishman said. They have so much available space that instead of seeing AI data centers as a threat to grid stability, China treats them as a convenient way to 'soak up oversupply,' he added. That level of cushion is unthinkable in the United States, where regional grids typically operate with a 15% reserve margin and sometimes less, particularly during extreme weather, Fishman said. In places like California or Texas, officials often issue warnings about red-flag conditions when demand is projected to strain the system. This leaves little room to absorb the rapid load increases AI infrastructure requires, Fishman ntoed. The gap in readiness is stark: while the U.S. is already experiencing political and economic fights over whether the grid can keep up, China is operating from a position of abundance. Even if AI demand in China grows so quickly renewable projects can't keep pace, Fishman said, the country can tap idle coal plants to bridge the gap while building more sustainable sources. 'It's not preferable,' he admitted, 'but it's doable.' By contrast, the U.S. would have to scramble to bring on new generation capacity, often facing years-long permitting delays, local opposition, and fragmented market rules, he said. Structural governance differences Underpinning the hardware advantage is a difference in governance. 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Without public financing to de-risk long-term bets, he argued, the U.S. political and economic system is simply not set up to build the grid of the future. Cultural attitudes reinforce this approach. In China, renewables are framed as a cornerstone of the economy because they make sense economically and strategically, not because they carry moral weight. Coal use isn't cast as a sign of villainy, as it would be among some circles in the U.S. – it's simply seen as outdated. This pragmatic framing, Fishman argued, allows policymakers to focus on efficiency and results rather than political battles. For Fishman, the takeaway is blunt. Without a dramatic shift in how the U.S. builds and funds its energy infrastructure, China's lead will only widen.'The gap in capability is only going to continue to become more obvious — and grow in the coming years,' he said. This story was originally featured on
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
How Binance's Yi He became ‘the most powerful woman in crypto'—and steered the company past its biggest ordeal
When Yi He was a girl in the 1980s, she walked to the well for water and relied on kerosene lamps at times to light the house. Things are different now. Today, Yi He is a celebrity to millions of Chinese and a multibillionaire thanks to her reported 10% stake in the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, where she wields enormous influence as a cofounder and senior executive. Still, life has not been easy. Binance's other cofounder, the flamboyant Changpeng Zhao, went to prison last year in the United States as part of a $4 billion plea deal. The situation created a huge business challenge for Binance and for Yi He, a painful personal one since Zhao was not only the company's CEO but is the father of her young children. Today, Binance appears to have weathered the ordeal. Zhao has served his sentence, and Binance, despite incurring the sort of blow that would have crippled most companies, is still on top as the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange. Yi He has been instrumental in achieving this, and after years of wielding power behind the scenes, is taking on a more public role running Binance. In a rare interview, Yi He told Fortune about her journey from poor village girl to crypto billionaire, the tests she faced during Binance's year of crisis, and her vision for an industry that is fast transforming global finance. The common touch In the course of her life and career, Yi He has overcome many obstacles—one of which has been learning English, which she only took up four years ago in her mid-thirties. During a long Zoom interview, He acquits herself well, only falling back on her translator when she struggles to explain a Chinese idiom or proverb. The power of communication is something Yi He knows well. At Binance, she is renowned for her marketing and customer service skills, which helped vault the exchange to the biggest in the world in less than a year. 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'She tells people, 'Sure, I came from a crappy background and made good, so why don't you do the same?'' says Chen. Yi He, whom Bloomberg dubbed 'the most powerful woman in crypto,' has climbed to the top of the blockchain world using this mix of smarts, hustle, and cockiness—qualities she shares with her cofounder and romantic partner. Building Binance When Changpeng Zhao launched Binance in 2017, he had already built an outsize public persona as CZ, by which he is universally known today. Zhao built up the CZ mythology by taking outsize risks—like selling his Shanghai apartment in 2014 to buy more Bitcoin—and by enthusiastically joining in the daily shitposting for the very online community known as Crypto Twitter. Zhao asked Yi He to join Binance in its early days but only after she had first recruited him years earlier, when she persuaded him to join her as chief technology officer at the exchange OKCoin (now OKX) in 2014. The pair shared an enthusiasm for crypto but other qualities as well. Zhao, like Yi He, spent his early years in an unheated, rural schoolhouse until his father immigrated to Canada where, in high school, Zhao worked minimum wage jobs at Chevron and McDonald's. Zhao is also inclined to clap back at those who mock his background, even retweeting memes of himself in a Golden Arches uniform. It was during their time at OKCoin that the pair became a couple as they gained experience operating a massive crypto business. Today, the pair, who never married but remain romantically involved, work closely as parents and business partners. Yi He is co-owner with Zhao of Binance's venture capital arm turned family office, YZi Labs, and owns at least 10% of shares in the parent company, according to the Wall Street Journal. On the nature of her relationship with Zhao, Yi He asked not to be quoted on the record and instead provided a written statement: 'My personal life is independent from my professional life. My achievements and capabilities as cofounder are often overlooked with my personal life in question,' she wrote, while touting a Binance user base of 280 million customers. Whatever the personal dimensions of the relationship, the professional side of it has proved highly effective, with Yi He roughly serving as the Binance equivalent of Sheryl Sandberg, the executive who helped build Facebook in its early days while helping to ground the then-unpolished CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. In practice, this has meant Zhao occupying the role of Binance's larger-than-life frontman and product visionary, with Yi He fanning massive growth through aggressive promotions, including car giveaways. Her approach found favor with the Chinese community abroad and also in China, where crypto is technically banned but still hugely popular, in part because it is an easily transferable asset beyond the reach of government capital controls. A Binance employee who asked not to be named so as to discuss the firm's executives described Yi He as an exacting boss, but one who supports employees and advocates for those around her. In discussing Binance's day-to-day operations, Yi He said a core tenet at the company is 'founder culture,' a phrase from the tech world that describes firms that retain the original drive of their early startup days. In the case of Binance, those early days were defined in part by a willingness to play fast and loose with regulation, and to hopscotch from country to country in response to government scrutiny. While that strategy helped fuel Binance's incredible growth, it has at times also been the company's biggest weakness—one that caused it to lose its most prominent founder. Binance after CZ By early 2023, the walls were closing in. Following the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX exchange the previous year, the Biden administration redoubled its efforts to bring the crypto sector to heel—with a particular focus on the sector's biggest player, Binance. The company's lawyers had been in discussions with the Justice Department about various allegations for years, but finally the time had come to make a deal. In September of 2023, the agency announced a sweeping settlement that would not only see Binance pay a whopping $4.3 billion fine—the largest of its kind in corporate history—but also force Zhao to step down as CEO and plead guilty to charges of failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering measures. Both the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, meanwhile, cited multiple unnamed sources to claim the agency sought to force Yi He to leave the company as well. ('Binance's plea agreements with the U.S. regulators are a matter of public record,' said a company spokesperson.) Despite this massive blow to both its treasury and leadership, Binance two years later remains the biggest crypto exchange by far under Zhao's successor, Richard Teng. A former top regulator from Singapore, Teng has helped the company implement a raft of compliance measures and project a new image that suggests it has evolved beyond the fast-and-loose tactics of its early days. In January, Binance also took a major step—for the first time introducing a formal board structure, featuring seven members including Teng and three independent directors. Despite all this, a former employee at the company told Fortune that the power at Binance very much resides where it always has—with Zhao, Yi He, and two other early Binance executives, Lilai 'Roger' Wang and Wei 'Sonny' Zhou. The person, who asked not to be identified in order to speak candidly, added that Yi He has a final say in all personnel matters and exerts the greatest authority when it comes to customer experience decisions. The Binance spokesperson, meanwhile, said the claim is not accurate and that the company's culture encourages employees to exercise a high degree of autonomy, and added that Zhou left the firm three years ago. The founder of a venture capital firm, meanwhile, described Binance as a company run with an 'iron fist' that, despite dealing with new legal constraints and the challenge of running a sprawling global operation, is in no danger of losing its place as market leader. This assessment appears to be supported by recent data, supplied by CoinGecko, that shows Binance holding on to the lion's share of trading activity—39% of volume on centralized exchanges in June—despite the emergence of new competitors: For Yi He, Binance's ongoing dominance comes as a validation of her customer-first strategy, and of the company founder's personal devotion to crypto—a technology she views as transformational, to the same degree that the arrival of the internet changed traditional media and TV. Yi He predicts that crypto will accelerate its push into the conventional financial system through stablecoins and other blockchain technologies and that, in five to 10 years, both realms will be fully integrated with each other. On a personal level, Yi He says the mass adoption of crypto feels like yet another massive technological change she has experienced since the days of her girlhood not so long ago, when her house didn't have electricity or running water. As for the trials she's experienced along the way, she cites a Mongolian proverb: 'Since you have spoken well, do not speak of pain. If you speak of the good, do not mention the pain.' This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
The End of Ford as We Know It
Last year, Ford CEO Jim Farley commuted in a car that wasn't made by his own company. In an effort to scope out the competition, Farley spent six months driving around in a Xiaomi SU7. The Chinese-made electric sedan is one of the world's most impressive cars: It can accelerate faster than many Porsches, has a giant touch screen that lets you turn off the lights at your house, and comes with a built-in AI assistant —all for roughly $30,000 in China. 'It's fantastic,' Farley said about the Xiaomi SU7 on a podcast last fall. 'I don't want to give it up.' Farley has openly feared what might happen to Ford if more Americans can get behind the wheel of the Xiaomi SU7. Ford was able to import a Xiaomi from Shanghai for testing purposes, but for now, regular Americans cannot buy the SU7 or another one of the many affordable and highly advanced EVs made in China. Stiff tariffs and restrictions on Chinese technology have kept them out of the U.S. If things changed, Ford—along with all other automakers in the U.S.—would be in serious danger. Chinese EVs can be so cheap and high tech that they risk outcompeting all cars, not just electric ones. In the rest of the world, traditional automakers are already struggling as Chinese cars hit the market. In Europe, Chinese brands now have roughly as much share of the market as Mercedes-Benz. 'We are in a global competition with China,' Farley said earlier this year. 'And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.' It might sound a bit overblown. American auto executives delivered similar warnings about Japan in the '80s —and Ford's still standing today. But this week, Ford signaled in unusually clear terms for the auto industry, that it sees China as an existential threat. At a Ford factory in Louisville, Kentucky, Farley announced a series of drastic countermeasures to begin making cheaper electric cars that can compete with Xiaomi and other Chinese companies. The changes are so fundamental that Ford is retooling the assembly line itself—the very thing Henry Ford used to get the world motoring a century ago. Ford's answer to China starts with—what else?—a pickup truck. In 2027, the Louisville plant will produce a new electric truck starting at $30,000. By today's standards, this would be one of the cheapest new EVs you can buy in America. It will cost far less than Ford's current electric truck, the F-150 Lightning Pro, which starts around $55,000. Plenty of Americans might get excited about a decent, affordable electric truck. But what's more important than the price is how it'll be made. Ford's other EVs, like the F-150 Lightning and electric Mustang Mach-E, were heavily adapted from existing gas-powered models. Those vehicles are built by cobbling together a hodgepodge of individual components that evolved independently of one another over time, like a house that's been slowly renovated several times across decades. Retrofitting a design for a big, expensive EV battery comes with all kinds of compromises, including high costs. Ford realized early on that it was spending billions of dollars on wiring, among other things, that its competitors such as Tesla didn't need to deal with, because their electric cars are purpose-built from the ground up. No wonder, then, that Ford's electric division has racked up $2 billion in losses in just the first half of this year alone. Ford's approach with its new truck is more like bulldozing the entire house and starting from scratch. A small team full of former Tesla and Apple engineers, working out of California, designed the process. The new truck will be made with 20 percent fewer parts than a traditional gas vehicle, Ford has said, and half as many cooling hoses. The company has 'no illusion that we have one whiz-bang idea' to keep costs down, Alan Clarke, Ford's head of advanced EV development, who spent a dozen years as a top Tesla engineer, told me. 'We've had to do hundreds of things to be able to meet this price point.' For Ford, a single $30,000 electric truck is hardly a sufficient answer to China's inexpensive EVs. The bigger development might be the factory itself. Besides adding robots, the company's assembly line hadn't changed much since the days of Henry Ford. At the revamped Louisville plant, Ford is using what it's calling an 'assembly tree' system: three 'branches' where the vehicle's battery and major body parts converge to make the car with fewer parts. By doing so, Ford says, it'll crank out trucks up to 15 percent more quickly than the plant's current vehicles. It's one factory and one vehicle for now, Clarke said, but if successful, this approach could spread throughout Ford. 'It is certainly the future of EV-making, one way or another,' he said. In some ways, Ford is simply catching up to what China has already been doing. 'Broadly, what Ford announced this week is already being done—just not by them,' Tu Le, the founder of Sino Auto Insights, a research firm, told me. With EVs, the battery became the most expensive part of a vehicle—so carmakers, starting with Tesla, began to rethink how body parts and other components were made and come together to cut costs. China ran with many of those ideas. Ford's plans will be challenging to pull off. China has immense government subsidies, a huge pool of engineering talent, the world's best battery technology, and ultra-low labor costs. (A Reuters analysis of BYD, the Chinese EV giant, indicates that its workers are paid roughly $850 per month.) Meanwhile, Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act just gutted many EV subsidies and incentives that would have helped America catch up to China. Legacy automakers have made big promises before about a forthcoming EV revolution, only to retreat, retrench, and rethink when things got hard, or when they got a pass from environmental regulators. Last year, Ford canceled a large electric SUV, and its current EV lineup is getting old while competitors like General Motors have been rolling out new models all of the time. Ford's new truck is at least two years away, and China isn't waiting around. Chinese EVs are surging in developing countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Djibouti, an d Ethiopia —where more limited gasoline infrastructure and lower EV-maintenance costs make them especially appealing. That competition is bad news for a company like Ford, which builds and sells cars all over the world. Ford's new car is designed to be exported as well, though the automaker won't say where yet. A lot is riding on a $30,000 truck. As Chinese EVs take over the world, keeping them out of the U.S. becomes a tougher and tougher sell. It's not hard to imagine a company like BYD eventually getting the go-ahead to build a factory in the U.S. 'I see a Chinese EV being built in the U.S. within Trump's current term,' Le predicted. Those cars won't be as dirt cheap as they are in China when built with American labor, but they would still be considerably more advanced. Henry Ford's company once reinvented how cars were built. The most alarming possibility for Ford is that it could do so all over again—and somehow, even that might not be enough.
