Japan's factory decline slows, but tariff worries persist
Japan's factory activity shrank at the slowest pace in five months in May as the decline in new orders eased, but worries over U.S. tariffs have dampened the recovery from an almost year-long contraction, a private-sector survey showed on Monday. Julian Satterthwaite reports.
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The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Toyota & Lexus new cars for 2025 revealed including rugged RAV4 update, hybrid Aygo and sharp-looking ES saloon
'IF you want to catch a lot of fish, set out many fishing rods,' a wise man in the motor industry once said. Toyota is definitely following that advice. 5 So any potential customer swimming into a Toyota dealership will find a huge range of cars ready to hook them. It's working. Sales of Toyota and its posher Lexus arm keep growing. A cascade of new cars and updates will likely keep the momentum going into next year. The RAV4 family SUV is a massive seller and returns next year as a plug-in hybrid only. It should be economical when running on petrol alone. But if you can find somewhere to plug in, the electric range is now a very handy 62 milles. The angular new body has a proper rugged look to it, standing out from the crop of softy crossovers it competes against. Toyota keeps driving down the cost of hybrids. At the end of the year it will relaunch its baby Aygo X as a hybrid instead of pure-petrol. That will have the lowest consumption and CO2 rating of any car without a plug. Toyota offers $25k discount off brand new model until June 2 – but the rebate depends on where shoppers live So the hybrid system is still a massive part of Toyota's success. When hybrid arrived here in the Prius at the turn of the millennium, it was a minority sport. Gradually it went mainstream, spreading across nearly all Toyota and Lexus models. So much so that the company took flak for not jumping from there on to the full-electric car bandwagon. Now that caution looks wise. The speed of changeover to EVs is softening, and the legal push to ban hybrids is paused five years to 2035. Shifting predictions for EVs are affecting Toyota-Lexus too. 5 For some years, the plan was to build standalone electric cars, wholly different from the hybrids. But that's going to change. Andrea Carlucci, European marketing boss, told me the plan now is to build cars that you can buy as either full-electric or hybrid. Selling completely separate hybrid and EV models, he says, 'causes a complexity challenge', confusing buyers and choking dealerships. 'We should simplify the number of silhouettes.' So Lexus is launching its sharp-looking new luxury saloon, the ES, in both a hybrid and a 330-mile electric. In the UK the plan is we'll get the electric only, but no doubt that could alter if the politics of EVs change again. Inside, it's luxurious but with a clean Japanese-garden feel. The door trim looks like back-illuminated bamboo. But despite the new plan for dual-powertrain cars, there are still a bunch of pure battery cars in the launch phase. The small one is the Urban Cruiser, on sale shortly. It'll be followed by the C-HR+, which looks, and is, different from the C-HR hybrid. All those two share is a general theme: both are compact coupe-crossovers. For families wanting more space as well as battery power, Toyota will add a Touring estate version to the bZ4X electric crossover. That's spring next year. The all-electric Lexus RZ gets an update next year, including steer-by-wire using an aircraft-style yoke instead of a steering wheel, plus fake 'gearbox' effects to make driving a single-speed EV feel more interesting. More like a petrol car, in other words.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
BBC Learning English - Learning English from the News / 50% adults overweight or obese by 2050: Global study
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BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
BBC Learning English - Learning English from the News / DeepSeek: Chinese AI app shocks tech world
(Photo by Omer Taha Cetin/Anadolu via Getty Images) ____________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________ The story A Chinese artificial intelligence app called DeepSeek has caught the attention of the global tech industry. It was released on the 20th of January, and has quickly risen to the top of the Apple store's download charts. DeepSeek claims the latest model was built using only $5.6 million, whereas ChatGPT's developer OpenAI spent $5 billion last year alone. The market value of tech company stocks, like Nvidia, has since fallen dramatically. News headlines Why is the AI world freaking out over China's DeepSeek? The Japan Times Nvidia shares sink as Chinese AI app spooks US markets BBC News AI Market Shake-Up: Global Giants Tumble As Chinese AI Model DeepSeek Disrupts Markets Business Today Key words and phrases freaking out losing emotional control I freaked out when my favourite actor walked past me in the street. spook create a sudden sense of fear or nervousness The government's sudden tax cuts spooked the markets. shake-up a change The football team kept losing, so the coach decided to have a shake-up of the squad. Next Learn more English vocabulary from the news with our News Review archive. Learn Phrasal verbs for feelings, like 'freak out', here. Listen to My Song, My Home here.
